Congress on the Lutheran Confessions

The Association of Confessional Lutherans and The Luther Academy are in the process of planning the next 

Congress on the Lutheran Confessions 

ACL National Free Conference 26

Luther Academy Lecture Series 22

April 15 - 17, 2015

Ramada Mall of America

Bloomington (a suburb of Minneapolis), Minnesota

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Congress Theme: 

MARRIAGE, SEX, and GENDER in the LUTHERAN CHURCH TODAY

—IN LIGHT OF THE LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS—

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Topics and Speakers (alphabetical):

Canaan or Israel? The Old Testament’s Doctrine of Marriage in the Pentateuch and the Prophets
— Rev. Steven Briel

Cohabiting Couples in the Congregation: Pastoral Ministry and Church Discipline from a Confessional Lutheran Perspective
— Rev. Jonathan Fisk

Marriage and the Family in the Lutheran Confessions 
— Mr. Tim Goeglein

Women’s Ordination and Congregational Roles Revisited: Can the Confessional Lutheran Synods Hold the Line?
— Rev. Brent Kuhlman

Divorce and Remarriage in the Parish and the Parsonage
— Rev. Brian Saunders

Women’s Ordination: More Than Bible Passages
— Dr. David Scaer

Same-Sex Marriage: The Challenges of its U.S. Legalization for Pastors and Congregations
— Mark Stern, Esq.

Luther: What is Marriage Really? 
— Rev. Paul Strawn

Homosexuals in the Congregation: Pastoral Ministry and Church Discipline from a Confessional Lutheran Perspective 
— Dr. Gary Zieroth

Banquet: Roses and Thorns: Advice Toward a Long and Happy Marriage
— Rev. Rolf Preus 

Questions, Information: TheACL@TheACL.org

The Foolishness of the Cross

This sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:18–25 was preached by the Rev. Jacob Corzine on 26 July 2014 (Saturday of Trinity 5) in Neuendettelsau, Germany at the fourth International Loehe Conference.

Wilhelm Loehe

I’ve been reading the game of thrones books over the last year and a half or so. I don’t read a lot of fantasy fiction, and I have to admit, I’m impressed. I’m seriously enjoying the books. I’m going to say just a little bit about what’s going on in the volume I’m reading right now, but there’s no need to leave. I don’t think I’m providing any spoilers beyond those already given away in the title. You see, the “Game of Thrones” is exactly what it sounds like. The books are basically about a battle between the elite in an ancient semi-medieval, semi-magical land for the place on the so-called “iron throne” of Westeros. Depending on the volume you’re reading, there are Lannisters, Starks, Targaryans, and Baratheons—I’m sure I’ve missed a few—putting everything that they have into finding a path from where they are to sitting on that throne in King’s Landing. Mostly that means gathering troops, forming alliances, and in general getting the upper hand any way they can. At any rate, it entirely consumes the characters driving at it.

How it will end is anyone’s guess. The next volume is due out pretty soon, I think. What seems fairly clear, however, is that there can be at most one winner—there’s only room for one on the Iron Throne. If anyone sits there, he—or she—will sit there alone. Anyone who has followed or supported that aspirer along the way can hope for due reward at the end. Those on the opposing side, not so much. Their years of efforts will have been for naught, and their foolishness will be unveiled. Years of effort in the wrong direction. What could appear more foolish?

There could seem to be an analogy reading this passage from 1 Corinthians to a group of people gathered around the topic of Education or Formation and the phrase, “If you cease learning, you cease being capable." Years and years are dedicated to study, learning, and understanding, in the hopes of attaining wisdom. Then comes one of the absolute greats of the discipline, the apostle Paul himself announcing that it’s all for naught. Wisdom is not the order of the day, but foolishness. The cross of Christ—that’s the beginning and the end of it all. It would almost seem, for all of our studying, that we may as well have spent our time reading fantasy novels.

But then, it could be that “foolishness” doesn’t mean here what foolishness typically means, but actually does mean wisdom. After all, St. Paul calls Christ the “wisdom of God.” Then, all our pursuits could be called wisdom, in as far as they pursue Christ and the cross. And we would be rescued after all with our wisdom. But I’m not sure. Christ is called the “wisdom of God,” not the “wisdom of theologians.” St. Paul calls what he preaches folly. The world doesn’t know God through wisdom, but through folly. Should we be too proud to call what we pursue folly? Or are we so bold as to call it wiser than St. Paul’s preaching of Christ?

