The realm of the holy. . .

Those things which cannot be challenged but must be affirmed are no longer simple truths or opinions.  They have moved past the secular and into the realm of religion.  They become the holy truths which must be affirmed.  They are belief, to be sure, but the unchallenged belief that form the fabric of the sacred or holy which is also the realm of God.  This is no longer the God of His own disclosing, the God of the wholly other who makes Himself known to us.  No, this is the God of our choosing, the God whom we have was born of our opinion and then created as the holy when those opinion changed into the sacred truths which could not be challenged or disputed anymore.  This is exactly like the God created by Israel from a golden calf but no one who holds these truths to be self-evident would admit it.  It is why our culture refuses to honor the ancient faith but remains religious.  It is a religion whose sacraments are not means of grace but the sacred rituals of the ballot box or the social media where truth is now affirmed.  It also explains why we remain so divided as a people and why uniting us is such a monumental task.  It is like trying to reconcile the actual beliefs of Islam and Christianity instead of simply trying to find commonalities within those faiths.  Sure, you can find things in common between the two religions with sacred text and holy histories but there is, in reality, nothing that could possibly unite the two.  They are fundamentally at odds with each other.  Their truths do not intersect in any fundamental way.

So it is for those who hold to the sacred tenets of feminism or homosexuality or gender invention.  There may be things we find in common but these are fundamentally at odds with the essential truths of both religions.  Yes, the deities of sexual desire and gender identity are a religion, a religion of belief that transcends logic, DNA, and even the body itself.  They are not incidental to those who hold to them but the grounding truths that organize and construct their self-identity and their worldview.  It is also the same for those on the opposite side who view President Trump as savior of their world order and the only means to any future they want to have.  We have entered the day when it seems impossible to hold to one view or another on the issues before us and still remain friendly with those who hold the opposite views.  Politeness may be about all we can expect but accommodation is harder than ever to find.  That is because what is held has become religious truth with its own doctrinal test of orthodoxy and its test of fellowship and unity.

There was once the possibility that Republicans and Democrats could espouse very different political views and still worship in the same pew.  Now the political views have transcended into religious truths and with that has come the inability to fellowship with those who have the nerve to disagree or to see things differently.  It is the reason why Washington has become such a polarized place, why there are fewer and fewer who can venture across the aisle to form constructive partnerships, and why it is essential to destroy your enemies.  I wish I could say that it was one sided and that it all was the fault of the political left.  It is not.  At some point I think we all know this.  Neither extreme wants to admit this and so the left is characterized as godless when they do have a god and sacred truth but the right is attracted to a Christian nationalism that has little in common with orthodox and catholic Christianity.  It may also be the reason why global religions are increasingly fractured and why it is so hard to repair these fractures.  Rome finds the Latin Mass and existential problem and so the left insists it has to go and the right insists it has to stay.  Anglicans fight over the name but the current Canterbury and GAFCAN (among others) represent very different versions of Christian truth and doctrine and not simply a sexual issue divide.  ELCA Lutherans and Missouri Lutherans are not simply different versions of the same essential confession but radically different takes on that confession and mutually exclusive takes at that.  In the midst of it all there are those who speak a common language and have a common worldview even though they have differences of opinion.  I fear that group is growing smaller.  Christianity will become even more fractured -- not because of the dispute over classically Christian dogma but over how much of the sacred order from the Kingdom of the left can be included within the body of belief without destroying the Christian.  It is not that nothing is sacred anymore but what is sacred is no longer bounded by Scripture and sacred tradition.  Religion has not ceased to before a force but it is a new religion whose creeds and confessions are informed less by sacred revelation than by unassailable truth which dare not be challenged and whose preeminence must be accepted in order to belong.  That means it has become its own religion in a society increasingly hostile to orthodox Christianity but not yet secular.

The problem with "satis est"

Everyone is agreed upon what the Latin satis est means.  There is no confusion there.  It is enough.  But from there on out we seem not to know what to do with that statement.  "And to the true unity of the Church it is enough to agree concerning the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments" (Et ad venam unitatem ecclesiae satis est consentire de doctrina evangelica et administratione sacramentorum). So reads one of the most important sentences in the Augsburg Confession. Coming between a definition of the "one holy Church" and the rejection of the Romanist teaching that human traditions, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, must everywhere be alike, this is a key statement of the Augustana on the nature of the Church's unity.  We all know and are pretty much agreed on what satis est means even though we cannot seem to come to any unanimity on what "the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments" means.  But the latter is for another post.  This one is about the simple phrase it is enough.

