Extra Nos: Confessional blah blah

Extra Nos: Confessional blah blah:


Confessional blah blah
Whenever I encounter a Lutheran identifying himself as "confessional", I go catatonic.

What does that mean? It does not mean the person believes in JBFA, it usually means the person believes the opposite; it usually means the person is a Universal Objective Justification adherent, i.e. a Huberite.

Take the case for example of "Lutheran" bloggers in the Internet. You will often read about them going on and on about the ancient traditions of the church discussing finer points of detail and so on. In fact, such people careless about whether or not UOJ is true or false. Often they think this is a minor point of disagreement. So they go to war on the liturgy, they go to war on lots of peripheral issues, they go fighting about what is minor -- always considering that the major issue is done deal already. They consider the doctrine of justification as something that can be set aside, because they think they got this down pat right.

You see when you become a UOJer everything becomes boring, you need something to get excited about.

So what is happening in Lutheranism is something I have seen before in Charismanic Evangelicalism.  When I was in it, the "in" word was "Reformed" so and so. That prefixing of identifying one's self with such a label is a way of getting traction, a way of getting an audience, you might say. It is a way of saying - look man, I am cool.

So when I read folk in Lutherdom saying "I am confessional" etc etc blah blah, often the cynical side of me comes out, I do a lot of LOLing. Because my friend, what some really mean by that is that they are really "synodical", meaning they are a follower of their synod and their synod's extra Biblical pronouncements.

The word "confessional" has been polluted. What matters if you ask me is not what the label one tacks on to oneself, what matters is what really the person believes and teaches and confesses. The label worths nothing.

When you think justification is no longer an issue, my theory is that you will fight for something else.

LPC


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