While the disputes are many, I believe they have to do today primarily with hermeneutics, the locus of authority, and the ontology of the divine, justification and ecclesiology. I believe that the deepest issues confronting (and sometimes separating Lutherans) are oftentimes not how the issues present themselves at the congregational level. Issues of women's ordination, the blessing of same sex relationships and marrying of same sex couples, human rights and social justice proclamations, closed communion, infant baptism, contemporary worship and use of early church liturgies, Biblical reliability concerning scientific and historical fact, etc., all do divide rank and file Lutherans and Lutheran congregations. Some of the issues still remain quite venomous, notably differences on closed/open communion, women's ordination and LBGT issues. Some issues of disagreement seem no longer rancorous. (The truth of young earth creationism seems not to inculcate much disagreement these days in the lives of most Lutheran congregations.)
In this brief article, my concern is neither to do a careful historical reading of Lutheran traditions to uncover salient differences among them, nor to construct a typology which would list the necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of any of these terms: "Evangelical Catholic," "midwestern pietist" or "Lutheran pietism," "radical Lutheranism," "Lutheran repristination," "Lutheran renewal," "Lutheran fundamentalism," "Lutheran high church movement," etc. All could be precisely defined, but any prescription of proper application will likely nonetheless be violated in practice. (Lutheran theologians have not always been charitable in the application of such terms to their Lutheran brothers and sisters.)
What I want to do is to go to the deeper level and explore the presuppositions that make it possible for Lutherans often simply to talk past one another. Acceptance of presuppositions as fact or "just the way things are" produce theological "spins" making it difficult for Lutherans of one persuasion to ascribe rationality, good intentions or sometimes basic comity to those with whom they disagree. The problem is that the discussion of the issues remains unsatisfying and superficial when the contour of deeper presuppositions is ignored.
In what follows, I am sacrificing scholarly precision and sourcing for boldness. (I figure that at some point in life, one must get bolder and I have endeavored to do so in recent years.) Part of being bold, is leaving the safe harbor of proper theological speaking in order to make broader points. Perhaps what I am doing here is "proto-theological."
Below is my list of the profound presuppositions or "pictures" (Wittgenstein) that do divide Lutherans. While each of these have theological ramifications, often the presupposition itself has little to do with theology. At the end of this reflection, I want to tie these presuppositions together somewhat. So what is my list of presupposition within early 21st century Lutheran theology?
- The Relationship of the Meaningful Content of Scripture and the Historical Conditions from which it Arose. Lutherans of all persuasions declare that the Scriptures are the norm and source of faith, life (and theology). They differ markedly, however, on what exactly constitutes the meaningful content of Scripture. Is the meaning of Scripture found in the Biblical text itself, in the interaction of the Biblical text with the reader (informed by the Holy Spirit), or in the Biblical text as it is understood in the context of its formation, original audience, and transmission? Simply put, to what degree does historical criticism (textual, source, form, redaction, etc.) and literary criticism help uncover the proper meaning of the text? Differences of opinion about putative Biblical injunctions against homoerotic behavior, the role of women in leading worship, and the practice of closed communion pertain to the issue of how knowledge of the wider religio-historical context (both diachronic and synchronic), and knowledge of textual formation and intentionality affect the actual meaning of the text. Lutherans in the pews saying "their Bible says this" have often been astounded to find their theologians saying that it really says something quite different if one has the requisite ability to penetrate back beyond the text into the horizon of its formation and original reception.
- The Question of Proper Authority in Theological Adjudication and Communal Practice. While all Lutherans speak of Scripture as properly norming faith, they disagree as to the authority of the norm. Traditional Catholic theology understood Scripture to be of sufficient complexity that it was unlikely that non-learned readings could successfully interpret Scripture correctly. A teaching magisterium was needed to guarantee proper interpretation of the text. Rejecting this, Lutherans argued that the Scripture alone was the proper norm and the sole authority for faith and life. But this works only if Scripture has external perspicuity, that it's meaning is sufficiently lucid that it can, in principle, work to adjudicate theological issues. An objectivity of the text is presupposed as the sine qua non of effective norming. However, if the very meaning of the text is at issue and its meaning oftentimes identified (discovered?, constructed?) on the basis of theological (or other) criteria, then the danger is that the real authority in textual meaning is the interpreter. But if the text's objectivity is determined by the subjectivity of the interpreter (and the interpretive community in which that interpreter stands), then the putative externality of the Word of God can become the mere documentation of the subject's hermeneutical virtuosity. (None of this would have surprised the Catholic theological faculty at Tuebingen in the mid-nineteenth century.) Adding the Holy Spirit to the mix does not seem to overcome this basic problem, for the activity of the Holy Spirit in making external clarity internal nonetheless presupposes the moment of external perspicuity.
