Archive for July, 2009
July 31, 2009 at 7:47 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
I submitted this paper to Drs. Eric W. Gritsch and Dr. Robert W. Jenson on May 16, 1986, as part of my work in The Lutheran Confessions, a class at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.
Paper
From the moment of its post-resurrection inception, the church catholic has been the gathering of believers around its risen and reigning Lord, Jesus the Christ, who has come, is present, and will continue to come in various ways. One of these ways, termed variously the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, and Eucharist, for example, has the following Pauline Scriptural witness:
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-25, RSV)
Throughout the history of the church, then, numerous interpretations and ancillary practices have arisen concerning this fundamental action of the church’s life. One particular—and for the purposes of this study—vitally important wrestling with this act is that set forth in The Book of Concord.
That this view has any importance over against others lies in the fact that The Book of Concord collects in one place many of the documents produced during the birth and early life of the reforming movement within the church known as Lutheranism. (Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976, p. 6) On the basis of the significance of this movement, then, the movement’s understanding of the Lord’s Supper is key.
This paper, therefore, will seek to explore and to explicate the understanding of the Lord’s Supper developed in The Book of Concord utilizing the following methodology. First of all, the paper will present an in-depth analysis of the two primary statements concerning the Lord’s Supper, namely those presented in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism, based upon the commentary provided by these and by the other works in the book. This will be accomplished from the Sitz im Leben of the documents themselves, i.e. the Reformation period of the sixteenth century. Secondly, an hermeneutical leap will be made to address the problem of articulating an understanding of the Lord’s Supper in twentieth-century terms.
For the purposes both of reference and of a sensible starting point, presented below are the two chief statements concerning the Lord’s Supper. Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism of 1529, writes, “what is the Sacrament of the Altar? Answer: Instituted by Christ himself, it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, given to us Christians to eat and to drink.” (SC 6.1-2, p. 3.51 in The Book of Concord, trans. and ed. by Theodore G. Tappert, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959. All references to the confessions are from this edition, using abbreviations from Lutheranism.) The other major statement, set forth in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, says, in the English translation of the German form, “It is taught among us that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the Supper of our Lord under the form of bread and wine and are therefore distributed and received.” (AC 10.1, p. 34)
A closer analysis of the two statements reveals both similarities of form, the ordering of elements, and variations of the wording of the elements. First, the statements both set forth some motive for even mentioning the topic of the Lord’s Supper in the first place. The Small Catechism says the Lord’s Supper is “instituted by Christ himself,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) while the Augsburg Confession begins, “It is taught among us.” (AC 10.1, p. 34.) Both phrases are declarations of authority undergirding the succeeding pronouncements. While the catechism seeks a seemingly more authoritative ground in the institution of Christ, the confession rests its statement upon the teaching authority of the church. Yet the institution of Christ is known through the witness of Scripture and it is “on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, these things are preached, taught, communicated, and embraced.” (Preface to AC, p., 25) And so the final authoritative appeal of both statements rests upon the Scriptural witness, testifying to the centrality of the principle of sola scriptura.
The second element of the two statements concerns part of what constitutes the Lord’s Supper. Here there is more uniformity in the wording; the Small Catechism contains the phrase “the true body and blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ,” (SC 6.2, p. 3.51) and the Augsburg Confession “the true body and blood of Christ.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) The inclusion or exclusion of the words “Lord Jesus” does not alter the sense of the phrases. What these elements intend will be considered later. For now, it is sufficient to demonstrate the similarity of the two formulations.
The third element concerns the way in which the body and blood of Jesus have being in the Lord’s Supper. The Small Catechism specifies they are “under the bread and wine,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) and the Augsburg Confession notes they “are really present under the form of bread and wine.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) There are significant differences in wording here; yet the connection with the artifacts of bread and wine merits noting.
The fourth element concerns the distribution. The Small Catechism says the Lord’s Supper is “given to us Christians to eat and to drink,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) whereas the Augsburg Confession maintains it is “distributed and received.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) Both formulations acknowledge that both kinds—the bread and the cup—are given to all who come to the table, even though they state the matter very differently.
The four-fold shape of these two major formulations concerning the Lord’s Supper suggests concern for the following issues. By what authority and command is the Lord’s Supper enacted? What constitutes the Lord’s Supper? (This question includes the second and third elements above.) Who receives the Lord’s Supper? One additional question should also be considered: What does the Lord’s Supper do?
Turning first of all to the question of by what authority the Lord’s Supper is done in the church, one observes that with unanimity the many references in the Book of Concord make the Christocentrjc assertion that Christ both commanded and first enacted the Lord’s Supper. According to the Augsburg Confession, ’the Lord’s Supper is one of the “signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us.” (AC 13.1, p. 35) Just because the Lord’s Supper is of God’s will for God’s people, it thereby has the authority of Christ attached to it. With regard to the question of whether the laity may drink the cup as well as eat the bread, the Augsburg Confession reaffirms they may as “there is a clear command and order of Christ, ’Drink of it, all of you (Matt. 26:27),’” (AC 22.1, p. 149) In this case, the confessions appeal to the Scriptural attestation of Christ’s command concerning the Lord’s Supper.
Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the authority and command underlying the Lord’s Supper can be found in the Large Catechism. Here Luther begins by citing the Verba, the Pauline form of which was quoted above. (LC 5.3, p. 147) Luther makes the important point, that based upon this account, the Lord’s Supper is not of human artifice, but that it receives its inception and injunction to perform from Jesus Christ himself. (LC 5.3, p. 447) In passing, one should note this view attributes the Verba to the lips of the person Jesus, and makes no allowance for the later historical-critical conclusions of oral tradition and the period of the early church. That the Verba may not in fact be specifically words of Jesus Christ, but words of the Christ-community does not blunt Luther’s claim, when one assumes Scripture may be inspired truth without being accurate fact, as the Scriptures themselves claim.
Thus, in summary of this point, the confessions maintain that the Lord’s Supper was begun by Christ Jesus and that Christ gave orders to enact the Supper according to Christ’s directions. This is well and good to know, but the next most obvious question presses: What is this Lord’s Supper, that Christ commands we eat and drink?