AC VII confesses that the church is located or found where the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered (Est autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in qua evangelium
recte docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta).  We all know the simple and yet profound truth of this assertion.  Of course, there is a dispute about what rightly preached and rightly administered means.  We are still trying to figure that out in a way that everyone can affirm.  Even within Missouri there seems to be division over what these words mean as they are unpacked in practice.  But we dare not get to far ahead of the words "it is enough" or, it is sufficient.  For the point here is not to discourage a higher level of unity and uniformity in words and practices (church usages) but to admit that it need not be required to go beyond the doctrine of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, the twin markers that locate the true Church.  I would suggest that we have misstated these words in such a way that it is too often seen as interfering or domineering to suggest that more unity and uniformity could or should be the goal.  That is what we find in the original constitution of the Missouri Synod at least until 1979 when it was changed (and as to what that means might be answered down the road).

It is wearisome to have people insist that less is more, that the minimal satisfaction of what must be required for the unity of the Church is all that anyone needs to strive for or be satisfied with.  That is simply not the case.  The original constitution of the Missouri Synod called for a higher standard, namely, to strive for the highest possible uniformity and unity of doctrine and church practice (a word that has evolved in meaning but at least means rites and ceremonies).  This took concrete shape in the requirement that members of the Synod exclusively use doctrinally pure agendas and hymnbooks and catechisms and was further expounded by the early intention of the Synod to form a publishing house to produce exactly those doctrinally pure agendas, hymnbooks, and catechisms.  The aim for a higher degree of unity and uniformity does not mitigate against Augustana VII but accurately understands the difference between what must be required for basic unity and what should be fostered for the well-being of the Church.  It is high time that we admit that satis est does not mean the most that can or should be the aim of the churches in their walk together.  There is nothing wrong or unseemly or against Augustana VII to strive for more, to expect more, and to call each other to account for the more that is a profound benefit to the Church.

It is frustrating that we as a Synod seem hesitant to say this and felt the need to try to incorporate responsible variety as an equivalent aim or goal in 1979.  Of course, the context of 1979 was not evangelical, seeker style, casual, non-liturgical worship services but the conflict just begun with a cooperative hymnal effort rejected and the Synod pursuing its own book.  Responsible variety then meant more the LBW/TLH/WS 1969, etc., mix of books and rites than it ever foresaw or expected the kind of thing typical among some folks today.  So, while the Synod modified the constitution to include responsible variety, it did not retract the goal of a higher level of unity and uniformity which was for the good of the Church, for the benefit of the congregations and their ministers, and for the benefit of the people in those congregations.  It may be enough to have a minimal standard for the sake of unity but that does not and has never meant no more needed to be the aim or the striving for of those within and those seeking to be in fellowship with the LCMS.  Satis est was never a mere matter of how little you can get by with but where you begin -- with where you end up being far and away nearer unity and uniformity in the fullest sense of those terms.

What insight!

The Pontifical Biblical Commission of the Vatican has declared, following a “thorough biblical study” commissioned by then-Pope Francis [only now concluded], that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah—for which the two cities were exterminated and struck down—was not due to a acts of homosexual depravity (Sodomia) by their inhabitants, but rather the “rejection of the immigrant.” 

So now we know better after getting it wrong all these years.  This is the level of scholarship in the Pontifical Biblical Commission today and this is good example of the erroneous conclusions a failed higher critical methodology leads to when we treat God's Word as merely another book!  I can only imagine that the lavender mafia in Rome and its champion in Fr. James Martin feel affirmed by this conclusion that it is only a matter of time before Rome makes what was once disorder normal.  And I thought that Rome might be changing after their time in the wilderness under Francis.  Boy was I wrong.

It is as if someone woke up to realize that the Latin Mass was not the big problem but a church body which no longer valued or listened to the voice of God's Word.  This makes the case for the much parodied sola Scriptura of Lutheran and Protestant confession.  It also makes the case for an historical grammatical methodology which does not begin with the presumption that God's book is just like any other book and can be unpacked with benefit of faith in its teaching.  We can only expect the Rome will continue to lead the way into more politically relevant and modern interpretations which defy what the Church has said and faithful teachers have taught and faithful people have heard.  This is the very thing that betrays the claims of catholicity Rome has made and reveals itself to be still living under its own Babylonian captivity to the voice of progressivism.  This is the kind of novelty the Lutheran confessors insisted was typical of Rome and a betrayal of the unanimity of the church fathers which is not a elevating tradition above God's Word but seeing how that Word lives within that tradition. 

