“I fear you give your husbands cause for doing this. If you were subject to them and would not clamor back, or especially when they begin to be strangely cruel, if you would not answer back, but be patient, submit and obey them, and with friendly words appease them, you would, of course, not be beaten.”
The following is taken from the Church Postil of Martin Luther. J. N. Lenker, editor and translator, gives this note: “This sermon appeared in 1535 under the title: ‘A Beautiful Christian consolation in all kinds of suffering and trial from the 8th chapter of Romans, with the explanation of the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity. Preached by Dr. Martin Luther.'”
Paragraphs 5-7 of this sermon are excerpted below. It may be read in its entirety here.
Christ does not here teach us to become pious and just through our works, but admonishes those who were already pious and just, that they be merciful like their Father in heaven, so that the heathen may thereby become better, and that thus unbelievers may be kindly enticed to become converted and edified, not only by preaching, but also by the merciful and blameless lives and good conduct of the good and just.
In the same sense St. Paul also teaches in 1 Corinthians 7:13: “And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her, let her not leave [her husband],” as long as he will permit her to remain a Christian. Because it can so happen that the man may be influenced by the virtue of his Christian wife to become converted and say: “I see by my wife, that Christians are good people; therefore I also want to be a Christian.”
Thus we also read of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, who had a strange and wonderful husband, who besides was also a heathen. But what did she do? She so conducted herself toward him that he did her no wrong. Other Christian wives were very much astonished at this, and went to her and complained about their husbands, that they could not do anything to please them, although they were Christians, and yet they were scolded and beaten by them; therefore they questioned her how she treated her husband, who, as every one knew, was not only a wonderful man, but a heathen also, and yet he never beat her.
Such favor they could not expect from their husbands, although they were not heathen, but Christians.
Kindhearted Monica answered them and said:
I fear you give your husbands cause for doing this. If you were subject to them and would not clamor back, or especially when they begin to be strangely cruel, if you would not answer back, but be patient, submit and obey them, and with friendly words appease them, you would, of course, not be beaten. For thus I am accustomed to treat my husband; when my lord scolds, I pray; if he is angry, I avoid him, or return kind words; in this way I have not only put down his anger, but I have also brought him so far that he is converted and has become a Christian.
Behold, the beautiful fruit that followed this conduct, because kind Monica was merciful toward her husband, and did not condemn and judge him. Thus it can often take place, as St. Paul says, that an unbelieving husband or wife may become converted through the one who believes.
Thus, says Christ here, should you Christians also do, because you are children of grace and peace, not of anger and discord, and are also called to inherit the blessing. Therefore you should also bring the blessing among the people, first by your preaching and public confession, and after that also by your good outward conduct, so that when the unbelievers judge and condemn you, treat you unmercifully and rob you, you will be merciful to them, and not avenge yourselves, but give and forgive, and besides help, love and bless them, and speak the best things of them before God and the world; that they may also observe by your good conduct that you are pious and blameless people, who do not only suffer evil, but also return good for evil. By this you will obtain a good name among the heathen, and be estimable and honorable in my sight, who art your Lord and God.
So far Dr. Luther.
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The following is a complete transcript of an Issues, Etc. interview with the late great Kurt Marquart (d. September 19, 2006) on the topic of Eastern Orthodoxy. The interview originally aired on September 3, 2000.
This transcript was done manually back in 2015 by a family member of a friend. If you see any typographical errors, please let me know in the comments. Enjoy.
Todd Wilken: Greetings and welcome to Issues, Etc. I’m Todd Wilken. I’m sitting in for Don Matzat; he has the day off. Are you one of those evangelicals who’s plain burned out? Burned out with the shallow theology, tired of singing “Shine, Jesus, Shine” every Sunday, tired of praise choruses and sermons that have a lot to do with your everyday life, but very little to do with eternal life? Are you just burned out with evangelicalism in general? What’s the answer? Go back to Rome? Maybe even farther—Constantinople. You know, there are a lot of evangelicals who have opted to return to Eastern Orthodoxy, and they find there theological substance, a worship life that is not disconnected from the worship life of the Church in ancient times; they find there things that intrigue them, and a certain mystical attraction as well.
We’re gonna talk about Eastern Orthodoxy in this hour of Issues, Etc. My guest in this hour, Professor Kurt Marquart, is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Welcome back to Issues, Etc., Professor Marquart.
Kurt Marquart: Thank you; good evening. How are you?
TW: I’m doing very well. What exactly is Eastern Orthodoxy? Could you give us a nutshell description?
KM: Well, Eastern Orthodoxy are the churches of the Christian East that— there are about nine national churches and several patriarchates, the largest of which is the Russian Orthodox Church.
TW: So when we use the term “Orthodoxy,” we are talking about a unified— and I know they’re going to hate to hear this— but we’re talking about, in a sense, a denomination or a communion, like the Anglican communion?
KM: Yes, it is a communion, but consisting of several independent churches, canonically independent, but they recognize the Patriarch of Constantinople as a kind of symbolical head.
TW: On the big issues— justification, the sacraments, the major doctrines of the Christian faith— can we say that there is a unity there in Orthodoxy as well? We can speak about them monolithically with regard to those issues?
KM: Well, I think it depends on whether the Orthodox theologian in question has been influenced by contemporary studies or not, very much as in other denominations, and the very traditionally minded unfortunately have inherited a kind of Roman Catholic polemical view of the Reformation, but the more, the better educated of the Eastern theologians will have a more sophisticated view of the matter.
TW: Walk us through some of the history of the East-West split in Christendom to find out the origins of this split.
KM: Yes. The main division, of course, the famous one, took place in 1054, with the mutual excommunications by Constantinople and Rome. And then the churches have walked side by side these last thousand years. There has been, for example, the Council of Florence, before the Reformation, which united the two churches, but the Russian Church, for example, strongly rejected it, as did some others, and therefore that union failed to produce a lasting result.
TW: So since 1054— and that’s a long time, Dr. Marquart— then, we have had an essential divide in the Church between East and West?
KM: Yes.
TW: Is it a theological divide as well as one of history?
KM: Well, the theological differences grew— grew, I think, in the course of time, because in the West, Scholasticism developed, and the East never quite got hold of that; their theology was never quite as precisely quantified as Western Scholastic theology.
Evangelical Eastern Exodus
TW: So why are many evangelicals— and I think in particular of Frankie Schaeffer, he’s the son of the famous Christian apologist— why are evangelicals like him enamored with Orthodoxy, even, in his case, converting to Orthodoxy?
KM: Yes, and not only evangelicals, but Pentecostalists; I’ve heard of one man in California who had fourteen different congregations—they all gave up hand-waving for icons and incense, and so on, and it’s attractive to many people. I think people see in Eastern Orthodoxy a lost dimension of the historic Church. It appeals to— well, it appeals to some very good senses, but it also can be a kind of romantic evasion of harder issues.
TW: Now, that surprises me for you to mention Pentecostals going Orthodox all of a sudden. I wonder— you said “giving up hand-waving for icons and incense”—
KM: Yes, yes.
TW: Do you think there might also be, along with the romantic infatuation, a certain— what?— a certain mystical connection between something like Pentecostalism and Orthodoxy that would make the transition easier in that case?
KM: Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know it means exchanging one very subjective, individualistic mysticism for a much more corporate, historical one, which appeals to the romantic imagination.
TW: Do you think that it is simply because a lot of evangelicals are tired of a bankrupt theology, a vacuous content in preaching and in music, a worship life that has gone basically the way of the world, whereas Orthodoxy has remained in many ways a culture unto itself?
KM: Well, yes, I think an important document here is the Chicago statement of, I think, 1977, where quite a number of evangelical leaders drew attention to the great weakness and shortcomings of so-called evangelical worship, and they lamented the absence of a genuinely sacramental churchly dimension and lamented the superficial nature of this sort of saccharine, sweet, sugary nature of it, and ten years later, two thousand evangelicals en masse joined the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Church on dissent. But that was a famous Chicago call, issued from Chicago.
TW: Does it have something to do also with a view of history and Church history? People longing to connect with a church that does not ignore history before its own personal congregation’s founding or before I was born?
KM: Yes, I think that is the appeal. It gives the impression of continuity, unbroken continuity with Christian antiquity.
Jaroslav Pelikan
TW: So then, how do we account for a prominent Lutheran like Jaroslav Pelikan, who many people may be familiar with as an editor of a greater part of Luther’s works in English— how do we account for someone who— he was not fleeing a vacuous theology, there is a definite connection to history in the Lutheran tradition, the theology is substantive— why would someone like Jaroslav Pelikan go East?
