Friday, July 5, 2019

Scholasticism and So-Called Lutheran Orthodoxy -
As Meaningless as the Confessional Lutheran Label



Just before he joined the Roman Catholic Church as a priest, Richard J. Neuhaus (LCMS, AELC, ELCA) called himself a Confessional Lutheran. Those who agreed with him were also Confessional Lutherans, some of them following in the wake of his incense. They sinuflected all the way to Rome, too.

If we turn a gimlet eye toward the LCMS, we can see that its favorite labels are misleading too. Supposedly CFW was an Old Lutheran aiming at the repristination of Lutheran doctrine. That is such a laugh. He was a Pietist before his group made Martin Stephan their Pietist guru, and they sought him out chiefly because their previous Pietist leader moved and assumed room temperature.

Moreover, Stephan was a Bohemian Pietist (as in Count Zinzendorf) and only received his call, lacking a diploma, because it was a Pietist congregation built on land donated by Zinzendorf, with permission to hold cell group meetings only on the property.
Stephan studied at Halle, making him the perfect Pietist.

Most Lutherans came to America through Pietist missionary societies or movements. Many were shocked by the religious zoo they found and gravitated toward the Book of Concord and Luther.
A prime example is the Swedish Augustana Synod because they kept their loyalty to Pietism but moved away from revivalism and such movements as Bishop Hill, Illinois. William Passavant served as a godfather to Augustana and other groups, and he too had reacted against revivalism. He encouraged the study of the Book of Concord, which was the reason for the name - Augustana (Augsburg Confession - Confessio Augustana).

 Stephan brought the group over because he was under house arrest and unemployable - for his cavorting with young women and misuse of funds. Stephan left his wife behind but took his main mistress in the next cabin on his ship.


The German Synod
The LCMS was almost entirely German during the years of Walther and his hand-picked disciple F. Pieper. It seems that many of the Pietists and revivalists sought direction from the late scholastic or orthodox theologians.

The Calvinists attacked the Lutherans during the post Book of Concord (1580) era, and that led to increasing reliance on Latin terminology, truly a terrible path to follow.

J. Gerhard worked with Chemnitz, but he was already drifting into the verbose and overly technical language of scholasticism. Afterward Gerhard, there was often a blend of Lutheran doctrine and Pietism, so Old Lutheran is really a mixed label. So is Orthodox Lutheran.

Walther was insecure (for good reason) about Biblical teaching, so he lectured in Latin (!) and asked questions in Latin, demanding Latin answers. He used an otherwise forgotten theologian (Baier) for his dogmatics text, and infused the LCMS with a repeat-after-me system of learning, copied by WELS.

Walther-Pieper inspired an obsession with Latin theological terms. David Scaer created a large book explaining the terms, yet he never caught onto the Chief Article, hating anyone who taught Justification by Faith.

So if you think the path to understanding Justification is Latin, Walther-Pieper-Scaer prove otherwise. They also created entire lobbying groups (Higher Things, Steadfast Lutherans, Gottesdienst) devoted to their Pietistic cause.

 The hideous Walther shrine is a spooky eye-sore.

We only have so much time, so much mental energy. If that is spent pursuing the exact meaning and history of the non-reciprocity of the second genus, the Scriptures will be neglected.

Pastors are tempted to wow others with their vast knowledge (one inch deep) of those terms. I remember Paul Kuske talking to the Columbus WELS pastors and getting the terms mixed up. They all acted superior in harmony with him because they were trained to think they were the best.

Recently, Steve Spencer and another Objective Justification sell-out insisted to me that they held to a quia subscription to the Book of Concord, another fig-leaf to cover the shame of the Olde Synodical Conference, which once taught Justification by Faith and now brays "OJ OJ OJ."



Luther's and Formula of Concord Term
I was impressed with the editors of the Book of Concord identifying with Luther's term - Theologian of the Augsburg Confession. They agreed and also considered themselves "theologians of the Augsburg Confession."

Do you wonder why the LCMS-WELS leaders do not like Melanchthon at all, when Luther praised his brilliant associate?

So our little church does not have an organization to venerate. We reach Europe, Australia, and the Philippines. A lot of readers come from Russia.

However, we are big because those who actually agree with the Augsburg Confession are one with us. We do not have an adulterous sugar-daddy to give us millions of dollars, so we rely on the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. As I look around, the Word has had more success than those glittering mausoleums to synod glory.



 Be sure to read the LCMS jokebook, to learn how one organizes a mob to threaten, rob, and kidnap church leaders. Synodical elections would be so much more newsworthy using Walther's tactics against Stephan.