First of all, throughout the confessions, when making reference to the Lord’s Supper and other such mandated actions, the reformers employ the word “sacrament.“ One definition given for sacrament is “rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added.” CAP 13.3, p. 211) For the reformers, a rite is an action to be performed. That the Lord’s Supper, which involved addressing, praying, singing, eating, and drinking, is an action is obvious. It has been shown above that the Supper carries the command of Christ, of God. Thus it remains to show that “the promise of grace has been added” (AP 13.3, p. 211) to the Supper to show that it is in fact a sacrament.
In the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon seeks to explain how it is that a sacrament has God’s promise connected with it. This he does in a crucial passage worth quoting as follows:
Through the Word and rite God simultaneously moves the heart to believe and take hold of faith, as Paul says (Rom. 10:17), “Faith comes from what is heard.” As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart, so the rite itself enters through the eyes to move the heart. The Word and the rite have the same effect, as Augustine said so when he called the sacrament “the visible word,” for the rite is received by the eyes and is a sort of picture of the Word, signifying the same thing as the Word. Therefore both have the same effect. (AP 13.5, pp. 211-212)
It is not immediately obvious that this passage speaks of promise at all; one must first understand what Melanchthon intends by the word “Word.” Further along in this particular section of the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Melanchthon makes a relation between Word and Gospel. (AP 13.11, p. 212) By Gospel, we can take Melanchthon to mean the proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection out of love for humanity. For his understanding of Word, it is sufficient to note he identifies it with the second person of the Trinity, who is incarnate as Jesus Christ. (AP 3.1, p. 107)
With this relation in thind, Melanchthon points to two passages of Scripture where the notions of God’s promise and God’s Word and Gospel are bound together. The first is “The Gospel is the power of God for salvation for every one who has faith’ (Rom. 1:i6)” and the second is “’My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it’ (Isa. 55:11).” (AP 13.11, p. 212) God’s promise that God’s Word does something is implicit in the unconditionality of the verbs in these two citations: “is” and “shall accomplish.” (AP 13.11, p. 212) These phrases speak of certainty, of assurance, of the will of God that something shall happen. This is God’s promise, and it is sure.
Thus, to summarize several points, according to the confessions, God’s Word promises to effect change in those to whom it is proclaimed. The change wrought by the Word in those it chooses to reach is of a specific nature. The Augsburg Confession specifies what God’s Word in the forms of Gospel and sacraments does: “Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who work faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the Gospel.” (AC 5.2, p. 31) This is to say that what God’s Word does is to create in people the faith that believes what the Word promises to be true.
All of these pieces, then, comment upon the extended passage of Melanchthons quoted above. Melanchthon analyzes the action of a sacrament in terms of “Word and rite.” (AP 13.5, p. 211) The preceding discussion has laid out how the Word works faith in the recipients. In a parallel and overlapping fashion, then, Melanchthon states that the rite does a similar thing: “As the Word enters through the ears to strike the heart, so the rite itself enters through the eyes to move the heart.” (AP 13.5, p. 212) Just as the Word is communicated by audible proclamation, whereby it is heard, and thereby works faith in the hearers, when and where God wills, so too is the rite the Word communicated by visible demonstration, whereby it is seen, and thereby works faith in the viewers, when and where God wills. And God wills it where God has promised it. And where God has promised it is in the rite of the Lord’s Supper.
Conclusively, then, the confession assert the Lord’s Supper is one of the “rites which have the command of God and to which the promise of grace has been added.” (AP 13.3, p. 211) This answers several of the questions posed above. One, by what authority and command is the Lord’s Supper enacted? It is enacted in accordance to God’s precept. Two, what does the Lord’s Supper do? As an action performed according to God’s precept, the Supper has God’s assured working and strengthening of faith in the participants. Three, what constitutes the Lord’s Supper? A mandated set of actions performed according to divine precept constitutes the Lord’s Supper. A specific exploration of the rite remains one of the tasks to be completed. And the other remaining question to be answered in the historical context of The Book of Concord is about who receives the Lord’s Supper.
To unpack the specifics of the rite itself, let the discussion turn to these pairs: bread–body and cup–bread. To aid in discerning what these pairs intend, it is helpful to recall the initial two statements of the Small Catechism, that the Lord’s Supper “is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine,” (SC 6.2, p. 351) and of the Augsburg Confession, that in the Lord’’s Supper, “the true body and blood of Christ are really present…under the form of bread and wine.” (AC 10.1, p. 34) By the parallelism of these statements, one can see the reformers intending to make some sort of correspondence between body and bread and between blood and wine.
What sort of correspondence exists between the objects of these pairs is tied up in some difficult phrases: “really present̶`; (AC 10.1, p. 34) and “truly and substantially present,̶`; (AP 10.1, p. 179) for example. Perhaps an enlightening way to explore what they mean is to see how the reformers’ understanding of the Lord’s Supper was drawn out in response to a controversy. In response to the challenges of the Sacramentarians, the Epitome of the Formula of Concord sets forth just the question posed above. Sacramentarians would say the phrases above do not apply to discussion of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. (EP 7.2, p. 482) Sacramentarians seek to deny the physical, bodily presence of Christin the Lord’s Supper, and assert that Jesus Christ has presence of Spirit, rather than of body. (EP 7.5, p. 482)
In response then to the Sacramentarians, the reformers set forth various “Affirmative Theses–Confession of the Pure Doctrine of the Holy Supper Against the Sacramentarians.” (EP 7.5, p. 482) One thesis contends “that the words of the testament of Christ are to be understood in no other way than their literal sense, and not as though the bread symbolized the absent body and the wine the absent blood of Christ, but that because of the sacramental union, they are truly the body and blood of Christ.” (EP 7.7, p. 1482) This statement, is in some respects, helpful for understanding the relation between the elements and Christ’s presence, and in some ways, of no use whatsoever. By the process of definition or delimitation by negation, this statement contends that the bread and wine are not symbols of the body and blood. That is helpful, for it precludes any talk of Christ’s presence asserting he is somewhere or somewhen else and that the Supper is mere symbolic reminder or memorial to a past event.
Where the above thesis falls short is once one has said Christ’s presence is not symbolic, one is at a loss to explain how bread and wine are “truly the body and blood of Christ.” (EP 7.7, p. 482) Some light is shed by noting the use of the phrase “truly and essentially present” (EP 7.6, p. 482) in the preceding thesis. By the use of these various terms describing Christ’s presence as presence “truly and essentially and really and substantially,” there is only one reasonable conclusion to draw from this.