Now, St. Paul wasn’t preaching to academic theologians. So, when he speaks so disparagingly of the wise, he surely doesn’t mean this crowd. He means the Greek philosophers and the Jewish scribes. Maybe there’s an out there. After all, our wisdom, however worldly it might be, is finally the wisdom of the cross of Christ. Except, again that wisdom is folly. Do we really have the self-confidence to admit that Paul was right about himself, but that we’ve moved beyond that?

To borrow St. Paul’s words from another place: What then shall we say? Shall we give up our studies, conferences, and societies? Give up our wisdom in favor of something many of us might be inclined right now to call “fundamentalism”?

I hope not. I prefer to read this passage as a needed caution. Wisdom may be the Achille’s heel of the scholar and theologian, our idol, or with Luther, the place we hang our hearts that becomes our God.

And here, this passage of 1 Corinthians works against that in two ways. First, it pushes us to self-reflection, revealing our wisdom for what we in our very human egotism make it to be. It forces the hard question, not “how could you ever think yourself so wise?”, but rather “what place does your wisdom have in your life as a Christian?” and “Is that the place the word of the cross was meant to occupy?” Or very simply, “Do you suppose your wisdom is wiser than the word of the cross?”

Second, the text draws us out of ourselves, directing the attention of our faith away from our own wisdom toward the word of the cross. It says, “Once you realize the foolishness of your own wisdom, know that there’s something better—the foolishness of God. Once you realize the weakness of your wisdom, that it isn’t a lasting wisdom, know that there is something better. God’s foolishness is wiser and his weakness is stronger. And both are in the word of Christ crucified.” But it remains the foolishness of God. It remains a foolishness extra nos, and this is, I think, why this passage can always be read as an indictment our wisdom, however theologically astute it might be. The word of the cross is always a word about something external. Our wisdom is, at best, a reflection. The word of the cross is the original.

The contrast is stark as it must be. We must give up our wisdom in favor of folly. Otherwise, we would risk hearing this passage as a call to refine our wisdom. But it’s the folly of the cross that, by the grace of God, may even baptize our wisdom.

Of course that would mean it’s not for naught. There are a few figures in the Game of Thrones novels who stand above the infighting and “serve the realm.” Ostensibly, they don’t work to replace the regent, but to serve whoever the regent is. They lack great wisdom and often seem foolish compared to some of those seeking the throne. They don't always have answers but do sometimes have grounds for critiquing other would-be wisdom, seeing the folly.

They have an idea that’s fixed as the world and the wisdom around them changes—the idea of the realm. We have something fixed as well—the word of the cross.

Amen.

The Rev. Jacob Corzine (FELSISA) does Campus Ministry at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and is the English-Language Co-Secretary of the International Loehe Society.

As an extension of LOGIA, BLOGIA understands itself to be a free conference in the blogosphere. As such, the views expressed on BLOGIA are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of LOGIA’s editorial board or the Luther Academy.

We’re Already Home: A Response to Joshua Genig

—by Christopher Neuendorf

It’s happened again: a Missouri Synod pastor has jumped ship, defecting to the Eastern Orthodox Church. Joshua Genig, formerly a pastor in Atlanta, Georgia, left his Lutheran parish and in December of last year received the sacrament (in Orthodox belief) of chrismation, together with his household. Of course, as is standard practice in these sorts of situations, Genig has gone public with an article explaining his decision. This one was published in First Things and is movingly entitled “My Journey into the Orthodox Church: We Travel Together Still.” What’s different this time is Genig’s characterization of the Lutheran Church. He argues that to be Lutheran is to be putative Orthodox, that his reception into the Orthodox Church is the culmination of the natural process of life as a Lutheran.

I beg to differ. What I see is a radical discontinuity. Genig’s transition to Eastern Orthodoxy is not the culmination of a process but the renunciation of a confession.