- The Ontology of the Divine. Most Lutherans do not realize that their commitment to presuppositions of ontological and epistemological realism concerning the divine determine what they think is possible in theology. Does God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language? Does human confrontation with divine determine the ontic contour of the divine? Does God bring about causally that which would not have happened were He not to have willed it? Simply put, is our language about God, His properties, and His causal relations with the universe and His children within it simply a language that clarifies human religious experience (feeling, willing, knowing, doing)? If it does nevertheless refer to God, does it refer to the divine realm symbolically, such that the affirmation of divine qualities and causal powers point to the depth of being, a region in principle incapable of sustaining causal relations with ontic reality? Clearly, if one believes that there is a God who exists on His own apart from human consciousness -- a God that has a primal intent upon creation -- then questions about "God changing His mind" will be understood in a far different way than if reference to God is conceived as a way of clarifying (or pointing to the limits of) human experience. If one regards theo-physical causality as possible, then one will find it difficult to move from the methodology of scientific naturalism to a full-fledge metaphysic of scientific naturalism and the concomitant causal closure of the physical. Moreover, if one believes God is not the kind of being who can in principle have causal power -- maybe God is like the set of all sets -- then one's views about the events of the early universe and macro neo-Darwinian evolution will likely be much different than one who does assert divine causality. Clearly, the clear contour of Scripture's meaningful content will likely be different for the one holding the causal closure of the physical and the one rejecting it.
- The Ontology of Justification. Does justification constitute an actual transformation of human life, or is it merely a change in divine judgment about the conditions of that life? (I don't want to engage the distinction between justification and sanctification, or weigh in here on whether "sanctification is merely getting used to justification.") If there exists divine causality -- if the Holy Spirit is causally involved in human life -- then God's just-making and sanctifying does bring about some state of affairs that would not have happened otherwise. (Some claim that religion at its depth is a path of transformation.) Forensic justification can be understood causally as well, of course, for if God really exists, and really does divinely impute sinlessness to the sinner, than some state of salvific affairs is brought about that would not have happened otherwise. However, if God does not exist apart from human awareness, perception, conception or language, and if God thereby has no causal powers, then justification seemingly must be construed finally subjectively; it pertains to the psychology of the "believer."
- The Ontology of the Church. What is the church? Is it an association of individuals receiving the gifts of God, or is it somehow the Body of Christ effective in bestowing these gifts upon its members and the world? One's views about the contour of ecclesial being will be determined in part by the one's views about divine reality itself. If one believes there is a divine being with divine properties and divine causal powers, then one's view of the Church will likely be far different than if one believes there is no such being. On the former, the Church can have a mystical, sacramental reality, but on the latter it must be finally understood on the basis of human community. On the former, the authority of Law is grounded in the reality of God, on the latter it emerges out of the life of the community itself, and can be changed as communal life changes. Obviously, one's views of LBGT issues will likely be quite different if one thinks there is an entity with divine properties and causal powers authorizing divine Law rather than the divine Law being an expression of, or somehow supervening upon, the life of the community.
What is important here is to recognize that the questions of the ontology of the divine and the normativity and authority of the Biblical text finally come together. If Holy Scriptures are reliable, normative and have proper authority, then they witness to a God with divine properties and causal powers. The move to afford ontological status to the divine thus seemingly rests on one's view about the perspicuity and epistemological reliability of the Biblical texts. Conversely, if one is convinced that the Enlightenment critique of the divine -- particularly in its Kantian form -- requires one to become an irrealist with respect to the divine and divine causal power, then one will likely be committed to a closed naturalistic metaphysic that makes it much more likely that one must interpret the meaningful content of the Biblical texts in light of the historico-politico-sociologico-economico interests and context in which they emerged.
So underneath the difference among Lutheran is a very simply difference in presuppositions. One presupposition is that God is real and language about God says what is true or false about the divine. Another presupposition is that God's being is of an ideal or linguistic order, that it is forever related to human awareness, perception, conception and language. Those holding the first view are more apt to hold a very high view of Scripture, believing that there is an objectivity to the meaningful content of Scripture -- even if this objectivity does utilize much of the machinery of the historical-critical method. Scripture has authority because it reveals most reliable truths about the real God. Those holding to the ideality or linguisticality of God, are more apt to emphasize the historical conditions from which Scripture emerged. Here the authority of Scripture tends to rest more in the traditions of its employment, and its place within the life of the Church generally. Clearly, what is permissible hermeneutically is quite different on the first view than the second.