That conclusion must be that however Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper, the presence is such that, in accord with the instituted and commanded words of Christ, the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. When one looks at the bread and wine, one sees the body and blood of Christ. That is the form Christ’s physical presence has, and he does not have a physical presence somewhere else than where he has promised to be.
As a result, the one remaining question with which to deal is the question of who receives the Supper. By a somewhat backdoor approach recognizing that the church is the gathering of believers about the risen Lord, and that believers may still be sinners, one can state, along with Luther, that “even though a knave should receive or administer it, it is the true sacrament (That is, Christ’s body and blood) just as truly as when one uses it most worthily.” (LC 5.16, p. 448) Luther can say this of the Lord’s Supper because of his insistence that what makes the sacrament “work” is that God has made certain promises that are not at all conditioned on the works, performance, disposition, or motives of the persons involved in the Supper. In addition, even though one may agree with this, yet say one must believe the promises, the confessions state that such faith is worked in the recipient by the will of God. Thus the sacraments, including the Lord’s Supper, “are signs and testimonies of God’s will toward us for the purpose of awakening and strengthening our faith.” (AP 13.1, p. 35)
The faith spoken of here comes to the person from outside the person, as Luther notes, “Whoever lets these words be addressed to him and believes that they are true has what the words declare.” (LC 5.35, p. 450)
Finally, an end, or at least a stopping point, to the inquiry begun under the guise of determining what the reformers intended by the two rather short statements in the Augsburg Confession and the Small Catechism, has been made. A summary is needed. Putting the two statements into the terms worked out in this paper, one has that the Lord’s Supper is an action of the gathered body of believers, performed at the command of Christ, according to the Verba to eat blessed bread and drink blessed wine, which are the body and blood of the risen Christ. All in the church may participate, both sinner and saint, and the faith which apprehends the promises God has made is the faith worked in persons by God through means.
The last section of this paper will treat an application of this understanding of the Lord’s Supper to the case of a particular congregation. This theological case study will show how the understanding worked out in the sixteenth century is eminantly applicable to situations in the twentieth century. Further, the treatment will present some specific addresses that can be made to those concerned in the case study, addresses which will attempt to communicate the promise and action of the Lord’s Supper.
The case study arises from experience with the congregation of Salem Evangelical Lutheran Church, Lebanon, Pennsylvania. A Pennsylvania German Lutheran congregation 226 years of age, the parish has been under the same pastor for the past 30 years. Holy Communion is “observed” the first Sunday of each month, following the second setting in the Service Book and Hymnal.
The bulletin prints the following announcement each Sunday when the Lord’s Supper is performed: “We invite all who discern in the Bread and Wine of the Sacrament the true Body and Blood of Christ to join us in fellowship at His Table.”
The pastor has contended that “weekly communion reduces attendance.” The church council recently voted to use individual glasses rather than a common cup, “for fear of the transmission of disease.” The piety of the congregation is funereal even on days of celebration, such as Easter.
Beginning with the invitation printed in the bulletin, all seems regular and confessional, with the exception of two points. It is somewhat strange that no mention is made of inviting the baptized to the table, as in the Augsburg Confession, the article on the Lord’s Supper contextually follows on the heels of the article on baptism. Also, if one understands baptism to be God’s act of claiming one as God’s child and working faith in one, this must of necessity precede being sustained in faith by the meal.
The second point is of somewhat more concern. The word “discern” is a troublesome word as it stands in the text.
It has two senses that seem to be what the announcement intends. The first is to make out something hidden and the second is to understand with the mind. Both of these senses are disastrous for the integrity of the Supper. The first approaches denying what the rest of the announcement asserts, namely that Christ is really present in the Supper. One could almost claim that “discern” carries the flavor of recognizing the symbolism of the bread and the wine. This would be a Sacramentarian position. What the confessional position on the Supper worked out above would allow one to say is this: “If you see the bread and wine during the Supper, you see all the body and blood Christ has; He hasn’t any body any place else than where he promises to be. This is one of those places.” The second sense of discern, to understand with the mind, displaces and undermines the necessity for receiving the Supper in faith. It is not by a work of the intellect one knows Christ is truly present in the Supper, but by an apprehension in faith, a faith that is worked and sustained in one from without by God. The address one could make to the person thinking it necessary to understand how Christ is present really in the Supper is this: “If you must understand intellectually how Christ is present before coming to the table, you will never be ready. Instead, it is just because you are unable to understand this, that God has promised God’s grace in the meal and calls you to God’s table in the sin of your ignorance to be built up in faith by God’s effort.“
The pastor’s contention that frequent celebration reduces attendance is not an issue specifically addressable by Table discourse, except in this way. If it is true that more frequent Communion reduces attendance, then that is all the more reason for the pastor to proclaim what it is the people are staying away from and to expose the depravity of their lives in words like these: “If you could see how many daggers, spears, and arrows are at every moment aimed at you, you would be glad to come to the sacrament as often as possible.” (LC 5.82, p. 456)
Lastly, the funereal piety of the people as they “observe” the Lord’s Supper seems to stem from the understanding that the Supper is merely a reenactment of what Christ did back there. And then, naturally, there is reason to be sad, as they stand on the Maundy Thursday side of the cross with death looking them in the eye. A Lutheran confessional approach to the problem might be the following: “That Lord whose cross stares you in the face, that Lord Jesus Christ has overcome sin and death and is risen and reigning in the world right now. And because Christ is risen, Christ is alive and really present in this Supper. Here, ‘the body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.’”
In this way, an understanding of the Lord’s Supper worked out under the guidance of the Lutheran confessions as presented in The Book of Concord, allows one to address God’s promise to persons. This promise is, namely, that God has promised to gather God’s people together about God’s table, to be present with them in the breaking of bread and the sharing of the cup, to strengthen and uphold them in faith through this meal, despite and just because of their estranged human condition.
Works Cited
Gritsch, Eric W. and Robert W. Jenson. Lutheranism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1976.
May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. New York: Oxford University Press. 1973.
Tappert, Theodore G. ed. and trans. The Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1959.
July 31, 2009 at 6:02 am · Filed under Daily Words
“My grace is enough for you, for in weakness power reaches perfection.” (2 Corinthians 12:9, LH)
July 30, 2009 at 6:25 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
In the spring term in 1987, I took took a class called “Luther Seminar: Education and Worship,”, lead by Prof. Eric W. Gritsch. I wrote this paper as my final project in the class.