Several considerations compelled Genig to leave the Lutheran Church for Eastern Orthodoxy. Discontent with the liturgical state of things in the Missouri Synod, which many of us would agree is a serious problem, and a desire for his children (including infants, I presume) to be able to receive the Lord’s Supper were a couple of those considerations. Both topics have been and will continue to be hashed out elsewhere. If Genig, right or wrong, found his conscience unable to bear Missouri’s liturgical disarray and our refusal to commune those who cannot examine themselves (1 Cor 11:28), then it is certainly understandable that he would go his own way. Better to live according to the conscience than serve as a pastor in a confession in which one no longer believes.

In my view, however, the chief reason for Genig’s departure for Orthodoxy, or at least its chief result, seems ultimately to have been a change in doctrine. “In Orthodoxy,” he writes, “God is mercy. God is not an angry judge, nor is he wrathful. . . . No need for belated commentary on various theories of the atonement, for no single theory accurately conveys the reality.” The implication is that in Lutheranism, God is wrath, or at least wrathful, and any theory of the atonement seeking to reconcile God’s justice and wrath with His mercy and love, such as that espoused by St. Paul in Romans 3:21–26 and 5:6–21, is a sad doctrinal construct that lacks the vitality and vigor of Orthodoxy, which, as we are told, is not a system of doctrine but a way of life. Though not phrased as boldly, this is the same leap as John Fenton, who explained his departure for Orthodoxy in terms of a doctrinal change: “I am convinced that the Book of Concord contains defective or deficient doctrines not in accord with the faith of the apostles. In simple terms, these deficiencies include . . . the notion that Jesus died to appease His Father’s wrath.” In these statements we learn from two different converts to Orthodoxy that Lutheranism’s problem is not merely deficient practice, but fundamental doctrinal error.

But that “error” defines us as Lutherans: the belief that in Christ God is both just and merciful, just by punishing the sin of the world through the death of His innocent Son and merciful by freely bestowing His Son’s innocence upon a world that had merited death and hell. Take this away and you’ve taken away Lutheranism, at least in any sort of confessional sense. Genig has not ceased to be Lutheran by severing his connection with a fellowship struggling to live up to its own ideals; he has ceased to be Lutheran by ceasing to believe what Lutherans by definition believe.

Patriarch Jeremiah II

It is this more than anything else that gives the lie to Genig’s contention that Eastern Orthodoxy is the natural culmination of Lutheranism, the true “home” for those of us who claim theological descent from Luther’s Reformation. As Genig writes, “Not only do I believe that the fullness of life is found in Holy Orthodoxy, but I also believe that, in a unique way, this is, in part, the life the Lutheran reformers were after.” In other words, Luther and his colleagues were not struggling to cleanse the Roman church of her errors or to unearth the apostolic faith that had become encrusted with centuries of superstition and false doctrine. They were, in fact, struggling to become Eastern Orthodox whether they knew it or not! Genig finds this reflected in the fact that second-generation Lutheran theologians wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople seeking a rapprochement. “From the earliest days of the Reformation,” he writes, “the Lutherans sought theological affirmation from the Orthodox Church (and not vice versa), in no small part because they viewed the Orthodox Church as holding unswervingly to the faith of the apostles. The Orthodox were, very simply, the Church.”

One wonders, then, why there is still a Lutheran Church. Surely if the first Lutherans had intended to find shelter under the wings of the Orthodox Church, if they had viewed the Orthodox as “very simply, the Church,” then they would have asked Patriarch Jeremiah II what was necessary for them to do and believe in order to become Orthodox, then changed their teaching and practice accordingly. The Lutheran Church would have been absorbed into the Orthodox Church, her confession renounced.