Blog posts are supposed to be short, and I will endeavor not to violate that expectation. What I am suggesting in this brief post is something quite simple, that is, that a high-view -- one might say a "non-natural" view -- of Scriptural authority and normativity links nicely with the notion that God is ultimately non-natural, having, as it were, sufficient non-natural causal power to affect the natural order. Alternately, a natural view of Scripture -- a causal story of how Scripture arose out of community stories written down for community purposes -- connects with an irrealist view of God and the concomitant position that the myths and rituals of this God emerged in the evolution of human life, and that while this God may be the most noble and lofty idea of the human life, it nonetheless remains causally inert with respect to the central problem of human life: How can I be saved? Clearly, it is reasonable to expect the practice of hermeneutics under the first picture to be far different than one finds it practiced under the second.
This post reminds me of the old joke about the seminarian who came out of LSTC and was assigned to a small congregation in western Iowa. On his first Sunday, he preached for 45 minutes on the hypostatic union and the implications thereof for forensic justification. After he had finished Eustuce leaned over to his wife Martha and asked, "What's he say?" Martha answered, "I don't know but it sure was purty."
ReplyDeleteDr. Bielfeldt is a brilliant man, however, from the perspective of a simple parish pastor, this seems to heavily over-complicate matters. The question among Lutherans is now and always has been, "What does the Word say?" We can create all manner of reasons why we think it should say something different, but that does not change what it says.
It is interesting to me that it seems as though no one in the Lutheran Church argued that the Bible might not really say that homosexuality is sinful until enough Lutheran pastors had homosexual family members and society started saying it was a valid choice. Nor does it seem as though Lutherans talked about the Bible saying that the Office of the Holy Ministry was given to women as well as men until enough Lutheran pastors had daughters who wanted to follow in daddy's footsteps and Pentecostals started ordaining women at the turn of the 20th century. My question is, do we over-complicate the interpretation of Holy Scripture in order to get it to say what we want it to say? Do we shy away from the truth in an effort to appear righteous and holy in all of choices? It is hard being a poor miserable sinner and living with the truth that we are never going to do everything right. But the Word says what the Word says and in most cases is not all that complex when read in context of the rest of Scripture. At least that's the way it looks from the seat of a simple parish pastor.
Rob, I'm certain that your general comments are in the majority. Still, I want to know what place Dennis' minority approach has. His attempts to make sense what is going on, and this is to study humans, what they say and do. These can be placed in a broader historical context. It is, I think, to try to understand ourselves and others in our modern context, esp. as it relates to the Gospel. It's aim is evangelical, even prophetic: to proclaim a warning, one that must be carefully crafted so that it can be heard by those we intend to reach. The majority adopts a different approach: to remain faithful to the Word. What I have always asked of Pastors is whether they think this Word must be tailored to its audience? For the most part, Lutheran Pastors have answered, "No," even if a mildly nuanced one. But if that Word is to be so tailored, as I think it must and has, then we must have a profound understanding of that audience, one more informed than the audience itself. It is here, I think, that the minority has a role. It takes a careful study of the words and attitudes of that audience to even notice its underlying lack of semantic realism, one endemic in our time, and its consequent understanding of a Real God. Now it is possible that the one hearing the majority's Gospel proclamation as a kind of therapeutic treatment will ultimately be led by the Spirit to the Christ of the Cross. Does this mean that the minority's disclosure is otiose, or worse? I, being a member of that minority, cannot help but think otherwise. What else, after all, can I do?
DeleteRob, in the sexuality discussions in the ELCA, laypeople "studying" the issue by reading "Journeying Together Faithfully," were treated to seminary professors telling them what the story of Lot and his visitors and first Romans were REALLY saying. They were guided, in effect, into a reading of Scripture where "Scripture interpreting itself" included an assimilation of the horizon behind the text. But if this is how Scripture interprets Itself, then one without knowledge of the relevant historical criticism cannot enter into the circle of Scripture's self-interpretation and thus its external and internal perspicuity. This always seemed to me like a move to establish another magisterium, not one standing in the Vatican, but rather one whose community is the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). When this happens, the conceptual coherency of Lutheran theology is lost. Where is the authority, if it is the Word whose inner moment now is determined by an SBL monograph series?