KM: Well, it’s hard to enter into individual minds here, but given, the, um, his— remember, Pelikan, in particular, I don’t know how typical he would be among all the converts— but Pelikan began as a kind of bright Missouri Synod— he was called a wunderkind, marvel— one of the marvel-children in the Missouri Synod— but he spent his life criticizing and lambasting the foundations of orthodox Lutheranism, and in the end, I think he saw the bankruptcy, but I think he escaped into mystical vapors and incense.
TW: Do you think his, the attraction there for him was— well, let’s stay away from Pelikan in particular— do you think the attraction for some Lutherans to Orthodoxy is one that you mentioned before, kind of a romantic infatuation with things Orthodox?
KM: Yes, I think it’s that, and I think the disillusionment with how Luther’s doctrine of the priesthood of all believers has become interpreted as a kind of general democratic mob-rule principle, that whatever the majority wants, the majority gets. And people disillusioned with that can easily jump into the arms of authoritarian Orthodoxy.
TW: And we would be one hundred percent with someone who would be disillusioned with mob rule.
KM: Yes. But the solution is not this mystical autocracy which you find in the East.
TW: I was— go ahead.
KM: I was just going to say, among the less well known in the West and less attractive features of Orthodoxy, I myself— I greatly love the Eastern liturgy. A great treasure is there from which all churches have profited and can profit. However, in practical terms, the notion of spiritual authority as understood in the East leads to things like the existence, for example, in Kiev, in Ukraine, of three different Orthodox patriarchs, each claiming to be the rightful patriarch of Kiev. I think one was recently murdered about three years ago. I don’t know if he has been replaced. And it is considered by some, I think those who follow the patriarch of Moscow, that his rivals are not truly connected to that historic body and therefore are grace-less—their sacraments offer no grace. Hence you have the expression, “a grace-less church.” Just because you’re connected with the wrong bureaucracy, you have no sacraments and no grace. I mean, this is horrendous, really.
TW: Now that’s something we’re gonna have to revisit a little later in this conversation when we talk about the particular differences between Orthodoxy and Reformation theology. I was watching National Public Radio— listening to National Public Radio recently, this was a couple of years ago, and there was a feature story on American evangelicals returning to Orthodoxy, and the growth of the American Orthodox Church here in America, and the liturgy that they returned to—some of them had never in all of their Christian lives seen a church service conducted in this way. When we come back from the break, Dr.— Pastor— sorry, Professor Marquart— I always get it wrong when there’s no “Dr.” on the front of the name— when we come back from this break, Professor Marquart, I would like you to describe as accurately but as briefly as possible what the average Christian might see if they walked into a Sunday morning service at an Orthodox church. You talk about that liturgy; how would it appear to us, how would it appear distinct from what most Christians are familiar with?
We’re talking with Professor Kurt Marquart; he’s Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, talking about Eastern Orthodoxy, its allure, and where does it stand on the big issues, like justification, the sacraments? What role do icons play in the piety of the Orthodox? These are some of the questions we’re going to be answering in the minutes ahead. Professor Kurt Marquart is my guest; we’ll be right back.
Orthodox Worship
TW: Welcome back to Issues, Etc. I’m Todd Wilken. I’m sitting in for Don Matzat; he has the day off. Professor Kurt Marquart is my guest. We’re talking about Eastern Orthodoxy. Professor Marquart, I’ve given you a little time to think about it—what would I see if I attended an Orthodox church on a Sunday morning?
KM: First of all, you’d be impressed by the icons— the overwhelming impression of “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven”— you’d have visual reminders of that surrounding you. You’d have incense, and you’d have magnificent chanting— I’m thinking of the Russian liturgy, which I think is more magnificent than the Greek. And you could only describe that sound as otherworldly, as transcendent. I remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn remarking once that he remembers being taken to a church, to a liturgy, when he was a young child, in the Soviet days, when it was forbidden, of course, and says, he had made— the celestial beauty of the singing made such a deep impression on him that no amount of intellectual argument later or personal suffering were able to wipe it out. And you wonder how many children would be impressed by the kind of clap-trap and popular-entertainment-seeking that is practiced in so-called “happy-clappy” churches. Another thing is, the story has it that the monastery, I think it’s Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, which is the headquarters of a very conservative branch of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the story that I heard was that they got the land by, or much of their money, from an American lady who happened to drive by, happened to stop in and attend the matins of the monks. And she said she immediately realized this is the only place in America where people pray. And she left all her wealth to that monastery.
TW: So it really does strike an impression on the observer.
KM: Yes, yes, it certainly would.
TW: I was at an Orthodox funeral about four or five years ago, and I remember all the things you mentioned—the incense, the icons, I remember a definite sense of transcendence—
KM: Yes.
TW: — about the worship service. I also remember a Kyrie, the “Lord have mercy,” that was chanted responsively, that took twenty full minutes. Is it an ornate liturgy— overly ornate liturgy?
KM: Well, it depends on whether it’s a high festival or not. Sometimes, for example, the “Alleluia” is repeated— there’s a story of an inexperienced Russian deacon who, in Moscow, was helping at a service, and suddenly he didn’t realize— and this was not to be repeated, it was his own direction— and he chanted “Alleluia forty times”— that was for a high festival. But normally it’s not recited that often. And of course in the Russian you have the magnificent Gospodi Pomilui, which is the equivalent of the Greek “Lord have mercy.”
TW: Would you think that the average Christian would have a hard time following what was going on on a Sunday morning in an Orthodox church?
KM: Well, you’d have a difficult time following it intellectually, yes. Even the Russian-speaking person would not quite follow, would not understand word for word the old Slavonic liturgy because the word usage is quite old.
Orthodoxy and Justification
TW: What does Orthodoxy teach with regard to the heart and soul of the Christian faith, justification?
KM: Well, unfortunately on justification, the Orthodox Church was mainly absent twice in the history of the Church when these great matters were debated and settled: once when St. Augustine debated with Pelagius, and especially North Africa took a very clear stand, which Rome later supported, against Pelagianism, the idea of self-salvation, or that you don’t really need much grace. And then a thousand years later, when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther had to fight the same battles over again, in a more subtle way, again the East was absent from that discussion.
TW: So if they missed out on the major debates that took place in the Western Church on justification, what view of justification does Orthodoxy hold?
KM: Well, one interesting thing is that the Orthodox writers generally don’t like St. Augustine. They refuse to call him “saint.” They usually refer to him as “blessed,” which means only local recognition rather than a global one. And they think that Augustine exaggerated the unique necessity of grace. Their theology, however, is not as exactly worked out as the Roman, and so it tends to make the impression of imprecision. But basically their idea is that, well, they like to use the term “deification.” Man by divine grace participates in the divine energies of God and so is led to be healed from the consequences of the Fall.
TW: Now put that into English that we can all understand.
KM: [laughs] Yes, it’s not so easy. But the thing is, according to Orthodoxy, the Fall did not, as we biblical Christians believe, really destroy man’s spiritual image of God. According to Orthodoxy, they usually distinguish the image of God and the likeness of God. And the image of God includes free will and can never be lost without human nature itself being lost. So there’s an in-built Pelagianism at the heart of Eastern Orthodoxy that holds that man, even in the Fall, did not lose his spiritual free will. Therefore the Fall— in the Fall, man did not experience spiritual dying, as St. Paul says, but weakening, sickening, and that sort of thing. So he needs the reviving but not resurrection.
TW: So, justification, according to Orthodoxy, would be akin to healing rather than to resurrection?
KM: Yes. Quite so. And there is a residual free will which can and must cooperate with God’s free grace in this whole process.
TW: What is the correct view? What would— what does Scripture actually teach on justification by contrast with the Orthodox view?
KM: Well, of course, according to Holy Scripture, which was so clearly recaptured by the Reformation, St. Paul clearly teaches that we are bankrupt after the Fall, and therefore we need— we are in a state of spiritual death, Ephesians 2, and need to be made alive. Justification is the forgiveness of sins received, entirely earned by Christ and entirely received by faith alone.
TW: So then, apart from the more exact formulation of the Roman Church, and the less exact formulation of the Orthodox Church, is there a real difference on justification between Rome and Constantinople?
KM: No, I don’t think there is. Substantively, Rome and Constantinople are very much alike in a number of things, including this tragic practice of what I call a Christian occultism, namely the invocation of the Blessed Virgin and other saints. And even, for example, in the Eastern liturgy, you can hear something which I don’t think the West since the Reformation puts quite that crassly, but the Russian pontifical liturgy says, “Presviataya Bogoroditse, spasi nas,” which means, “Holy Mother of God, save us.”