Paper
Martin Luther conceived the Christian life as a continual, daily return to one’s baptismal waters, reaffirming God’s action which “…effects forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants salvation to all who believe, as the Word and promise of God declare.” (Martin Luther, Small Catechism. IV.6, in The Book of Concord, trans. and ed. by Theodore G. Tappert, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959) To return to one’s baptism, moreover, acknowledges one’s faith in the God who performed the baptism and simultaneously renounces one’s trust in any other gods. Therefore, the Christian life of continual trust in God becomes a joyful task of obedience to the first commandment of the Decalogue: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, ed. by Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) For Luther, this commandment simply means Christians “…should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” (SC I.2) Accomplishing this by one’s own efforts and strengths is forbiddingly overwhelming, even impossible.
But Christians are not alone; at their baptisms they receive a charism, a gift of the Holy Spirit, empowering them to live out their callings, their vocations, as children of God, according to God’s will revealed in his Word. Life under the Word of God is worship, and
…is like inhaling and exhaling. Members of Christ’s body inhale by hearing and receiving Word and sacraments in appropriate liturgical enactment in the church; and they exhale by serving others with selfless, sacrificial love. (Eric W. Gritsch, Martin—God’s Court Jester, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983, p. 180)
Learning the form and contour of this life sculpted by God is a process of education.
Learning to conform one’s life to God’s will requires understanding both God’s action in one’s life and God’s expectations of one’s response. Here Luther focuses his catechetical vision of the Christian life. Luther organizes his handbook for the Christian life, his catechism, around the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, viewing it as “instruction for children,” containing “…the minimum of knowledge required of a Christian.” (LC Preface, 1-2) But as Luther observes (even of himself), all God’s baptized are children, no matter how old. He writes:
I must still read and study the Catechism daily, yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the Catechism, and I do it gladly. (LC, Martin Luther’s Preface, 8 )
While Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms clearly perform this catechetical function in the life of Christians, Luther perceives catechesis in much broader terms. Just as all of life is a return to baptism, so too is much, if not all, of the Christian’s life pervaded by catechetical elements; one learns how to live under the first commandment in many ways.
One lesson of catechesis teaches,
The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein;
for he has founded it upon the seas,
and established it upon the rivers. (Psalm 24:1-2)
When Christians recognize God’s gift of creation, they recognize creation to be good, and respond to God in praise for his gift. Often, in spontaneous eruptions of joyful praise to God for his gifts, Christians sing songs. “For Luther, music [i]s a ‘noble, wholesome, and joyful’ creation, a gift of God. For Luther, music [i]s a part of God’s creation with the power to praise its Creator ….” (Carl Schalk and C. Halter, eds., Handbook of Church Music, St. Louis: Coricordia Publishing House, date unknown, p. 15) Thus music, for Luther, is much more than making merry, it is a vehicle for expression.
When Luther conceives of musical expression within the lives of Christians, he “hears” hymns. He envisions hymnody as a vital part of the Christian life under the first commandment, and so he writes hymns. In fact,
…Luther’s hymns were meant not to create a mood, but to convey a message. They were a confession of faith, not of personal feelings …. They were written not to be read but to be sung by a whole congregation. (Luther’s Works, Vol. 53, ed. by Ulrich S. Leupold, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965, p. 197)
Luther’s hymns confess the catholic and evangelical faith in worship, but they do much more, particularly in terms of catechesis. As one critic observes:
The many hymnals and books of spiritual songs (geistliche Lieder, Kirchenlieder) printed during the Reformation served the several purposes of congregational singing: to give thanks and praise to God, to express the community’s common spiritual interests, to arouse the individual’s religious emotions and help imprint on his [sic] mind the salient points of the doctrine. (Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, p.233)
This imprinting of doctrine on the mind is catechesis. For Luther, because he views catechesis “(from the Greek katechein, ‘sounding back’)” (Gritsch, p. 180) in both an aural and an oral way, hearing and responding are key for the Christian’s understanding of life under the one God. For this reason,
To [Luther], the way of the gospel led through the ear more than the eye. That is why he valued poetry and music so highly, and the hymns which would sing the gospel into the hearts of the common people. (Vilmos Vajta, Luther on Worship, Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press, 1958, p. 185)
The power of hymns to carry the message of the living gospel into the hearts of people is usually channeled into efforts of evangelism, but Luther also recognizes the dynamic of sustaining faith catechetically through song. As one writer contends,
Of the three ways of imparting the Christian message, by preaching, by reading, and by singing, “the third way was particularly likely to impress the doctrine deeply into the minds of simple-minded young people and preserve it from generation to generation.” (Strauss, p. 232)
Therefore, (picking up the strands of this whole development) Luther’s use of hymnody as a catechetical tool to “sing the gospel into the hearts of the common people” builds deliberately upon his understanding of music’s place in God’s creation, his desire to catechize Christians, and ultimately his theology of the Christian life as governed by the first commandment.
While many commentaries, theologies, and criticisms, when looking at Luther’s hymns, seem to concentrate mostly on uplifting hymnody in worship, merely giving the hymns’ catechetical use a passing note, Luther deliberately cultivates the catechetical side of his hymns. Fortunately, some critics spot Luther’s intent. One writes:
The pedagogical intent proved to be an important aspect. Walther already included three “catechetical” hymns by Luther which may have been written not only for the regular catechism services in the city church but also for home and school. After 1524, Luther added to their number systematically until the main subjects were covered: Ten Commandments, Creed, Lord’s Prayer, Baptism, and Lord’s Supper. His effort indicates that, in the emerging tradition, the hymnal was meant not as a help for congregational singing only but also for instruction and personal devotion, that is, as a prayer book. (Karlfried Froehlich, “Luther’s Hymns and Johann Sebastian Bach” in The Bulletin, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Lutheran Theological Seminary, Vol. 66, No. 1, Winter 1986, p. 7)
Luther makes this point himself in the “Shorter Preface to the Large Catechism” of 1529, picking up the power of music to supplement the proclamation of the preaching in the lives of young people. He warns,
Do not assume that they will learn and retain this teaching from sermons alone. When these parts have been well learned, you may assign them also some Psalms or some hymns, based on these subjects, to supplement and confirm their knowledge.