DeleteThe "irrealism" you refer to here does not merely influence our attitudes about God, Christ, Scripture, and the Church, but about any notions of reality. If we cannot live in a real world, one that we can make true statements about, then what kind of a world do we live in? This is the Kantian divide, that makes the "real" world utterly inaccessible. What can we say then about what we say about the world or ourselves? Even MacIntyre claims that all truth can only make sense relative to a particular tradition. Who is to say (as he reminds us) that one tradition, even all traditions, are not moving in a dance of versimilitude towards a greater truth, even the Real. From where we sit, from below and inside our respective bubbles, this seems to me difficult to deny. Is there a one Real World? If so, is there a one unique description and understanding of that world or are there at least a large number of such descriptions and understandings? If the latter are they commensurable, can they be translated from one to the other? To come back to your comments, must this understanding be a human understanding? What exactly would that mean? Clearly any LebensWelt must be human, but what is human? Your conclusion wants to draw a distinction between a God that arises out of human community and one that is ontologically independent of that community. But this seems to me too committed to a divide between subject and object, interior and exterior, the very Humean divide that Kant sought to rescue us from, but failed. These both are too buffered souls. The question that I always ask is why this human endeavor, this human aim and trajectory. It cannot be found in the necessity of our biology, nor even in our survival. Why this word, even this meme? Is there any necessity that it arise in this form from human community, here envisioned as some kind of autonomous entity? How do we account for these human properties and characteristics? It is the question I ask of all existence: why, of an infinity of being and character, this being and character? Is it all some vast "accident"? How do we come ontologically by accidents? Is that even possible? We easily speak of random events without considering that even random events require some kind of specific causal reality. Why that reality? I don't believe in autonomy. Humankind is caught up in the evolution of the stars, and these in the progress of a cosmos beyond our ken. The only real question is not whether there is a god, but what kind of god. In any case, we cannot get outside this god, this Reality, we cannot make a human story that is not already gifted to us. The human story is bound up with god's story. It cannot be otherwise. It is not difficult for all to believe this. It's seems foolish to me to believe otherwise. The problem is again the nature of this god and our knowing of this god. And this raises the horrible question as to whether the Scripture must be closed? Must even our understanding of Christ be fixed? Having committed to a Real God, a Real World, and our ability to know something of it, it is still undecided what the nature of our understanding is. Is it tentative, progressive, incomplete? Are there certain fixed aspects? Is the dichotomy you point to but another aspect of this divine trajectory? Am I too Hegelian? It is the turmoil and storm that I perceive, one in which Christ comes across the raging sea to comfort me and still the storm, for a while at least. We are caught in it, and go where it blows, He remaining the only still point. It is, for me, an ontology most strange. It is Christo-centric without being dogma-centric. As if it is bare existence that is fixed, but its shape can shift in the fog and changing light. I allow Him that: to be His own, and me to be His.
ReplyDeleteBill, you have profound insights and ask fundamental questions. I am wondering about the subject/object dichotomy to which you allude. I remember teaching a text by Feyerabend to an lower-level undergraduate class a half of lifetime ago. Feyerabend was wont to explain Protagoras' dictum -- "Man is the measure of all things, the things that are that are, and the things that are not that are not" -- as not being subjective, but having a type of communal objectivity. Feyerabend makes an important point. I think we must distinguish the real -- that which exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language in general (and there are many faces of realism) -- from the communal objective -- that which is consensually regarded as real beyond my particular awareness, perception, conception and language -- from the subjective -- that which is "real for me." (I hate to use the word 'real' here, but culture seems now to use language that way.) The distinction is thus that between "real in itself," "real for my tribe," and "real for me." So the question I asked pertains to God. Is God real in Himself or only for my tribe? I believe that many in the old-time, side-line Protestant denominations can scarcely any more make sense of the distinction. What would it mean, after all, for there to be a divine realm somehow independent of human consciousness? Is not religion an element in the structure of consciousness and not a stage in the history of consciousness? And this lost ability clearly to grasp the distinction infects our prima facie thinking about the Word. Whose Word? How can this Word donate its reality without it itself being real? Must we not finally grant that the Word -- the regularity, order, language, reason, account of the cosmos -- concretized in a person is what it it is apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language; that it is what it is apart from deepest affirmations of our tribe; that is is what it is apart from the deepest promptings of our heart? Must we not say that this Word that orders all becoming is eternal, that it is the condition for the possibility of time itself? I don't think you are too Hegelian. But perhaps these reflection make me dogma-centric and not Christo-centric by your lights. Yet, I concur with your coda: "I allow Him that: to be His own, and me to be His." Thank you, friend, for your words.