TW: So, Mary’s not only invoked for intercession, she’s invoked for salvation.
KM: Well, that is a recited liturgical exclamation. But it depends on the degree of theological sophistication and education as to how people understand that, I suppose.
TW: Is this why Orthodoxy can appeal to people of all different stripes? You mentioned Pentecostals, general evangelicals, Lutherans— because their theological statements are less precisely formulated, you can almost fit your theology into it, regardless of where you come from?
KM: Well, just listening to you say that, it sort of strikes me, but I think it would appeal to the person, the whole postmodern mindset where mystical enactment or ritual enactment is more important than any kind of theological definition. So you flee from intellectual clarity to mystical obfuscation. That’s part of it, I think.
TW: I distinctly remember having a conversation with a fellow pastor friend of mine on Orthodoxy and justification, and we read two statements. One of us— I, I believed the statement sounded very much like the Council of Trent, and he believed it sounded very much like the Lutheran Confessions. And the sad thing was, the statement was general enough it probably could have been read both ways.
KM: Yes.
TW: We’re trying to answer in this hour how it is that we’re supposed to read that key question of justification according to Orthodoxy. So— go ahead, Doctor.
KM: I just was going to say, there is a book, you know, recording the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue held in North America, and I think it’s called Salvation Today. And there you find quite clearly delineated the basic differences between the Lutheran-Pauline and, we believe also Johannine, understanding of justification as a free gift, and the Orthodox understanding that it’s basically equivalent to sanctification or growth in love and good works.
Justification and Theosis
TW: This is not a small question, the question of justification. This is the question. We’re talking about Eastern Orthodoxy in this hour. Professor Kurt Marquart is my guest. You mentioned before that central to the doctrine of justification among the Orthodox is this notion of “participating in the divine life.” Is it called theosis, am I correct on that?
KM: Yes, theosis, or deification, in English.
TW: Now, is there, is this a view that can be supported from Scripture? Is it something that the Western Church has completely ignored? Or is it a particular error of the Orthodox?
KM: No, it all depends on how you define the word. But the basic text, the clearest text is in 1 Peter 1:4 [he meant 2 Peter 1:4], where we are partakers, said to be partakers of the very divine nature, participants of the very divine nature. It’s quite a remarkable thing in all the ancient Fathers, consider that as culminating here on earth in the reception of the Holy Eucharist or the Lord’s own body and blood.
TW: So, rightly understood, Christians of the non-Orthodox persuasion could hold to a similar view of theosis.
KM: They must if they follow the Holy Scripture. But the term has sort of fallen into disuse in the West. But there was a very— may I tell you a surprising story? It surprised me at the time. There was an interesting dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Lutheran Church of Finland in Kiev in 1977. And the chief lecturer on the Lutheran side was a Professor Mannermaa of the University of Helsinki in Finland. And he brought out the quite remarkable fact which most of us have quite forgotten, that theosis or deification is very prominent in the writings of Martin Luther. Now who would have suspected that? And moreover, Mannermaa points out that for him— that for Luther— he meant it in a very different way from the standard Orthodox view, and for him, justification can be put in those terms.
TW: So how would Luther have understood theosis, then?
KM: Here’s the difference. For Luther, theosis or deification means this: The Lord Jesus Christ is God and man in one person. In Him, our humanity is absolutely united with God in one person. And through His humanity, by faith, our humanity participates in that. So by sharing in Christ by faith, we participate in the fullness of God. So here it is purely a gift. The famous saying, the famous statement of Luther in the Galatians commentary, where he said that “in faith itself, Christ is present.” In other words, that Christ is not merely— that the object of faith is not merely an idea, a specter, some spectral concept, but Christ Himself. And faith grabs hold of Christ, and thereby, God. And therefore justification is theosis. That is, the sinner, who has nothing in himself, by faith receives the righteousness of Christ and is united with Him.
TW: So how does Orthodoxy then view the sacraments?
KM: Well, could you first contrast that with standard Orthodox presentation, for example, as you have it in Gregory of Palamas, in the fourteenth century. For him, deification is rather the result of an ascetic exercise. And you have monks and other holy persons reciting the “Jesus Prayer”, breathing in a certain way, and if you rightly, by this ascetic exercise, unite yourself with God, then at the end you may glimpse with your physical eyes the uncreated light of God. So it’s a very different view. It’s a difference between God coming down and man going up.
TW: So, the Orthodox view, with man would be that man participates in the divine life by his own efforts, at least in part.
KM: Well, they would never say that. They would say that it’s a gift of grace. But remember, the free human will must cooperate in all that. And also, Gregory Palamas makes a special point of saying that it’s not really the nature of God, it’s not the being of God, but only His energies with which we’re united. And in the Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue, it’s very interesting that the Orthodox representative makes a special point of that, that they don’t accept the Petrine text I’ve just quoted, “partakers of the very divine nature.” They’re embarrassed by that; they say we really participate only in the divine energies, but the nature is beyond any participation. So I think there’s a touch of Platonism in that.
Listener Questions & Comments
TW: Let’s get to the sacraments in a minute here. First, let’s take a phone call from Bill, who’s listening in Phoenix, on KGCB. Bill, welcome to the show.
Bill: Yeah, how you doing, interesting show. Enjoying it.
TW: You got a question, Bill?
Bill: Yeah, it was a— I read a Eastern Orthodox paper last year, and I think Frankie Schaffer was one of the editors, I can’t remember the name of it. But anyway, in an editorial they talked about some of the differences between Eastern Orthodox and evangelicalism, and one of the areas they mentioned was, they don’t hold to Sola Scriptura, and I just wondered if the professor would comment on that.
TW: Good question, Bill. Thanks for the call. Professor Marquart?
KM: Yes, quite right. They hold, like Rome, to the authority also of Holy Tradition, but unlike Rome, “tradition” is regarded by the Eastern Church of consisting basically of the decisions of the seven ecumenical councils. And of course, the Church Fathers, the ancient Fathers are understood as in harmony with that.
TW: Is it a similar view to that of Rome of infallibility of Church tradition, if it comes from the seven ecumenical heads?
KM: Well, yes, ecumenical councils are as such infallible, but there is no doctrine of any person— certainly there’s no infallibility of the Patriarch of Constantinople, one of whom in fact became a Calvinist, and was killed for his troubles.
TW: The phone number, 1-800-730-2727. Let’s talk to Deanna. She listens in Minneapolis on KKMS. Hi, Deanna.
Deanna: Hi. I have a confusion here about what you’re saying about justification. I am Greek Orthodox and have been brought up in the Greek Orthodox Church all my life, and from what I’ve learned from going to church is that we are saved through grace.
TW: OK, and you’re hearing something different here.
Deanna: Right.
TW: OK, Professor Marquart.
KM: Yes; the word “grace” is a longsuffering member of our theological vocabulary. You may remember the whole Reformation turned on the meaning of the word “grace.” You can say very similar things about grace and mean quite opposite things by it depending on what you mean by “grace.” Also Rome, for example, is willing to say “grace alone.” But Rome, as also Constantinople, thinks of grace— and Rome here in a worse way— but they think of grace as a kind of substance, spiritual force, etc., which is poured into man, and when man by his free will makes use of this grace, then in that way salvation is accomplished.
TW: So one could say, “You are saved by grace,” but mean “grace— which includes man’s active and willing participation.”
KM: Yes; grace essentially as a stimulant to Christian behavior. And grace as a kind of divine electricity, the divine energies which stimulate us to produce love and good works.
TW: Professor Marquart, if you were going to advise Diana to go back to her priest, and to ask him a question to clarify this word “grace,” what would that question be?
KM: Well, I don’t know about a question, but I’d suggest two Bible texts particularly that define how St. Paul uses the term “saving grace.” The term “grace” can be used in the sense of a gift of grace. But when Paul uses “saving grace,” for example in Romans 4, it’s quite clear that there grace means simply the divine attitude of forgiving kindness. And also in Romans 11:6, where it says, “If by grace, then no longer by works, otherwise grace is no more grace.” So grace is defined there as God’s attitude, not as some power poured into us, by which we then produce good works.
TW: Diana, go back and ask your priest what he means by “grace.” Ask him if he means, is it the favorable disposition of God toward us in Jesus Christ? Or does it include anything in us whatsoever? See what his answer is to that question; it may clear it up for you. Thanks for the call.
KM: May I add something to that?