Before turning to the actual texts of Luther’s hymns to see how he carried out his plan of catechizing Christians through the singing of hymns, one should first consider how Luther himself upholds and introduces his hymns. As early as 1524, in his “Preface to the Wittenberg Hymnal,” Luther writes:
That it is good and God pleasing to sing hymns is, I think, known to every Christian; for everyone is aware not only of the example of the prophets and kings in the Old Testament who praised God with song and sound, with poetry and psaltery, but also of the common and ancient custom of the Christian church to sing Psalms. St. Paul instituted this in I Corinthians 14 [:15] and exhorted the Colossians [3:16] to sing spiritual songs and Psalms heartily unto the Lord so that God’s Word and Christian teaching might be instilled and implanted in many ways. (LW, 53, pp. 315-316)
Here Luther grounds his reforms of hymnody in the tradition of the people of God and points to the catechetical actions of “instilling and implanting” the Word of God. In his liturgical reform, as set forth in “The German Mass and Order of Service” of 1526, Luther again turns to hymns in the language of the people, the vernacular, to aid in forming the lives of Christians. He explains:
This is what we do to train the schoolboys in the Bible. Every day of the week they chant a few Psalms in Latin before the lesson, as has been customary at Matins hitherto …. After the lesson the whole congregation sings a German hymn, the Lord’s Prayer is said silently, and the pastor or chaplain reads an collect and closes with the Benedicamus Domino as usual. (LW 53, p. 69)
Thus Luther introduces vernacular hymnody as a tool in the catechesis, in the formation of Christians, under the Word and will of God.
These ideas receive expression in the “Augsburg Confession” of 1530, at the hands of the reform movement, which contends concerning the Mass,
Almost all the customary ceremonies are also retained, except that German hymns are interspersed here and there among the parts sung in Latin. These are added for the instruction of the people, for ceremonies are needed especially in order that the unlearned may be taught. Paul prescribed that in a church a language should be used which is under-stood by the people. (AC XXIV.2-3)
This quotation shows a true concern for the needs of the unlearned to receive some knowledge and teaching concerning the faith, and a recognition of the barriers language can erect against the catechetical forming of Christians.
Finally, in a carefully written and sensitively conceived writing entitled, “Preface to the Burial Hymns”, from 1542, the older Luther sketches out some rubrics for the conduct of funerals. Even at this time of life, normally filled with inconsolable and unchecked sorrow, he opens a little space for hymnody’s shaping of Christian lives made malleable through grief. He says:
Nor do we sing any dirges or doleful songs over our dead and at the grave, but comforting hymns of the forgiveness of sins, of rest, sleep, life, and of the resurrection of departed Christians so that our faith may be strengthened and the people be moved to true devotion. (LW 53, p. 326)
Given this background and these insights into Luther’s way of serving the catechesis of Christians through hymnody, examining the hymns Luther wrote will give us clues to his understanding of hymnody as a catechetical tool and will suggest ways in which we can apply these insights in the parish today to catechize Christians.
Luther’s body of hymns includes six usually classified as catechetical: two on the commandments and one each on the remaining four parts of his catechism. His earliest hymn on the commandments, entitled “These Are the Holy Ten Commandments,” dates from 1524. (LW 53, p. 277) It receives a somewhat dour analysis, insensitive to its power as a catechism:
While some of his hymns were born out of his most personal experience and reflected the struggles and victories of his faith, others [including this one] were mere versilications of the Catechism. (LW 53, p. 277)
Twelve stanzas in length, the hymn contains one introductory and two summary stanzas bracketting nine stanzas on the commandments themselves. Each stanza versifies a commandment in the opening lines and gives the catechetical interpretation in the concluding lines, finishing with the plea, “Lord, have mercy.” Consider stanza two, on the first commandment:
I am the Lord thy God alone;
Of gods besides thou shalt have none;
Thou shalt thyself trust all to me,
And love me right heartily. (LW 53, p. 278)
Luther’s versified explanation here bears a striking resemblance to the one given in his catechism: “We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” (SC 1.2) He concludes with two stanzas telling why God gives the commandments, to expose humanity’s sinfulness and to show how humans should live under God’s will, and to cast humanity’s reliance on Christ alone and not its own works. (LW 53, p. 279) Thus a catechetical hymnic structure becomes noticeable: Introduction, Catechetical Body (element, explanation), and Conclusion.
Luther’s second hymn on the commandments, “Man, Wouldst Thou Live All Blissfully,” again from 1524, (LW 53, p. 280) concatenates the above structure, covering the ten commands in five stanzas, and offering a catechetical explanation of only the first four commandments.
“In One True God We All Believe,” also from 1524, offers a catechetical and hymnic rendition of the Apostles’ Creed in three stanzas, one for each person of the Trinity. (LW 53, pp. 271-273) The first stanza is remarkable for its catechetical explanation of the simple confession, “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth:”
In one true God we all believe,
Maker of the earth and heaven;
Who, us as children to receive,
Hath himself as Father given.
Now and henceforth he will feed us,
Soul and body will surround us,
’Gainst mischances he will heed us,
Nought shall meet us that shall wound us.
He watches o’er us, cares, defends;
And everything is in his hands. (LW 53, pp. 272-273)
Luther extends what one would normally consider the past work of God into and throughout the whole life of Christians, comforting and consoling against the challenges of the world.
A later hymn, “Our Father in the Heaven who Art,” from 1539, offering a catechetical interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, has been described as “…outstanding, for every stanza begins with an almost literal rendering of the Lord’s Prayer phrase by phrase, followed by the catechetical interpretation of its meaning in the remaining lines.” (LW 53, p. 295) This hymn closely adheres to the structure of the first hymn on the commandments. The ninth stanza treats catechetically what few others would consider worthy of such attention, namely the “Amen.”
Amen! that is, let this come true!
Strengthen our faith ever anew,
That we may never be in doubt
Of that we here have prayed about.
In thy name, trusting in thy word,
We blithely say Amen, O Lord. (LW 53, p. 298)
Here Luther intensifies and focuses the “Amen” in terms of strengthening faith, conforming the one praying to the daily discipline of life as a child of God.
Luther’s hymns on the sacraments, namely “To Jordan When Our Lord Had Gone” of 1541 (LW 53, p. 299) and “Jesus Christ, Our God and Savior” of 1524 (LW 53, p. 249), round out his catechetical hymnody. They exhibit the same general characteristics as the other hymns, giving text and interpretation. The first, on baptism, explains the sacrament in light of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan. (LW 53, pp. 300-301). This differs from the above hymns in that Luther builds upon a narrative text rather than a formulaic text. The second, on the Lord’s Supper, explains this sacrament without versifiying the words of institution in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, a curious decision on Luther’s part, as that text seems to lend itself so well to his catechetical task.