In the end this is not really about homosexual behavior at all but about the way -- the easy way -- some work around what God's Word actually says and cast aside the witness of the ages in the form of what the Church has understood and taught.  We are facing a time when the great temptation before us is not simply to ignore the passages of Scripture we do not like or find hard to defend in modern times but simply rewrite or interpret anew what has always been understood and taught. 

The problems before us. . .

While some may suggest that the problem of the moment is doctrinal in nature and specific to the fuzziness we have come to accept as normal in our doctrinal confession, others might insist that it is bad preaching and preachers that are the problem.  Still others might complain that the liturgical chaos that is typical of the either intentional pushing of the limits or the consequence of a casual treatment of the things of God.  Finally, there are those who insist that we are losing people we never had, those who were never really formed in the faith and planted upon the good soil of faithful confession and life within the community of the baptized.  I would suggest that no single problem is the cause for the Church's woes today but that our present crisis is really due to them all -- doctrinal confusion, weak preaching, liturgical disorder, and inadequate formation/catechesis.   Because we are suffering from the combined effect of them all, we need to address all of them and sooner rather than later.

Doctrinal clarity is not the result of more nuanced doctrinal statements.  Words are not the problem although they are certainly part of it all.  Meaning what we say is at the root of it.  It is not a crisis of content but of conviction, a problem of faith.  Let me be clear, the great mysteries of the faith are not puzzles to be solved but doctrines which we accept by faith, trusting in the voice of God's Word to speak to us and for us rather than some sort of game to play in which the goal is to crack the nut.  We cannot do much better than the creeds to say who God is and who He is not (Athanasian Creed) as the Holy Trinity.  It is the same for the mystery of the two natures of Christ.  God has not given us this as some kind of treasure trail to follow to get to the moment of understanding or comprehension but the mystery is the thing, believed and confessed as God has revealed it.  The problem of doctrinal clarity is not crying out for more creeds or newer ones or better expressions of this we believe.  No, doctrinal clarity comes from saying what God has said publicly and confidently over and over and over again until it resides in us and the world hears us making the good confession.

Weak preaching does not mean preaching error.  It can mean predictable preaching that keeps saying the same things over and over again without actually preaching the text and applying God's Word to who we are and where we are today.  I maintain that preaching only justification is the same problem as not preaching it at all.  So what?  What does this mean for who I am and how then I shall live as a child of God?  Weak preaching is preaching too much until nothing is clear and people struggle to take away from the sermon a handle to hold onto God's Word during the week.  Weak preaching is giving too much time to stories or introductions or jokes or a thousand other little tricks preachers use to mask not knowing or preaching the text faithfully.  Rome is stereotypical of a church body which has forgotten what it means to preach and has turned the whole preaching enterprise into a simple moralistic pep talk.  Protestantism has turned the sermon on its head until what we think of what God has said becomes more important than what He has said.  Perhaps preachers need to read and hear good sermons for a while before they put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) but it would not hurt to remember to look at the people to whom you are preaching and to speak with conviction and not simply to inform.

Lutherans have their own problems with liturgical chaos on Sunday morning but neither is Rome exempt.  Honestly, for all the problems you might find in an evangelical style Lutheran setting, last time I checked we did not have priests dressed up as chickens or clowns or rappers in chasubles and the like.  Rome seems to think that those who play at worship are a bigger problem than those who want to worship in Latin.   I think we Lutherans might have a few Latin sympathizers but our problem is simply too much latitude and too great a temptation on both sides of the worship wars to admit that we are talking adiaphora here instead of talking about worship words, actions, and forms consistent with what we say we confess.  A spare liturgical style is not as offensive to our Confession as one without any real style but with far too much designed merely to entertain or encourage.  Honestly, if worship is where we encounter the mystery of the faith, we ought to at least approach it with some sense of solemnity, reverence, and awe.