TW: Please.
KM: Is that, you find, just as among Roman Catholic clergy, you find also many priests who are quite open to evangelical, Reformation interpretations of things, so you may find a wide variety of individual interpretations, but that is not the official position of the Eastern Church as such.
On the Sacraments
TW: What is the official position of the Eastern Church on the sacraments?
KM: Well, technically the official position is that of the seven ecumenical councils. However, through the Middle Ages, the tradition of seven sacraments has been accepted by the Eastern Church. Very much like that of the Roman Church, except that, instead of confirmation, you have a sacrament of anointing, chrismation, which is administered at baptism.
TW: So, you would have baptism, you would have chrismation, you would have the Lord’s Supper, you would have marriage, ordination, and extreme unction?
KM: They have confession.
TW: And confession, OK.
KM: The chrismation, that would be their version of extreme unction [Marquart misspeaks here and corrects himself later in a brief exchange with a caller].
TW: So it’s roughly parallel to that of Rome. Do they hold similar views to the sacraments, in particular the sacrament of the Mass? Do they hold similar views about the Lord’s Supper?
KM: Well, the one good thing is that the Eastern Church, as well as Roman Catholicism, holds to the true presence of the Lord’s body and blood in the Eucharist. But then in the Middle Ages, especially under the— well, after the Middle Ages, as a result of the Counter-Reformation, much of the Eastern theological literature came to reflect ideas of transubstantiation. But understand that some modern Eastern theologians are moving away from that. The Lutheran theologian Chemnitz, writing at the end of the sixteenth century, points out that we, too, in the Reformation, we accept the old Greek term metabole, that is “change”— there is a change in the Sacrament, but not a change as though the bread changes into body, but change that before the consecration it is only one thing, and after the consecration, when the word of God is added, then you have both an earthly element, the bread and the wine, and heavenly elements, the Lord’s body and blood— the analogy of the Incarnation.
The Place of Icons
TW: Professor Marquart, I was at this Orthodox funeral I told you about, and the icons there were huge. There were full-sized panels that stood at the front of the church. I really couldn’t even identify every person on each panel. But they seemed to have a prominent place in the worship. What is that place?
KM: Well, ikon is basically Greek for “image,” and the peculiar nature of the typical Eastern icon is that, unlike Western liturgical art, or Western ecclesiastical art, it does not simply mean to represent, say, a person or an event, but it means also to represent its spiritual significance. And therein, to my mind, lies a great strength of the icon. The icon will never simply repeat, will never give simply a photograph-like reproduction of some saint. It’ll— by the nimbus and so on— it’ll seek to indicate the spiritual meaning and the spiritual personhood and the spiritual significance of the event. And I think therein lies a certain defense against secularization. When you think of ecclesiastical art in the West, you think of Raphael and those magnificent paintings of the Middle Ages. But they were basically paintings of beautiful bodies— there’s no spiritual significance to them. I think the advantage of icons is that they avoid that secularization.
TW: Shouldn’t all church art do that? Seek to preach a sermon, not just represent a figure?
KM: I think so. But when you look at some of the saccharine productions in our Protestant church art, one could only find that the Eastern icon has more substance to it.
TW: But how have icons been abused in the East?
KM: Well, the abuse is— and largely, I think, from misunderstanding in popular superstition— that the spiritual power of the icon has been transferred to the actual physical object. I remember, for example, years ago in New York, there was a visiting miracle-working icon of the Mother of God being circulated, and one dear lady who was suffering from advanced cancer had that icon brought to her and put in bed with her, with the idea of helping to cure her. So I think that is a superstitious use. But it depends again on the degree of spiritual and theological enlightenment of the individual, how the thing is regarded.
TW: And those abuses wouldn’t fall within the teaching of Orthodoxy per se, but more within the piety of the faithful.
KM: Yes, practical piety, as you find also in Roman Catholic countries, can be very far removed from official dogma.
Free Will
TW: Let’s go back to the phones. Phil is listening in Chicago on WYLL. Hi, Phil.
Phil: Hi! Yes, this is Phil. I’m an Orthodox Christian who became Orthodox, amongst other things, through reading the Lutheran Cyclopedia, back, uh, the 1925 edition, I think. Basically, I think there’s been some misrepresentation here. For instance, doctrine of sacraments, the issue of anointing the sick is different from chrismation. Chrismation is basically considered the sacramental act of receiving the Holy Spirit, as baptism is the sacramental act of becoming a Christian.
KM: Yes, I’m sorry—
Phil: These two are distinct sacraments, they use different oil.
TW: OK, Phil—
Phil: Also—
TW: Phil, what about the issue of grace, Phil? We had a previous caller, an Orthodox caller—
Phil: Right. We don’t believe in original guilt, and also, we believe in the power of the Gospel, that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation, not a preexisting order of election which chooses individuals.
TW: Does man have a free will to make, or to cooperate with God’s grace?
Phil: Man can respond positively or negatively. Consider the parable of the soils, sometimes called the parable of the sower. The life principle is entirely in the seed. Soil is dead by itself; it can’t grow anything by itself. But the issue of whether the seed sprouts and produces a crop depends on the disposition of the soil.
TW: So man has a capacity to make a decision to accept Jesus, in some sense.
Phil: Right. And Pelagius is not known as “St. Pelagius”; he was associated— he’s considered a condemned heretic, as is his associate Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople— also a condemned heretic.
TW: OK, Phil, let’s get Professor Marquart’s response. Professor Marquart?
KM: Yes, first of all, on the chrismation, of course, I did initially say that chrismation is really the counterpart of Western confirmation. And you’re quite right, the— but instead of extreme unction there is anointing of the sick, and Rome, after Vatican II, is returning to that view as well.
TW: What about the issue of cooperation with grace?
KM: Well, there, yes, of course, that is the standard Eastern view, that man never lost his capacity of free decision, and had he done so, he would have lost human nature and would have ceased to be human. And that’s fundamentally wrong; that’s contradictory to the Pauline teaching.
TW: Not only wrong in a theoretical sense, but it does violence to the doctrine of justification as Paul presents it, doesn’t it?
KM: Yes, because it makes it no longer a gift of life to the dead, but makes it something in which we have a part.
TW: Let’s talk to Pete in Minneapolis. He’s listening on KKMS. Hi, Pete.
Pete: Yeah, very interesting. There’s a small Russian Orthodox church in our neighborhood that I’ve gone to on occasion, especially for their festivals, and it’s just as you described earlier, Professor, the singing is absolutely remarkable, and you feel you’re in— I feel that I was in a sacred space. And my comment is that so much of modern Christianity is— of Protestant Christianity— is becoming a very ordinary kind of space. It’s like you’re going to a railway station or a school or something. Could you comment on that?
TW: Thank you, Pete. I don’t think you’re going to find any disagreement on that criticism of modern evangelicalism, even where it finds itself among Lutherans, with Professor Marquart, are we?
KM: No, but unfortunately, there are some mindless Lutherans who are aping this headlong rush into pedestrian nonsense, and so it’s good to hear again what our caller is reminding us. Do you know that when Russia became Christian a thousand years ago, virtually exactly a thousand years before Communism collapsed, the commission that had been sent by Prince Vladimir reported that they had gone to see very many interesting things, including Rome and Islam and Judaism; “But,” the report says, “when we got to Constantinople, to the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, suddenly we no longer knew whether we were in heaven or on earth.” And that is a strength of the old Eastern liturgy. It does maintain the sense that in the liturgy, when we participate in the mystery of the Lord Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, we are in fact in heaven.
TW: OK, so evangelicals of all stripes are burnt out. They’re burnt out with a worship that seems as mundane as going to the shopping mall. They’re burnt out with songs that have little detectable theology, sermons with less detectable theology, and many of them are flocking to Rome or even going so far as Constantinople. Is there another alternative, Professor Marquart?
KM: Well, if only Wittenberg would know it, Wittenberg should be the place to which the spiritual heirs of Geneva would take their first recourse when they get homesick for the old traditions of the Church. But many modern Lutheran churches themselves have forgotten their identity and are also straying from the ways of the Church, and that is deeply tragic.
TW: Professor Marquart, thank you very much for being my guest.
KM: Thank you very much; it was a great pleasure. Thank you.
TW: Professor Kurt Marquart is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. We’ve been talking about Eastern Orthodoxy.
Jesus has founded one Church on earth, a Church that He gathers around His Word and sacraments. We’ve identified in this hour a major difference that exists between those of the East and those of the West, those of the Reformation and those of Orthodoxy, on that issue of justification. Not a small question, folks. Not a minor question, not one that we can simply agree to disagree about, but a question about how you are saved. It is by God’s grace through Jesus Christ alone. I’ll be back next week.