In conclusion, then, one notes Luther’s design of rooting his hymns in the symbols, actions, and scriptures, the central core of the catholic faith, branching from these trunks of the life of the Church to catechetically reveal the foliage of the Christian life. Through singing these hymns, people come to have their memories, vocabulary, and understanding of these traditions and events shaped and formed into the patterns Luther carves out. This disciplines individuals in their Christian vocation as children of God living under the commandment to have only God as God.
Luther’s efforts at writing catechetical hymns to make the commandments, creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments an understandable, applicable, dynamic, and comforting part of the life of Christians suggest several tragectories for the life of the church today. First, hymn selection in worship is vitally connected to parish education and catechetics, and should not be seen merely as “pretty music to cover the sound of small change hitting the offering plate.” Second, teachers of catechetics should reconsider lectures alone as a teaching tool, and consider the participative, interactive use of catechetical hymns. Indeed, struggling to write hymns to explain the parts of the catechism would involve students in the formation of their own disciplined formation as Christians. Third, people in the Church having the charism of poetic skill should seriously dedicate themselves to penning new catechetical hymns reflecting the changes in language of the parts of the traditional catechism. Just as sermons reflect the present life of the congregations and the wider world, so too should catechetical hymns seek to explain the catechism in the context of the life of the late twentieth century. Fourth, the hymnody of the catholic Church should recover Luther’s catechetical hymns as a clear and vital testimony to the evangelical catholic faith of the church, and as a joyful offering of praise and thanksgiving to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By accepting these proposals and creating and testing others, the Church may experience the dynamic vitality of Christian formation to shape and dignify lives increasingly splintered and trivialized by society.
Works Cited
Buszin, Walter E. Luther on Music, Pamphlet Series No. 3. St. Paul, Minnesota: Lutheran Society for Worship, Music and the Arts. 1958.
Froehlich, Karlfried. “Luther’s Hymns and Johann Sebastian Bach” in The Bulletin. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Lutheran Theological Seminary. Vol. 66, No. 1, Winter 1986.
Gritsch, Eric W. Martin—God’s Court Jester. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1983.
Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 53, Liturgy and Hymns. ed. by Ulrich Leupold. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1965.
May, Herbert C. and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. (NRSV) New York: Oxford University Press, Inc. 1977.
Nettl, Paul. Luther and Music. trans. by Frida Best and Ralph Wood. Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press. 1948.
Schalk, Carl and C. Hatter, eds. Handbook of Church Music. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. date unknown.
Strauss, Gerald. Luther’s House of Learning. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1978.
Tappert, Theodore C., ed. and trans. The Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press. 1959.
Vajta, Vilmos. Luther on Worship. Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press. 1958.
July 30, 2009 at 5:43 am · Filed under Daily Words
“The one who devotes himself
to the study of the law of the Most High…
sets his heart to rise early
to seek the Lord who made him,
and to petition the Most High;
he opens his mouth in prayer
and asks pardon for his sins.” (Sirach 38:34b, 39:5, NRSV)
July 29, 2009 at 5:56 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
I submitted this paper to Mr. Scott Gustafson, on April 25, 1986, as part of a class entitled, “Introduction to Systematic Theology,” in the spring of my first year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.
Paper
In his preface to the work On Being A Christian, Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng writes, in almost free-verse poetic phrases, what he sees the goal of his book to be. Küng states the work will seek to expound, as regards “…the Christian program”:
what this program originally meant, before it was covered
with the dust and debris of two thousand years,
and what this program, brought to light again,
can offer today
by way of a meaningful, fulfilled life
to each and every one.
This is not another gospel,
but the same ancient gospel rediscovered for today. (Küng, Hans. On Being A Christian, trans. Edward Quinn. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1976., p. 20)
In ways sometimes alarming to the magisterial authority of the Roman Catholic Church, but in ways, at least on the surface, palatable to Protestants, Küng cites Scripture as his authority. But how does Scripture function authoritatively for Küng? And just what is Scripture for him? And further, what right does the Scripture have to claim to speak authoritatively in the lives of its readers? An answer to these questions lies in words along the lines of “Scripture is the inspired Word of God.” Working out understandings of these terms will simultaneously shed some light on the above-posed questions as well as summarize K&umml;ng’s position on the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture. First of all, as regards the documents themselves, Küng does not treat the Gospels of the New Testament as history. He says this in spite of these two observations: “Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be located”, and “Jesus of Nazareth is not a myth: his history can be dated.” (p. 148) The historicity of Jesus is established; he is not a myth. And yet, the Gospels are not historical-biographical in our senses of the words. In fact, “…it is quite impossible to write a biography of Jesus of Nazareth.” (p. 150) The two observations above establish existence and little else. The Gospels themselves do not provide history of Jesus; the Gospels are “organized testimony of the Christian faith.” (p. 151)
As testimonies, the Gospels are, in essence, confessions of faith. By selection, modification, and arrangement of the various oral and written traditions, the writers of the Gospels created a testimony or confession of Jesus as the Christ, suitable to the needs of their community. As K&umml;ng notes,
The evangelists—undoubtedly not merely collectors and transmitters, as people once thought, but absolutely original theologians with their own conception of the message—arranged the Jesus narratives and Jesus sayings according to their own plan and at their own discretion. (p. 152)
Once the Gospel writers did this, their work did something. Their work sought “to proclaim him [Jesus] in the light of his resurrection as Messiah, Christ, Lord, Son of God.” (p. 153) That is, the Gospels are “committed testimonies of faith meant to commit their readers.” (p. 153) So the Gospels, and the other writings of the New Testament, as these “committed testimonies,” are Scripture for Küng.
And so, the first part of the claim “Scripture is the inspired Word of God” has been explicated. It remains to be shown, first, how Scripture is inspired, and second, how Scripture is the inspired Word of God.