Finally, we must admit that a couple of hours of catechetical instruction as a pre-teen or early teenager OR as an adult is not and is never enough to form a person in the faith.  The liturgy is our primary teacher and through the Divine Service we are nurtured in the faith once taught and once confessed and now owned today.  It is not a matter of finding better catechetical materials or using screens or more modern teaching methodology but of owning the faith, ordering our worldviews by its lens, and understanding who we are and why we are in the midst of it all.  Our journey into the presence of God is not the pursuit of an extravagant moment outside ourselves but of nourishing the life born anew through from the baptismal womb and living in pursuit of its ends while living within the shape of this present moment.  We are not catechized primarily by explaining the faith but of confessing it over and over and over again until it lives within us, being called and living by the voice in the ear of God's Word and guided by that same voice to the place where His flesh once given for the life of the world becomes our spiritual food for the way.  Faith is not a feeling which comes and goes like the clothing we wear and then cast aside but the latitude and longitude of our lives, identified according to God's order and living to fulfill His purpose and calling.

All of these are the urgent pursuits of the day and all of these are the reason why we find ourselves so often in crisis mode.  When we fail at these, we are buffeted by the winds of change and lifted from the mooring lines that hold us fast in the grasp of grace.  All of these ought to be our pursuit whether or not the world finds them interesting or compelling or relevant and even when our own folks begin to wonder why we spend so much time on basics instead of graduating to a higher level of engagement with the mystery of God.  These are not basics meant to get out of the way before we meet the higher and deeper truths of who we are and who God is.  These are, instead, the constant litany or refrain of our Christian lives and calling, the well worn trail we follow over and over again.  We discern the fuller meaning not by growing up or past these but precisely by the constant pursuit of doctrinal clarity, faithful preaching, liturgical integrity, and catechetical formation in the faith.   

Too successful?

This past summer was hard on Europe.  Temperatures were high and the people miserable in an area in which air conditioning was not typical for most homes.  You certainly about it in the news.  It was actually worse than most of us probably imagined.  Of course, climate change was blamed.  It was all man's fault for polluting and disturbing the pristine balance of nature.  Everyone had come to believe that unless we figured out a way to clean up our act, the world was doomed.  Who thought it could have been otherwise?

Now even those who are on the climate change bandwagon are coming to a very interesting conclusion.  

“From 1980, Europe warmed around 1C more than the average of extratropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and around 1.5C more than the global average. . . . Most of this excess warming over Europe can be linked to the reduction of particle emissions,” Pedro Roldán‐Gómez, an associate researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, told The Telegraph.

The reduction in air pollution has caused an increase in temperatures that is particularly pronounced at the poles. When the temperature difference between the poles and the equator shrinks, the jet stream grows stagnant, which results in weather systems, like the recent hot spells in Europe, persisting for longer periods.

Europe has warmed at twice the rate of the rest of the world since the 1980s, resulting in deadly heat waves that environmental activists and politicians have attributed to carbon emissions. But according to the study, the opposite is true: Much of the increase in temperature can be attributed to Europe’s recent success in reducing the amount of airborne particulate matter, since such pollution acts as a sunshade. 

In other words, the problems evident in Europe's heat wave were also of man's doing but not because he was being irresponsible and raping the good earth of God's creation but because they were trying to repair the wrongs done by those before.  Cleaning up the problem results in its own set of circumstances that become a new problem for us to deal with.  My point here is not to argue for or against climate change but to point out how deeply the problems of our world are established by sin and how it is impossible for us to fix our own problems.  We cannot save but need a Savior who can.  Only the God who created all things can come to our aid and repair what we have ruined.

While it might seem the responsible thing to pick up after our own mess and it is surely the right thing for us to do, that does not mean that we can repair the wrong and restore what we have broken.  It is a good and helpful thing for a parent to call a child to account for making a mess and for calling that child to pick up the mess and make right what he has made wrong even when the parent knows the child cannot possibly do it all on his or her own.  God watches us even when we are trying to do what is right and yet He understands what we do not.  We cannot fix it or make the mess go away.  That is how deeply sin is embedded into the fabric of creation and why it groans not for us as responsible adult people to take notice of and responsibility for what we  have screwed up but for the One to come who alone can answer this longing with real new birth and an everlasting creation.  Right here in climate change and the ecological work of those intending to repair the wrong is evidence that we need a God to do for us what we cannot do -- a God to fix the Fall and repair what sin has done not simply to the soul of man but to the whole of the world God made.