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
[T]he Church simply recognized the books of the New Testament as apostolic. And it is not the Church’s recognition but their apostolic origin which gives these books authority.
A recent X post on the topic of the canon of Scripture caught my eye yesterday and sent me into the archives of an old defunct blog. Enjoy.
From personal email correspondence in 2012 with my most senior friend and mentor, Charles McClean, pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church UAC (LCMS) in Baltimore, MD.
McClean’s comments, reproduced below, were made in response to the oft-voiced contention of those under the papacy and in the Eastern communions that “the Church established the canon”, which contention I had posed to him hypothetically:
[T]he Church simply recognized the books of the New Testament as apostolic. And it is not the Church’s recognition but their apostolic origin which gives these books authority. The New Testament is the written deposit of the apostles’ teaching. The process whereby these books were recognized was untidy and in a sense reaches its completion with the 39th Paschal Letter (so called because it was the letter announcing the date of Easter) of St Athanasius as bishop of Alexandria in 367 in which the great bishop lists the 27 books of the New Testament. He does not see himself as establishing anything or promulgating some new rule or canon for he begins by saying, “Permit me to remind you of what you already know.” And the untidy process can be seen in the citations from the New Testament in the church fathers, the use of the New Testament writings as readings in the Eucharist, and in the rejection of Marcion’s list at Rome in 140 AD.
It is a remarkable fact that the Church of the Augsburg Confession has never authoritatively defined the New Testament canon but has always recognized the distinction between the homologoumena (books everywhere accepted as apostolic) and the anti-legomena (books whose apostolic origin has been questioned). This is a matter of historical fact and so can never be changed. The anti-legomena are Hebrews, James, II Peter, II and III John, Jude, Revelation. Although this theoretical distinction remains in Lutheran teaching, for all practical purposes all 27 books of the New Testament are received as canonical. The late Martin Franzmann of blessed memory (1907-1969) says, “in the last analysis, the church of God can become convinced and remain assured that they are indeed the wellsprings of salvation only by drinking of them.”1
The whole question of the papacy is yet another issue. But even many Roman Catholic scholars now admit that it was not until somewhere in the second century that one can even speak of a bishop of Rome. Until that time the Church of Rome like Corinth seems to have been led by a corporate episcopate or presbytery.
The Word of God creates the Church, the Church does not create (but can only receive) the Word of God. The Church at most recognized the New Testament writings as the apostolic witness to Christ, the Word of the Lord in written form.
Needless to say these are issues which have been endlessly debated for centuries — and the end is not yet.
Bruce Ley, Charles McClean, and yours truly in Oregon, May 2015.
The Word of the Lord Grows: a First Historical Introduction to the New Testament. St Louis: CPH, 1961; p. 295. ↩︎
Picard’s statement is not exactly an “I, Berengarius.” And it should be. If the LCMS Corp were a synod in spirit and in truth, not just in name, that’s more or less what would be required.
Nothing ever happens.
I was surprised to see yesterday that one of my posts on X has garnished almost seventy-five thousand views (at the time of this writing). Given the subject matter, I’m glad it did.
"I hate the Athanasian Creed. I think it's a terrible creed. You can disagree with me, but we're gonna put that aside . . . "
Joel Picard, pastor of Trinity Lutheran (LCMS) in Knoxville, Iowa.
— The Boniface Group (@bonifacegroup) June 2, 2026
There was a lot of conversation in the comments and some interesting QTs in the first day after the post dropped. During that time I did my small part to make the internet a better place by blocking the tradcath and convertodox scouts who showed up in my mentions. You’re welcome.
The worst comments came from LCMS Lutherans, though. Far and away the worst. Truth be told, I blocked most of them, too. Your time is precious. So is mine. Let’s not waste it.
To be fair, though, plenty of the LCMS commenters were well and rightly disturbed. The camel’s knees are quite clearly quivering ‘neath the load. This was yet one more straw. When the beast’s back breaks, where will the rider roll? That is the question. If our DMs are any indication, there will be more than a few for whom it will be a crash and tumble unto life, peace of conscience, and true freedom in the Gospel, away from the Babylonian captivity1 of the neo-Lutheran parachurch corporations — “synods” falsely so-called.
No, it will not be the majority, but c’est la vie. This fact should not trouble any Christian heart. Expect Gideon’s Ratio to keep applying in these scenarios from now until Christ’s Second Advent. (Postmils keep walking.)
Mr. Picard issued a video apology earlier today. And before we proceed, you can go ahead and arrest your sanctimony and unhand those pearls: I am not a parishioner at his church; we are not on a first-name basis; there is no law dictating the styling by which men in the ministry are to be addressed; and there is nothing dishonoring or dishonorable about the title “Mr.” — I call to witness the papacy, which the neo-Lutherans adore so much, whose priests were still going by the title “Mr.” (“Don,” “Monsieur,” etc.) well into the nineteenth century, “Fr.” being a title for monastic clergy only. Oh no! But my tradlarp fantasy!!
Anyway, here is what Mr. Picard said:
I apologize for anything that I said that was upsetting to anyone in regard to the Athanasian Creed. I had expressed to the congregation that I had served before that I find it rather lengthy and given to some misunderstanding in regard to works righteousness towards the end. That was all that I intended by that. I don’t disagree with the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed, or the Trinity, or anything of that nature, and having led anyone to think so, I apologize.
In the broad sense of the term this is indeed an apology, which is to say, it is an explanation. But it is not one in which repentance plays any sort of part. There is no admission of wrongdoing, not even an “I should not have said that.” By the end of it, the Athanasian Creed is still problematic, and Mr. Picard reserves the right to his contemptuous opinion. It is “lengthy,” you see — heaven forfend that Sunday morning goes eight minutes longer than usual! — and “given to some misunderstanding in regard to works righteousness towards the end.”
That last is really a rather astounding statement, given that the end of the Athanasian Creed is literally a quotation of these words of Our Lord from John 5:
For the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation. (vv. 28-29)
I won’t belabor the point, because it is obvious. In ordinary circumstances, sayings from Holy Writ which are “given to misunderstanding” are elucidated in what is known as a “sermon.”
Suffice it to say, Picard’s statement is not exactly an “I, Berengarius.”2 And it should be. If the LCMS Corp were a synod in spirit and in truth, not just in name, that’s more or less what would be required. Mr. Picard’s new/current congregation would be entitled to — and require — some assurances, and so would the congregations which are in communion with them and therefore him. Dare I say, there would be some penance restitution:
Thus concerning restitution, Gregory says that repentance is false if it does not satisfy those whose property we have taken. For he who still steals does not truly grieve that he has stolen or robbed. For he is a thief or robber, so long as he is the unjust possessor of the property of another. This civil satisfaction is necessary, because it is written: “Let him that stole, steal no more” (Eph. 4:28). Likewise Chrysostom says: “In the heart, contrition; in the mouth, confession; in the work, entire humility.” This amounts to nothing against us. Good works ought to follow repentance; it ought to be repentance, not simulation, but a change of the entire life for the better.3
But now we’re getting into fan-fic — and a pretty low-effort variety, at that, since I am not exactly what you would call a “fan” of the LCMS Corp, in case you have somehow missed this prior to now.
(While we’re on the subject: “‘LCMS, Inc.’ and ‘the LCMS’ are not the same!” is a lamer cope than that gaudy, shimmering monstrosity that you bought at the Almy spring sale. Sell both of them and buy a sword.)
If you, as a member of, e.g., the LCMS Corp “worker” roster, were to publicly make any of the foregoing observations at this point in time (i.e., after the airing of the apology), you would be the one coming under scrutiny, possibly to the nth degree (“de-rostered”), for failing to be properly “loving,” conciliatory, etc. This is one of the reasons why you won’t do it — at least not under your real name.
Likewise, if you as a member of, e.g., an affiliate congregation of the LCMS Corp — a lowly, untonsured4 layman — were to point this out, a pastor would tell on you to your church’s pastor. The latter would sit on you, give you a “now now” Eighth Commandment talk, and maybe even eventually withhold communion from you until you confessed your love for Big Brother. Among other things, your struggle session would be an occasion for Daddy to gently remind you that, as a layman, you really have no business criticizing one of the members of his guild.
Depending on who your pastor is, he might not do all of this immediately. But if pressure came through the pipe and he sensed that his rostered status might eventually be threatened for his “refusal to deal pastorally” with you, you had better believe that he would. This is one of the reasons why you won’t be that guy — at least not under your real name.