First of all, to understand how Scripture is inspired, one must face the fact that the actual text of the Bible was written by people, some known, and some anonymous. According to Küng:
Thus it [the Bible] is unequivocally man’s word collected, written down, given varied emphasis, sentence by sentence by quite definite individuals and developed in different ways. Hence it is not without shortcomings and mistakes, concealment and confusion, limitations and errors. (p. 63)
This view, fostered by the findings of historical-critical research, precludes the reasonable individual from understanding inspiration in a “mechanical” way, as persons taking the “dictation of the Holy Spirit.” (p. 464)
Küng develops another way of understanding inspiration in connection with Scripture and the work of the Holy Spirit. He writes,
Not only the recording, but the whole prehistory and posthistory of the writing, the whole process of acceptance in faith and transmission of the message, all these have something to do with the divine Spirit.(p. 465)
He sees the work of the Holy Spirit as overarching the whole event that is the communication of the Gospel. The adjectives he uses are “Spirit-pervaded and Spirit-filled.” (p. 465)
By these designations of the human words of Scripture as “Spirit-pervaded and Spirit-filled,” Küng recognizes the human words as inspired, as not at all arbitrary. But this does not say how Scripture is the inspired Word of God, but merely how Scripture is the inspired words of humans. Now, therefore, it is necessary to explore how Küng develops the idea that Scripture is the inspired Word of God.
Küng writes, ““The Scriptures are not themselves divine revelation.” (p. 466) If they were divine revelation, then they would themselves be objects of devotion. But, as developed above, Küng sees the Scriptures as testimonies to the divine revelation. For Küng, then, says,
My faith arises from Scripture in the sense that the latter provides me with external evidence in an authentic form of this God of Israel and of Jesus Christ. But my faith is not based on Scripture. It is not the book as such, but this God himself in Jesus who is the ground of my faith. (p. 446)
Thus, for Küng, Scripture has an authoritative or authenticating function, insofar as, and only insofar as it points to or witnesses to the one God who reveals himself in the history of Israel and finally in the person of Jesus the Christ.
At this point, Küng is close to revealing how Scripture is the inspired Word of God. Then, in one short, italicized passage, he makes the final step and states the way in which he understands the relation between Scripture and Word of God. He writes:
The Bible is not simply God’s word: it is first of all and in its whole extent man’s word, the word of quite definite individuals.
The Bible does not simply contain God’s word: there are not certain propositions which are God’s word, while the rest are man’s.
The Bible becomes God’s word: it becomes God’s word for anyone who submits trustfully and in faith to its testimony and so to the God revealed in it and to Jesus Christ. (p. 467)
The first observation precludes the mechanical inspiration point-of-view of Scripture and comes to terms with the full humanity of the processes by which Scripture came to be. The second observation, that “the Bible does not simply contain God’s word” disallows one from picking and choosing which passages one desires to follow or heed. Then in the third proposition, Küng makes the step in stating just how Scripture or the Bible relates to the notion of Word of God. He states “the Bible becomes God’s word” for the person entering into a relationship of faith in the One witnessed to and pointed to by the same Bible.
Küng is very quick to amplify this, saying
it is God himself, revealed in the history of Israel and in the person of Jesus Christ, who calls through these testimonies of faith and provides for the message—despite all human weakness and opposition—constantly to be truly heard, understood, believed, and realized. (p. 167)
Thus the power and authority of the Biblical witness to the one God lies ultimately not with the humanly weak witnesses, but with the revealed God, who works faith in God’s hearers through his Word in Scripture.
Küng notes, in passing, that the Word of God in Scripture does something even if the hearer rejects it; the Word of God condemns and judges. (p. 467) For Küng, these actions, as well as the more positive actions of raising up faith in the hearers of the Word, are from first to last the work of the Holy Spirit. On that positive side, the hearer
allows himself to be inspired by the Spirit of this Scripture, who is in truth the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus Christ; the Spirit who in a wholly nonmechanical way turns the documents themselves into Spirit-filled and Spirit-pervaded testimonies. (p. 467)
Thus King unites all the various strands developed with regard to the authority and inspiration of Scripture. The Holy Spirit, who worked faith in the writers of Scripture, enabling them to fashion testimonies of faith, works faith also in the persons who hear the words of Scripture today. These persons have faith worked in them, again by the Holy Spirit, by means of the human words of Scripture become Word of God, by means of the Spirit-filling and Spirit-pervading actions of those human words.
In this way, Scripture is the inspired Word of God, and as such, Scripture claims all rights to speak authoritatively in the lives of those hearing it and believing in the God of Israel and of Jesus Christ. It is the work of this Spirit that makes the human words of Scripture have anything more than academic interest to the world today; it is the work of this Spirit that makes words of humans become inspired the Word of God in Scripture.
July 29, 2009 at 5:11 am · Filed under Daily Words
“…we likewise bring every thought into captivity to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5b, LH)
July 28, 2009 at 6:02 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
I wrote this review of James A. Scherer’s Gospel, Church & Kingdom, Chapter 2, for a class at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, some time between 1985 and 1989. The printed copy is undated.
Paper
Lutheran Mission in Historical Perspective
Scherer surveys the contributions of Lutheranism, as a “confessing movement” within the church catholic, to the theology of mission, concentrating on Martin Luther’s thought and on both its explication and its misappropriation by later Lutherans. Because of various historical, theological and cultural factors, Lutherans have unevenly applied the theory in concrete action.
According to Scherer, “For Luther, mission is always preeminently the work of the Triune God—Missio Dei—and its goal and outcome are the coming of the kingdom of God.” (p. 55) To accomplish His work, God uses His Word, His church, and His believers; the Father spreads the gospel of His triumph over death through the raising of Jesus by the power of their Holy Spirit, by means of the witness of the church, the gathering of believers around the risen Son. (p. 61) The church is not the end product of mission, according to Luther; God now gives humanity tastes and glimpses of His reign (kingdom), but He has yet to fully reveal it. (p. 56)
Scherer’s critique is both positive and negative. Luther’s vision of mission is biblical, Christocentric, and eschatological. But because of those characteristics, it does not translate well into programs and strategies; its success can be measured neither by church growth nor by feeling Jesus in one’s heart. God alone will accomplish the Missio Dei; yet everyone baptized is charged to witness to the new life given in Jesus’ name, until the day when all confess Him as Lord. (p. 66)
Luther’s heirs missed the message Luther spoke. Orthodoxy relied upon their principle of cuius regio, eius religio [whose rule, his religion] to accomplish the tasks of mission. Only where the ruler’s religion determined the people’s religion did humans participate in God’s mission. (p. 67) Further, Orthodoxy maintained that Matthew 28:19-20 was Jesus’ commission to the apostles only. They were dead, so the commission bound no one then living. (p. 68)
The Pietist movement, spurred by Philip Jakob Spener, reacted to Orthodoxy’s entrenchment, moving on five fronts:
- Reception of the Great Commission as authoritative both for the whole church and for individual Christians.
