Friday, April 5, 2019

Code words. . .

Those who seek to bring about radical change seldom speak in radical terms.  Mostly they speak as a people who desire to conserve and who believe that in order to survive or flourish, the conservation must be stewarded by careful change.  But, as a great line put it, Progressive is usually code for departing from the teachings of Scripture and Tradition.  Something has to go.  Since the most important thing for many is the fact that the Church is judged by those outside her as relevant and authoritative, what has to go to preserve the Church's image and credibility are the distinctive things of the Church -- what Scripture says and how that faith has been preserved through time and space.

Strangely, those who are usually labeled radical are those who are not only trying to preserve and conserve but restore what has been lost.  A case in point.  My parish is celebrating our 60th birthday this year and, though we generally use Divine Service 1 or 2 from Lutheran Service Book, we have been using Divine Service 3.  It preserves the form in use when this congregation was founded and it has been conserved in our liturgical tradition since it was framed in 1941 in The Lutheran Hymnal -- itself a preservation of forms much earlier and most uniformly shaped in the Common Service of 1888.  All well and good, right?  Maybe not.

Since this order preserves the chanting of the Words of Institution -- not something usually done in the first two Divine Services, that chanting stands out like a sore thumb as something new -- a departure from the past.  In reality it is the restoration of the past (and something restored not simply locally but by rubric and setting in Lutheran Service Book).  Yet to Lutheran ears in Tennessee, it is radical, new, an innovation, and, worse, katholische.  This is, of course, rather goofy since Rome did not even speak these words loudly for the hearing of the people, much less chanted the Words of Institution, in so long I cannot even document it.  In other words, this is a distinctly Lutheran practice, innovated by Martin Luther, who directed that they be chanted in the Gospel tone.  So, to some, I am a progressive because they think I have innovated.  To others, I am a medievalist since I am preserving something unworthy or not essential to be preserved.

And therein lies the problem.  When we fail to know our history, we confuse what is progressive with what preserves and what preserves or restores with what is radical.  This is no small thing because it means that we are ripe for the plucking by those who seek to steal from us not some small liturgical practice like the chanting of the Words of Institution but the big things of Scripture and its clear teaching of the Gospel and Tradition and its preservation of that truth in every place and every time.  That is the big danger.  It is no big deal that a Lutheran pastor has to explain himself for something as small as the chanting of the Verba but it is a big deal when we have to restore what has been lost because we no longer know the difference between the sacred deposit once delivered to the saints and that which has been invented to make the faith more palatable or accessible to those outside the faith and more reasonable to those within who find believing a stretch.

By the way, the greater danger is not that Lutherans will come off looking like Roman Catholics to those who do not know better but that Lutherans will themselves presume that they are more like the big box evangelicals all around them than they are the people of the Augustana, the Catechism, and the faith they confess.  In essence, what we have today are Lutherans who know so little of their faith and history that they find it more reasonable to think of themselves as Methodists with a liturgy or vested Baptists when it comes to the Bible or friendly evangelicals when it comes to styling their church before the world than the people and faith the Symbols insist we are.  Sacraments are not some residual Catholic thing we can ditch but the essence of who Lutherans are.  The efficacious Word is not simply an inerrant Word but one that works -- that does what it says because the Spirit is at work in it and through it.  The liturgy is not adiaphora so be tinkered with or abandoned because we do not like it or we like other things better but the other side of the confession coin.  To lose it is to lose what we believe and not simply a format.  And all of this is hastened and encouraged by people who confuse conservers with progressives and progressives with conservers to the the point where it actually becomes reasonable to abandon the faith in order to save it.  Then, Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

12 comments:

Carl Vehse said...

And, as we know, Scripture clearly indicates that our Savior chanted the words when He instituted the Lord's Supper.

Anonymous said...

Chanting of the verba goes back to the Middle Ages when
the acoustics were terrible in the high ceiling Gothic
churches. So the idea of chanting was to project a stronger
voice to the congregation which could be heard more clearly.

With the 21st century sound systems available for churches,
chanting is still adiaphoria at best and a bad idea at worst.

Anonymous said...

"The liturgy is not adiaphora so be tinkered with or abandoned because we do not like it or we like other things better but the other side of the confession coin. To lose it is to lose what we believe and not simply a format."

"Still, I do not wish hereby to demand that those who already have a good Order or, by God's grace, can make a better, should let it go, and yield to us. Nor is it my meaning that the whole of Germany should have to adopt forthwith our Wittenberg Order. It never was the case that the ministers, convents, and parishes were alike in everything. But it would be a grand thing if, in every several lordship, Divine Service were conducted in one fashion; and the neighbouring little townships and villages joined in the cry with one city. Whether in other lordships they should do the same or something different, should be left free and without penalty. In fine, we institute this Order not for the sake of those who are Christians already. For they have need of none of these things (for which things' sake man does not live: but they live for the sake of us who are not yet Christians, that they may make us Christians); they have their Divine Service in their spirits. But it is necessary to have such an Order for the sake of those who are to become Christians, or are to grow stronger; just as a Christian has need of baptism, the word and the sacrament not as a Christian (for, as such, he has them already), but as a sinner. But, above all, the Order is for the simple and for the young folk who must daily be exercised in the Scripture and God's Word, to the end that they may become conversant with Scripture and expert in its use, ready and skilful in giving an answer for their faith, and able in time to teach others and aid in the advancement of the kingdom of Christ. For the sake of such, we must read, sing, preach, write, and compose; and if it could in any wise help or promote their interests, I would have all the bells pealing, and all the organs playing, and everything making a noise that could. The Popish Divine Services are to be condemned for this reason that they have made of them laws, work, and merit; and so have depressed faith. And they do not direct them towards the young and simple, to practise them thereby in the Scripture and Word of God; but they are themselves stuck fast in them, and hold them as things useful and necessary to salvation : and that is the devil. For in this wise the ancients have neither ordered nor imposed them." -- Guess who?