Do you believe that your pastor would be an exception? For most men not named “Ryan Turnipseed”, this is Schrödinger’s Quantum Excommunication Cat. Results only exist if the test is taken. If you don’t believe me, ask your dejected mutual who just got his spit-check back from 23andMe.
Thou shalt not tarnish the image of a parachurch company man with something obnoxious like the truth.
That shalt not call the naked Emperor “naked.”
The ability to surf from congregation to congregation like the world’s most heroic travel nurse, giving no explanation beyond “God called me”, is the grain which the rostered ox shall in no wise be deprived of. Everything else — and I mean everything else: your livelihood, your reputation, your health, and above all else your salvation — is of secondary concern at best to the parachurch and the hirelings who manage its franchises, who are, as a rule, too weak to dig and too ashamed to beg.
Remember that. Remember it as our country heads into ever darkening times — dark economically and in more serious ways. Because for as long as the Lord tarries, everything you will see from parachurch corporations like the LCMS is going to confirm it — more and more, and unremittingly. They are going to get worse, and many will be deceived and scandalized. Many will come right up to the edge of the truth, but, their consciences being captivated by false, Romanizing doctrines of the Church and the Ministry, they will recoil, retreat, and return to eating fake steak inside the Matrix. (Not described: how they will fulfill their consideration in this bargain — it may very well involve you.) And their generations, if they have any, will pay an unspeakable cost for this quailing of spirit.
Surely Thou hast appointed judgments to them because of their crafty dealings: Thou hast cast them down when they were lifted up.
How have they become desolate! suddenly they have failed: they have perished because of their iniquity.
As the dream of one awakening, O Lord, in Thy city Thou wilt despise their image.5
Rouse your soul to watch and pray, Christian. From your sleep awaken. Pray that the Lord would rescue you and yours and fortify you with His good gifts and Spirit for however long you must sojourn in the wilderness in the wake of the coming crack-up — and, indeed, that He would do so always.
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
“Therefore, the fanatics are wrong, as well as the gloss in Canon Law, if they criticize Pope Nicolas for having forced Berengar to confess that the true body of Christ is crushed and ground with the teeth.* Would to God that all popes had acted in so Christian a fashion in all other matters as this pope did with Berengar in forcing this confession. For this is undoubtedly the meaning, that he who eats and chews this bread eats and chews that which is the genuine, true body of Christ and not mere, ordinary bread, as Wycliffe teaches. For this bread is truly the body of Christ, just as the dove is the Holy Spirit and the flame is the angel.” (Martin Luther, “Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper,” trans. Robert H. Fischer, LW Vol. 37, Word & Sacrament III, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 1961, 300)
*fn 229: “In 1059 Pope Nicolas II forced Berengar of Tours to confess that ‘after consecration the bread and wine are not only a sacrament but also the true body and blood of Christ, and are sensibly . . . handled and broken by the hands of the priests, and pressed and crushed by the teeth of the faithful, not only sacramentally but in reality. . . .’ The Swiss opponents of Luther sharply denounced this recantation, cf. Zwingli, Commentary. LWZ 3, 210; Clear Instruction. LCC 24, 198 f. Even the early scholastic theologians found that confession subject to criticism, which is reflected in Canon Law, in the Gloss on the Decretum of Gratian III, De Consecratione, dist. II, cap. 42. Corpus Iuris Canonici, I, cols. 1328 f. Berengar accordingly was required in 1079 to make another recantation which has become a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, confessing that ‘the bread and wine placed on the altar are substantially changed into the true and proper and life-giving flesh and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that after consecration they are the true body of Christ. . . . and the true blood of Christ, . . . not only through the sign and power of the sacrament, but in their proper nature and true substance. . . .’ Cf. Roy J. Deferrari (trans.), Heinrich Denzinger’s Sources of Catholic Dogma (St. Louis: Herder, 1957), No. 355. On the whole subject see Sasse, This Is My Body, pp. 82 ff.”
Important history. See also Apology, X: Of the Holy Supper, 54-56, in which it is affirmed that a change which can rightly be called “substantial” (though not “transubstantiation,” nor even “consubstantiation”) occurs in the celebration of the Sacrament. Unfortunately, mistaken notions and silly urban legends have resulted from this, mostly on account of the strange neo-Lutheran inability to walk and chew gum at the same time, together with the usual culprit: their curious desire for the Antichrist’s approval.
“I, Berengarius, believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine that are placed on the altar are through the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of our Redeemer substantially changed into the true and proper life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord; and that after the consecration is the true body of Christ, which was born of the Virgin, as an offering for the salvation of the world hung on the cross, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and (is) the true blood of Christ which flowed from his side; not only through the sign and power of the sacrament but in his proper nature and true substance; as it is set down in this summary and as I read it and you understand it. Thus I believe, and I will not teach any more against this faith. So help me God and this holy Gospel of God.”↩︎
Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XIIb (VI): “Of Confession and Satisfaction,” 72-73. ↩︎
The seminaries are cutting the tonsure much lower on the body these days. And hair is right out — this one is a more permanent pruning. Rumor has it that a particular work of Origen served as an inspiration for the new Mark of the Ministerium. Unfortunately it’s not one that you can track down and read, as in this case the sword was a great deal mightier than the pen. ↩︎
“Rogate” means “pray.” More literally it means “ask,” which is even better, because this reminds us that the essence of prayer in the narrow sense is petition, that is asking.
The Small Catechism:
What is the Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer? Answer: Our Father who art in heaven.
What does this mean? Answer: God would by these words tenderly invite us to believe that He is our true Father, and that we are His true children, so that we may with all boldness and confidence ask Him as dear children ask their dear father.
The Gospel according to St. John:
Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. And in that day ye shall ask Me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (16:22-24)
The Last Sunday of Easter
Just to get this out of the way: Rogate really is the last Sunday of Easter. The following Thursday (May 14 this year) is the Feast of the Ascension. Ascension, not Pentecost, marks the end of the season of Easter. Ascension has its own ten-day season leading up to Pentecost — or Whitsunday, as it is customarily known in some churches.
Easter is forty days long. It is not fifty days long. Every calendar-respecting Christian in the West knew this until the homosexual Jesuit higher critics that I mentioned in the last post decided to move Chesterton’s Gate. This means that the Sunday following Rogate, called Exaudi, is not a Sunday of Easter. That is OK. None of this is worth dickering about on the internet. But it is true, and if you want to know what Old Lutheran practice is . . . well, I’ve just told you.
Luther’s Catechism Hymns
Martin Luther wrote many wonderful hymns. The one that most everyone knows, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” is indeed excellent, but it is not his best hymn. It’s hard to say which is best, but it might be “O Lord, Look Down from Heav’n, Behold.” If you enjoy the Stone Choir podcast, or if you’ve ever hate-listened all the way to the end of an episode, you have heard an electronica version of this hymn’s melody as the outro.
Luther wrote hymns for each of the five chief parts of the Catechism. Here they are:
On Rogate, it is customary to sing the Lord’s Prayer hymn, “Our Father, Thou in Heav’n Above,” so you will see it appointed as the chief hymn in the bulletin. If you need help learning the melody, the Lutheran Kantor project is here to help:
Luther’s hymns inspired the great Evangelical-Lutheran composers and organ masters of the Renaissance and Baroque eras: Demantius, Praetorius, Schütz, Scheidt, Pachelbel, Böhm, Buxtehude, Crüger, Telemann and, of course, the greatest of them all, Bach.
Short motifs drawn from hymn tunes (some Luther composed, others he adapted) were developed, adorned, and embellished by these and other composers into longer works. Sometimes an entire line of melody would receive the same treatment. J. S. Bach would often use an entire chorale as the basis for a cantata.
The results of such wise master building have endured throughout the centuries as the most sublime music ever created: vessels of lament to chasten and soothe contrite hearts, offerings of praise and thanksgiving — all of them catechesis for Christian minds and hearts, words of faith and of good doctrine drawn from the Scriptures, able to make one wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
Take Georg Böhm’s Vater unser im Himmelreich, for example.1 This is the most beautiful thing you will ever hear played on a pipe organ — provided that it meets the standard set by the late great Wim van Beek.2
The Martinkerk’s west-gallery organ is one of the most famous church instruments in the world. The video below features some impressive visuals of it. But hang fire, anon — you’re going to want to save this for when you have about five minutes of uninterrupted dead quiet. Make sure you have earbuds or headphones with good low end or an audio setup with a decent subwoofer.