- Creation of “voluntary mission societies,” committed to ministry beyond the church’s boundaries.
- Commission of persons with a “testifying spirit” to engage in evangelistic missions.
- Collection of practical experience in the ministry of mission, its strategies and methodologies.
- Subjection of denominational differences to the press of an eschatological embrace of the Commission. (pp.71-72)
Scherer notes to its credit that Pietism broke many of the deadlocks of Orthodoxy, but began to emphasize human structures rather than God’s reign, regeneration by the Spirit rather than justification by faith, special mission groups rather than the church, Western culture rather than an acculturated gospel, and moral rectitude rather than societal Justice. (pp. 72-73)
During the resurgence of confessionalism in the nineteenth century, Lutherans “…combin[ed] evangelism and church planting with confessional separatism…,” giving new churches “…full spiritual authority, including Word, sacraments, indigenous ministry, and the ‘three self-marks’ (self-government, self-support, and self-propagation).” (p. 76) While Lutherans established churches, they tended to plant cultural Lutheranism rather than to foster Lutheran Christians. (p. 77)
The sweep of societal changes in the twentieth century, among them, two world wars, declining colonialism, the end of Christendom, the rise of faith in science and technology, the growth of cities, and the development of world-wide communications, brought reforms to Lutheran mission activity. Despite these challenges, Lutherans worldwide began to form a single Lutheran community (manifest in the Lutheran World Federation), to enter into dialogue with other communions (Lutheran—Roman Catholic and Lutheran—Anglican), and to participate in the ministries of ecumenical groups (The World Council of Churches). Through specifically missionary efforts of the LWF, Lutherans sought to present a “united witness before the world to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the power of God for salvation.” (pp.80-81).
Finally, Scherer outlines seven convergences reached by current Lutheran missiological thought. They are as follows:
- The kingdom of God as the goal of mission
- The church as instrument of God’s mission
- The calling to mission and unity
- “Salvation history” as a valid paradigm
- Justification by grace through faith as the Word of proclamation
- The correlation of creation and redemption in mission practice
- The necessary relation between justification and justice (pp. 84-90)
Scherer characterizes these realizations, not as revolutionary changes in Lutheran missiology, but as corrections of past errors, coupled with a return to Luther’s Mission Dei path of theological reflection. Scherer sees a serious attempt within world Lutheranism to grapple with the challenges of taking seriously Christ’s Great Commission.
Personal Reflection
I was surprised to read Scherer’s assessment of Luther’s missiological thought. While I have read most of those passages before, and studied them, I had never thought of them as presenting a theology of mission. It seems Luther’s gift of occasional theological reflection, usually his strong point, contributed to the de-emphasis of concerted missiological work on both his and his successors’ parts.
The historical survey of Lutheran thought between Luther and the present struck me, because the missionary attitudes of theses era are still alive in the attitudes of various factions of ELCA Lutherans today. In that respect, the history is present and alive, so that the conflicting attitudes work against each other, preventing any united missionary action.
In addition, there seems to be a trend, once again, within the ELCA to seek structures and programs to accomplish the task of mission. To focus on structure is understandable for an infant church, but to forget Luther’s Missio Dei approach to missiology is a mistake we cannot afford to make.
Lutherans still have much work to do to scrape the Germanic and Scandinavian barnacles from its message. For example, I just heard that one of the divisions of the ELCA is working to translate the LBW into languages like Chinese or Japanese. But there is no reason, no necessity, for keeping the same liturgical music and just changing the language. While Japanese Lutherans may be interested in learning the Swedish plainsong of Setting Three, they need not become Swedish to celebrate the liturgy in the Lutheran tradition.
July 28, 2009 at 5:31 am · Filed under Daily Words
“He who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully.” (2 Corinthians 9:6, LH)
July 27, 2009 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
Based on the contents of this paper, I must have written it for a class entitled, “The Early Church and its Creeds.” This was a first-semester class I took at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in the fall 1985 semester.
Paper
Once the early church received the charge from Christ to “…go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19a) and reached the size where the original apostles could no longer maintain personal contact, the need to codify the basic teachings of the Christian faith became apparent. Once in writing, these teachings could be passed on to newcomers to the faith. One such collection of teachings is, in fact, called The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, or The Didache. It points to “…two ways, one of life and one of death; and between the two ways there is a great difference.” (The Didache 1:1) The “way of life” follows the great commandment: “First, you must love God who made you, and second, your neighbor as yourself.” (The Didache 1:2) Rather than leaving the implications of this general rule for the newcomer to discover, The Didache explores its applications to daily life. The body of The Didache then, sets out for the newcomer to the Christian faith the numerous ramifications of that great commandment in both personal and corporate action.
In its first six chapters, The Didache unpacks the great commandment in terms of personal action, prescribing modes of conduct in response to enemies and vice. Many of the prescriptions take the form “Do not….” (The Didache 2:2 ff.) This negative approach to positive living follows from the formulation of the Golden Rule given in the document: “And whatever you want people to refrain from doing to you, you must not do to them.” (The Didache 1:2b) This formulation seems to define virtue through the omission of bad acts rather than the commission of good acts. Nevertheless, if one follows fully the instructions of The Didache, one will stay on the “way of life,” as the document states:
If you can bear the Lord’s full yoke, you will be perfect. But if you cannot, then do what you can. (The Didache 6:2)
Perfectly complying with the instructions in The Didache leads to perfection, yet the document recognizes the impossibility of doing so.
Chapters seven through fifteen catalogue models for corporate action in the life of the community of believers. Included are basic liturgies, developed in the early church, for the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist, as well as descriptions of the disciplines of prayer and fasting. Further, The Didache describes how to respond to teachers, apostles, and prophets, and outlines ways to observe the Sabbath, elect bishops and deacons, and resolve disputes among members of the community of believers. These chapters, while seemingly rather loosely connected to the contrast between the ways of life and death, do describe the ideal workings of a community of believers seeking to love fully both God and neighbor.
The Didache is a manual for novices of the Christian faith, delineating rules and models for personal conduct and corporate action. Through its compaction of the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus Christ and its inclusion of basic liturgies and guidance, The Didache operates to answer the question, “How should Christians act to show love for God and other people?”
July 27, 2009 at 9:45 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Fro you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9, LH)
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