But that is very different from what in fact happened. Yes, from the beginning the Lutherans acknowledged and respected the Orthodox. Philipp Melancththon in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession appealed to the practice of the Greek Church in his argument for both kinds in the Sacrament (XXII.4), against private masses (XXIV.6), and against a sacrificial understanding of the Lord’s Supper (XXIV.93). Martin Luther in the Smalcald Articles pointed to the Greek Christians as evidence that the Christian Church can exist without a pope (II.IV.4). But this hardly constitutes a recognition of the Orthodox Church as being “very simply, the Church.” Furthermore, when communication was struck up between the Lutheran West and the Greek East, the first move was made by Patriarch Joasaph II, who out of curiosity sent an emissary in 1558–60 to investigate the Lutherans. Melanchthon, having developed a friendship with this emissary, prepared a Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession and attempted to send it to Constantinople, but a correspondence never materialized. It was not until the next generation that communication with Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople was successfully spearheaded by Jacob Andreae, a major contributor to the Formula of Concord.1 The correspondence was cordial, but when both sides realized that they had fundamental disagreements, they politely declined to continue discussion.

So why didn’t the Lutherans just become Orthodox? According to Genig, the Reformers wrote to Constantinople seeking the affirmation of Patriarch Jeremiah II. In fact, however, they wrote to him in hopes that he would prove to be a Lutheran! They were looking for the Orthodox to accept and subscribe the Augsburg Confession. This is hardly the posture of a fellowship seeking affirmation from those who are “very simply, the Church.”

The Lutherans insisted upon Scripture as the sole judge in disagreements, and subjected the Orthodox to the same rule: “There is, indeed, no more sure, nor truer, nor better standard rule for judging all dogmas, all institutes, and usages of faith and human traditions and works, than the Word of the Almighty God of All; the Word, which has been revealed to the human race by the Prophets and Christ and the Apostles and written in the Old and New Testaments for the benefit and the salvation of the entire Church.”2 The Lutheran insistence upon judging all teachers by Scripture led Jeremiah to end the correspondence, writing to the Lutherans, “We request that from henceforth you do not cause us more grief, nor write to us on the same subject if you should wish to treat these luminaries and theologians of the Church in a different manner. You honor and exalt them in words, but you reject them in deeds. For you try to prove our weapons which are their holy and divine discourses as unsuitable.”3 For agreement between Lutherans and Orthodox to take place, either the Lutherans will have to forfeit Scripture as sole rule and norm for Christian teaching, or the Orthodox will have to acknowledge the authority of Scripture over and above the other authorities of their Sacred Tradition. Until that happens, the Lutheran Church is perfectly content to continue submitting to the Word of God, whether the Orthodox join them in that submission or not. We would welcome the Orthodox “home” to the Scriptures, but we do not feel compelled to seek out a home that depends on any authority outside the written Word of God.

What, then, of Genig’s claim that he has “done what the earliest Lutherans had hoped to do”? The earliest Lutherans did not hope to become Orthodox. They were confident in their own orthodoxy, ready to give an account of their teaching before the dread judgment seat of Christ. If anything, they hoped the Orthodox would become Lutheran, that is to say, recognize the Lutheran Confession as right and true, in agreement with Holy Scripture.

Rev. Christopher Neuendorf

Has Genig fulfilled that hope? Certainly not. Instead, he changed his confession to match the Orthodox Church, irrespective of that confession’s agreement or disagreement with Scripture. Whatever Genig may claim, whatever his conscience has compelled him to do, he may not claim solidarity with “the earliest Lutherans.” They did not “come home” to the Orthodox Church because, by virtue of their total submission to the Holy Scriptures, they were already home in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. And we who share in their confession are home in Christ’s Church as well.

I bear no personal animosity toward Joshua Genig. I believe he has followed his conscience, and for that he ought not be condemned. I too followed my conscience years ago, leaving the fellowship of the Orthodox Church and joining myself to a communion that is deeply flawed, constantly struggling, often faithless, but bound together by the one confession that Holy Scripture compels me to claim as my own. I am thankful to be home in the Church of the apostles, the Church that Christ is building upon the rock of the good confession that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, that for our sake He was made sin who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. And if you’re a Lutheran, you can be glad of that too.

Rev. Christopher Neuendorf serves Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Davenport, Iowa.

As an extension of LOGIA, BLOGIA understands itself to be a free conference in the blogosphere. As such, the views expressed on BLOGIA are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of LOGIA’s editorial board or the Luther Academy.

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1. George Mastrontonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tübingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession (Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982), 8–10, 13–15. ↩
2. Augsburg and Constantinople, 110. ↩
3. Augsburg and Constantinople, 306. ↩