There is a bit of fry in the video. But there is no fry in this Telegram playlist of the full album of van Beek’s recital, from whence the recording of Vater unser was taken.
Singing “Our Father, Thou in Heav’n Above” as the chief hymn is indeed a fixture of Rogate Sunday. But if you’re looking at the bulletin3, you will notice something else way before you get to the chief hymn. In fact it will be the first thing you notice, after the lovely cover art:
Singing the Litany
The opening hymn, Invocation, Introit, and Kyrie are gone, and in their place is this long thing, which you may or may not recognize. And since the only labels in our bulletin are placeholders, you might not know that this thing is called “The Litany,” sometimes “The Great Litany.”
A lengthy digression on the history of the Litany at this juncture would be tedious, so I won’t make one. Check the footnote.4
For now:
The Litany is old.
The Litany is a long prayer. It is best sung. “He who sings prays twice,” St. Augustine says, and he’s right.
Over time the Litany was embellished with un-Christian things like invocations of the saints.
I am not going to debate you on the invocation of the saints, and if you compose an essay about it in the comments, you will have wasted your time. Repent, or you are going to waste an eternity.
Martin Luther, the pious servant of God raised up by Him to reform His Church, purged the Litany of its un-Christian accretions. He published a German version and a Latin version.
The version in the bulletin is #661 in The Lutheran Hymnal. It is a translation of Luther’s Latin Litany. It is slightly more prolix than the German version.5
This version (below) is #368 in Walther’s Hymnal.6 It is a translation of Luther’s German Litany. The differences from the one in TLH are minor, e.g., it keeps “Kyrie Eleison” in Greek at the beginning and the end. I set it to the same melody, so it should still work as a guide. This was recorded in 2019 when I was headmaster of Trinity Lutheran School in Cheyenne. I’m a little surprised to see it up still.
You should buy Walther’s Hymnal, even though it is expensive ($43.99).7 New is the best price, unless you are one of the three people who will save $2.67 by buying one from Alibris.
It is customary to pray the Litany in church on St. Mark’s Day (April 25), on the three so-called “rogation days” in between Rogate Sunday and the Feast of the Ascension, during Lent, and at various other times.
It is customary for some children (for example, my children, and soon yours) to sing the Litany to themselves while they while away a half hour in the Fisher-Price swing on a breezy summer day.
The version of the Litany published in the Lutheran Service Book has been bowdlerized, like virtually everything else that appears between its covers.8
In future years at Holy Trinity, if the Lord tarries, we might mark the three rogation days with the corporate praying of the Litany at Matins or Vespers. For now, we are marking Rogate Sunday in this way. (We also pray it at Matins from time to time.) When the Litany is prayed at the beginning of the divine service, it takes the place of the entrance rite. Think of it as an extended Kyrie.
Here is what I want to leave you with:
The hymns and prayers of the Church belong to you. You can learn to sing the Litany. Like all Christian hymns, it is a thing to be prayed, sung, and in all ways taken to heart, not passively consumed as a product.
“Look at this video of this Russian monk singing the Litany, so based”
Do not do this.
Flee every form of spiritual voyeurism as if it were the devil himself. Exorcise the low-rent demons of para-spirituality through prayer and fasting. Sing and pray. Pray and work. Fill your mind and heart with the Word of God through songs, hymns, and spiritual songs. Paul and Silas were not watching videos of Russian monks in the Philippian jail: they were singing from what they had stored up in their hearts.
Taking the time to learn the Litany and singing it : catching a trout, cleaning it, panfrying it on the bank, and eating it9 :: watching videos of other people performatively praying : ingesting Swedish Fish Oreos through an abdominal feeding port.
Experiencing target confusion? Don’t know where to start?
Every week, there will be recordings of two or three great hymns in the Google Drive folder and the Telegram channel. Use those in conjunction with the weekly bulletins to learn the hymns. In time you will find that their words have become part of the furniture in the room of your heart.
Amen, that is, So shall it be. Confirm our faith and hope in Thee That we may doubt not, but believe What here we ask we shall receive. Thus in Thy name and at Thy Word We say: Amen. Oh, hear us, Lord!
+SDG+
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
✠
Footnotes
This particular composition is entirely instrumental, but it still serves the catechetical function described. How? Well, it’s based on a hymn which is based on the Lord’s Prayer, which is the prayer that Jesus taught us, His disciples, and commanded us to pray. It’s all woven together. ↩︎
Some organists, while technically very talented, lack the spirit of the great Orgelmeistern and are thus unable to connect with the soul of the Baroque literature. Van Beek was not one of these moist robots. ↩︎
If you want the Google Drive link to a pdf, here it is — I don’t think that will dox you, if that is a concern, but I don’t know for certain. Use a private tab or something. If you want a link to the file on Tele, here it is. Same caveat. If we purchase a higher-tier WordPress plan in the future, this won’t be necessary. ↩︎
“The German and Latin Litanies became very popular and were seen by Luther, the Reformers, and their heirs as a core component of their life of worship and faith. All over Reformation and post-Reformation Germany, the Litany appears to have been sung once or twice weekly (Friday and in some places also Wednesday). It thus must have been extremely well known, probably well loved, and certainly well ingrained into the minds and hearts of all Lutherans. In his detailed study of early Lutheran worship practice, Joseph Herl notes that the German Litany was the fourth most popular ‘hymn’ in the church orders that he investigated” (Benjamin Mayes, “Restoring the Great Litany in the Lutheran Church,” CTQ 81 [2017]: 321-330). Unfortunately pdf is the only available format for this one, so do what you must (take the Kindle Scribe pill, bros). It’s an enjoyable read. ↩︎
The version in TLH does not include music for the minister or leader of the prayer. The urban legend reason for not printing these parts — here or anywhere else in TLH — is that it was a cost-saving measure during the war (TLH was published in 1941). Maybe this is part of the reason why the Litany was not much used in American Lutheranism. I don’t know. Whatever the case may be, the version in the bulletin is from The Music for the Liturgy, a small volume published in 1944. You can guess what’s in it. It has the music for the minister’s part of the Litany (and much else besides). You’re looking at what they call a “rare find.” ↩︎
This is not a real hymnal name; it is just what CPH decided to title it instead of “Church Hymnbook for Evangelical-Lutheran Congregations of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession,” which is what it’s called in German (but in German). Around here we just call it the KGB, short for Kirchengesangbuch.↩︎
I will talk more about this later, but frankly you can see for yourself when you open WH and compare it to modern Lutheran hymnals, especially to the Lutheran Service Book, published by CPH in 2006, q.v. footnote 8. WH slots into the “This Is What They Took From You (And They Are in the Process of Taking Even More, And, No, It Won’t Make a Difference Who Wins the Missouri Synod Presidency This Summer)” file with a resounding thud. ↩︎
Published in 2006, LSB is the consensus hymnal. Which consensus? You pick. In the Litany, “to preserve all women in the perils of childbirth” has become “to grant all women with child, and all mothers with infant children, increasing happiness in their blessings” — not a bad sentiment, but why the replacement? “To set free all who are innocently imprisoned” has become “to free those in bondage” — a very bad sentiment, if you think about it. “To have mercy upon all men” has become “to have mercy on us all” — the classic feminist edit. Truth be told, the entire LSB suite of liturgy and hymnody is so inimical to true Lutheran piety that you would think it had been designed with the sole purpose of emasculating the churches of God. The purpose of a system is what it does, and this is what LSB has done and continues to do. ↩︎
If you don’t like fish, substitute a tasty vertebrate of your choosing. ↩︎
This was, more or less, the question put to me by a new Lutheran brother I had the pleasure of speaking with over the phone yesterday.
He wanted to say, by way of qualification, that while he is basically convinced of Lutheran doctrine, and while it has solved a few acute theological questions that have gnawed at him for years . . . well, he hasn’t read absolutely all of the Book of Concord.
“I’ve read the Small Catechism and the [Augsburg] Confession” he said, and mentioned that he had read around in some other places.
What I said to him, I say to you:
If you haven’t read all of the Book of Concord, that’s fine. If you’ve read and understood the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession, there aren’t going to be any surprises in the rest of the book. There’s not going to be anything new. Yes, there will be a further unfolding of the articles of doctrine — a fuller exposition of them in light of different controversies — but nothing materially different from the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession. Chip away at the rest slowly.
“Is there anything else I should be reading?” he asked.
Maybe you have the same question. If so, here is what I told him:
Pick up a Lutheran dogmatics text.