DeleteWhat is it that is "real" "only for my tribe"? We way things like, "Well, we do things this way where I'm from." But this is not the same thing as saying, "that our custom is real." What would someone mean if they said that "God is only real for my tribe"? Were that true, we would have to believe that God is not real at all. We might say something like, "We see God as being like this." In saying so, we admit that God is real, and that means real for everyone, but that we understand God differently than others, and this seems plausible. Can we compare the "God of Muslims" to that of the "Christian God." Neither Muslims and Christians nor would say that "God is real only for Muslims/Christians." Someone might ask, "Is the God of Muslims the same as the Christian's God?" That is, that they understand the one God differently. How could anyone answer that question? Both the Muslim and the Christian would have to say no. Yet can we imagine an aufheben? We might. But in doing so there remains still one God, one real God. In short, I can't make sense of something that is "only true for my tribe." It appears performatively self-contradictory. When we experience something as "real," we simultaneously experience it as "real" for all in some respect, even as some aspects can be changing, as the proverbial elephant, as a glass of wine seen from different perspectives about a candle lit table, friends gathered for a Kierkegaardian feast.
DeleteActually, young Earth creationism has become a hot-button issue in the LCMS again. I think there is a pretty broad consensus on the topic, but a Concordia (Nebraska?) science faculty member wrote an article which came off a bit vague. Following that, several regional districts passed resolutions supporting YEC and recieved ‘brotherly admonition’ letters signed by the CSL Seminary faculty. This will likely be one of the burning issues at the next LCMS triennial convention.
ReplyDeleteI was not aware of this, Jim. Thank you!
DeleteIt seems to me that the only way to approach Scripture is through its own text, and, where varying interpretations, even after applying the approach that Scripture is its own interpreter, are possible, looking at the Confessions to see if those provide us with guidance. When even those admit of more than one reading, then we have to look at the Church historically has had to say about the great teachers of the Church, both before and after the Reformation; a list, not to be exclusive of anyone not named, might include Ss. Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, John Chrysostom, Hilary of Poitiers, Gelasius, Anselm of Canterbury, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, and during and after the Reformation, Luther, Melanchthon, Chytraeus, Chemnitz, Gerhard, Quenstedt, Walther, Krauth, Pieper, Hoenecke, Schlink and Robert Preus. The first four councils of the Church would be very persuasive; the fifth through the seventh, somewhat so but with caution.
ReplyDeleteAs to modern social questions, same-sex activity ought not even to be an issue in the Church; but it is. Scripture's text is not only clear but vehement: "thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is an abomination." "26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." Which part of those passages is unclear? It is an abomination; it is a vile passion, it is exchanging the natural use for what is against nature, it is shameful. "Arsenokoites" shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. These are not vague terms. The homosexuality which was widespread both in 15th- to 6th-century BC Phoenicia and Canaan, and again in first-century AD Greece and Rome, had no place in the Christian (or the Jewish) faith.
In the broader context, realism is essential. Nominalism may help in understanding some specific phenomena, but noumenally, the moment that you start to say, not a thing is what it is but rather it is what you call it, the door is open for God to be seen not as God, but as "the ground of all being" or an "archetype"; it is the door to Tillich and Jung. Once you are there, you are far from the Lutheran Confessions and thereby far from being a Lutheran. That cannot be solved by applying one or a few Lutheran concepts. If saying a few Lutheran things makes you a Lutheran, then Aquinas was a Lutheran. In fact he really was more Lutheran than many who walk around calling themselves Lutherans. A thing is what it is, not what you call it.
Ken, I agree that Thomas Aquinas is more Lutheran than some people putatively doing Lutheran theology these days.
DeleteConfessions are the norma normata (norma secundum quid) built upon the norma normans of Scripture. But when the norma normans is no longer normative with respect to the putative clarity of its meaningful content, then by what right can the norma normata derived from the norma normans function to clarify this norma normans? This is the question. Lutheran theology becomes incoherent, I believe, without the concept of Scripture's external clarity. Many within Lutheran circles, however, believe that this clarity can only be achieved through the hermeneutical virtuosity of the interpreter, using her knowledge of what lies in back of the text to determine the text's proper meaning. Now the external clarity of Scripture demands one keep abreast of new developments in the Society of Biblical Literature.
As for the issue of homoerotic behavior, I always ask this: "But do you think this activity lies within the order of creation or the order of the fall?" (Of course, some have longer ago abandoned orders of creation language because of how the notion was misused in Germany in the thirties and forties. -- This argument has always struck me as a type of genetic fallacy.)