Anonymous said...

"By the way, the greater danger is not that Lutherans will come off looking like Roman Catholics to those who do not know better but that Lutherans will themselves presume that they are more like the big box evangelicals all around them than they are the people of the Augustana, the Catechism, and the faith they confess."


I never understood this. The January 31st, 2019 podcast in the link below features Rick Warren. Why do LCMS pastors want to teach modern American Evangelical theology at the expense of confessional Lutheran theology. Look at what is happening to Evangelicalism, everywhere. These are not a few fringe, "snake handling kooks" but mainstream Evangelicals who have permanently changed Protestant Christianity:


http://www.piratechristian.com/fightingforthefaith/

Anonymous said...

Jesus may not have sung the Verba but it is purely done out of reverence, elevation of speak, attention to Jesus, that it is chanted. But of course we do know they were singing the Psalm, as they were written to be sung, so Carl and Anon 1121 both insist, demand the pastor/people chant the Psalms every Sunday.

Carl Vehse said...

There is no Scriptural mandate or proscription for speaking or chanting the words of institution or the Psalms. To insist or demand or imply that a pastor or pewsitter do one (or the other) because it express more reverence or faithfulness is pietistic.

Mark said...

Ignorance is the fertile field plowed by Heretics!

Pastor Peters said...

Okay who said they MUST be chanted? We were chanting them in reference to Luther's direction (offered in LSB) as a reference to our history. How some folks can turn this into an issue is beyond me. Again, the point of the post was ignorance of Lutheran history. Proven here again.

Anonymous said...

"those who seek to steal from us not some small liturgical practice like the chanting of the Words of Institution but the big things of Scripture and its clear teaching of the Gospel and Tradition"

Here's the issue. You wish to impose Scripture and Tradition on the Lutheran Church. That is not sola Scriptura. Read Luther's preface above. We sinners need baptism, the Word, and the sacrament. The order or liturgy or tradition exists solely to exercise the young and weak in the word of God, so that they may confess the faith and grow the kingdom of God. Tradition does not exist as something holy in and of itself. Lutheran reformers studied church history not just to prove the catholicity of their teachings, but to disprove the idea that the Mass was an inviolate order handed down unchanged by the apostles themselves. Variation in rites is part of Reformation ideology as much as communion in both kinds, the marriage of priests, and justification. You may lampoon your readers' understanding of history, but it is yours (along with the entire "liturgy is not adiaphora" crowd) that is faulty.

Anonymous said...

I'll bite.

"Here's the issue. You wish to impose Scripture and Tradition on the Lutheran Church. That is not sola Scriptura."

What is sola Scriptura? Is that the sum of our doctrine? Is the church of the Augustana reduced to the bumper sticker slogan?

No one is imposing "Tradition" on the Lutheran church. The Lutheran church has a tradition as does every other church body. Our forefathers were not minimalists. This is why we retained nearly all ceremony, and claim higher reverence than the Papists. Where we fail to be so reverent, we are sub-Lutheran. Does this require chanting? No, of course not. No one is saying it does.

"Tradition does not exist as something holy in and of itself."

At face value, true. Let's try this: Is the Liturgy holy?

"Lutheran reformers studied church history not just to prove the catholicity of their teachings, but to disprove the idea that the Mass was an inviolate order handed down unchanged by the apostles themselves."

They did not study in order to prove or disprove anything, they showed forth the Truth fromfrom the Sacred Scriptures, and supported their assertions with the writings of the Fathers, and their wealth of knowledge of church history. Variations of rites refers to differences in liturgical traditions spanning centuries, i.e. Mozarabic, Gallician, Roman, Coptic/Ethiopian, Byzantine, etc. It did not refer to wholesale changes in style and/or substance of the received Divine Service with every new generation. Maybe we are in agreement on this issue.

In any case, why so worried about a single pastor with no practical ability to impact the synod overall, who is merely pointing out the liturgical wealth of our own tradition?

Lutheran Lurker said...

So Luther was promoting a practice against his own operating principle when he directed the chanting of the Words of Institution in the Formula Missae???? Headlines!!! Luther contradicts Luther!!!

Anonymous said...

Here's the really (tragically) amusing reality. The folks who often are most opposed to chanting, the "TLH only" crowd types, or the "we never did this when I was kid" types, grew up completely used to chanting, they just don't realize it. You don't know, what you don't know.

THEY were the ones doing all the chanting in the liturgy, while the pastor spoke his parts! What do you think all that singing is int he liturgy that the laity were doing?

IT WAS CHANTING!!!

Funny, yes. Sad? More so.

Like I said, you don't know what you don't know.

Qui cantat bis orat, as Augustine said.