Lutheran standard theological texts are called “Dogmatics.” In the Reformed world it is perhaps more customary, at least in recent years, to speak of “Systematics.” There are differences between these approaches to theology, and there are reasons why it is accurate to say that “Lutheran theology is properly dogmatic,” but today I’m just going to say it without giving the reasons.
The oldest and most venerable Lutheran dogmatics text is The Compendium of Lutheran Theology by Leonard Hutter. For short it is known as “Hutter’s Compend.” Buy it here or access a pdf for free.
Not the oldest, because only one can be the oldest, and I just told you what it is, but arguably the best starter dogmatics in terms of compactness and masterful simplicity is Augustus Graebner’s Outlines of Doctrinal Theology.Buy it here or access a pdf for free. If you have Amazon Prime, this might be the cheapest option.
Standard Disclaimer
I have no affiliation with Lutheran Librarian or Brian Wolfmueller.
Lutheran Librarian, whoever he is, reprints all sorts of old Lutheran theological books fairly indiscriminately. That is not a criticism; it’s just a fact. Some of the books are great; others, not so much. The only print edition I have from him is Bente’s Historical Introductions to the Book of Concord, which, incidentally, is another book you should read, so here’s a featured tweet about it:
I now have three editions of this book.
I love old books and old fonts (also old dogs, children, and watermelon wine), but I also like not going blind from eye-strain.
And then there’s Brian Wolfmueller. Wolfmueller sees no problem with communing a self-identified Marxist at his church, and his views on race are a pig’s breakfast. In this he is hardly unique — quite the opposite: he typifies Current Year conservative Lutheranism. I’m only directing you to his site because, as far as I know, no one else has put Graebner’s Outlines back into print. Gather your rosebuds as ye may.
There is such a thing as being overly scrupulous when it comes to sourcing books. I’ll just say right now . . . sometimes you need to hold your nose and just buy what’s available and cheap. You guys want every single one of your books to be some artisanal codex printed via steam-powered linotype on ethically-sourced papyri and hand-stitched with small-batch catgut by a tradwife by the light of a spermaceti lamp. And then you don’t even read them.
With that said, Concordia Publishing House’s prices are obscene, and I fully support avoiding doing business with them. The obscene prices make this an easier prospect. The “Not Quite Perfect” sale and the fall and spring warehouse sales can be great times to buy, but otherwise it’s highway robbery.
And CPH couldn’t be bothered to continue with the project. Do they have better things to do?
No, they do not.
Really, though this was also a blessing, as a smaller independent publisher, Emmanuel Press, was able to take up the mantle and has now published Exodus (594 pages, $39.00) and Leviticus (220 pages, $28.00), with Numbers (352 pages, $35.00) available for pre-order.
. . . those are still kind of expensive. But Emmanuel Press is small, and they don’t have as much of a margin.
This was supposed to be a shorter post.
Pick up Hutter or Graebner. You won’t regret it.
PS. The eReader hack
Just going to copypasta the note I wrote to our church men’s group on this topic:
Brothers:
I’d like to make a recommendation: obtain some kind of device for reading PDFs. As I was discussing with [NAME] on Sunday, I use a Kindle Scribe for this purpose. The reMarkable e-Reader is another device that guys recommend.
The key desired features of such a device are (1) a screen approaching the size of standard paper; (2) easy on the eyes, i.e., not a computer/phone screen — the devices mentioned above use display tech that makes the screen very paperlike; (3) dedicated to reading, i.e., you can’t really do anything else with it.
Having physical copies of all of the best books is optimal, without a doubt. Nothing can replace that. Someday, we’re going to have a legitimate church library. You all have home libraries. That said, it is not feasible for us to obtain absolutely everything that we’d like to read in book form. Sometimes it’s theoretically feasible, but it isn’t practical.
The newer Kindle Scribe models are pretty slick, as the tech has improved even in just a few years (as it always does). That said, the 1st generation refurbs are just fine (example). The two that I have are both 1st gen: one I bought during a Prime Day sale, and the other I bought refurbished on eBay.
Looking ahead, the ability for me to just send a PDF to everyone ahead of a Sunday doctrine class would be very helpful.
And it’s already happened with some of you that you ask for a book recommendation. I have an absolutely fire recommendation, but I either don’t have it or I’ve lost or can’t find my copy. You look it up on BookFinder, and . . . there’s one copy on ThriftBooks UK for £461.67.
But, hey, I have the book in PDF.
But who wants to read a PDF on the computer?
If you have strong objections to this pitch, no worries. Not trying to turn anyone in here into a cyborg. I myself am a Luddite at heart, but this is one of the hacks I have used in recent years that has actually had great utility and ROI. I find that reading PDFs — not so much eBooks, but actual facsimile pages — is a pretty close approximation to the information transfer that a book provides. Something about the framing of text within the fixed fields of discrete pages helps my brain retain things. Obviously it doesn’t have the tactile and aesthetic advantages of a book — you can’t physically leaf through a PDF, and there’s no “old book smell” — but, again, it’s a hack and a tool, not a replacement.
TL;DR – You can’t optimize in every category. Buy once/cry once on a refurbished Kindle Scribe. It’s useful.
“What about audiobooks?”
We’re working on it, anon. We’re working on it.
+SDG+
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
On Monday, March 23, we made the following announcement over on X:
We will be publishing resources for family and group devotions after Easter. Meeting regularly for prayer, Scripture-reading, etc., on the Lord's Day is the first step in the process of discerning the possibility of establishing a congregation.
Today I’m going to describe what these resources will be and tell you where you can find them every week. Before I do all that, I’m going to set the frame a bit with some comments on the general situation faced by right-wing Christian men.
This is a somewhat lengthy post. You’ll need about fifteen minutes.
God bless.
One day, Deo volente.
There has been a significant uptick in interest in churchgoing among right-wing men in recent years.
Correlated with this, and over the same rough span of years, my circle of friends and acquaintances has become a de facto “church finder” network. It is rare for a week to pass in which I do not receive direct or indirect requests for assistance in this regard. Conversation with mutuals confirms that my experience is not unique — far from it.
This is a wonderful thing. God be praised for it.
I’m not going to waste my time and yours by giving a definition of the term “right-wing” or a history of politics since the war or a history of Christianity in America since the same war. I’m simply going to build a basic profile of the sort of man who asks someone like me to find him a church.
Such a man . . .
generally speaking, is White.
understands that liberalism is not merely a set of viewpoints roughly corresponding to a preference for the Democratic Party in electoral politics, but is much more like adherence to a New Global Religion.
is fed up with the creeping liberalism of his local congregation, which matches the creeping (or lurching) liberalism of the “church body” that his congregation is part of/associated with
– or –
hasn’t been to church in a long time; has recently become convicted about this; wants to start going again, but a cursory search and a few reluctant visits have revealed that the liberalism described in (2) is deeply embedded pretty much everywhere
– or –
has never been to church (but, being an American male in the Current Year, knows what church tradition his family hails from) but wants to start going, but . . . a cursory search and a few reluctant visits have revealed that the liberalism described in (2) is deeply embedded pretty much everywhere.
has done enough research (maybe listened to some podcasts, maybe read some things) to know that he is at least somewhat interested in Lutheranism.
Last but not least:
thinks cracking a few beers with John Chrysostom, Vlad Țepeș, and Martin Luther sounds like a great time.
But we have a problem:
The Problem
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.1 Most congregations and church bodies are not explicitly right-wing. They have not been for a great while. Ergo, they have become left-wing.
The grim reality is that they are almost universally controlled by cabals of men whose contempt for the beliefs of their nominal fathers in the faith (except within the very narrow bounds of confessional theology) is quite open.
These men are in fact explicitly not right-wing, and they want to make sure everyone knows this. “We need to admit that Luther said a lot of awful things.” “Dabney was a product of his time.” “Their theology was gold, but the rest of their beliefs were terrible.”
By and large, the men in the pews are familiar with this state of affairs. It is the one they know best; more likely it is the only one they know.
The number of men alive today who remember anything substantially different is small and rapidly dwindling: they are senior citizens. Of these, the majority greatly prefer how things are to how things were. Indeed, many of them helped destroy the old ways — and they are quite proud of it.
For example: most men in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS) over the age of 60 approve of female suffrage in congregational assemblies (“She’s a pistol, ain’t she?”), and of this number, many recall with pride how they were part of the (all-male) vote to enfranchise the women sometime in the 80s.2 If you doubt this, go and ask one of them — they are quite thick on the ground in your average LCMS church, so it shouldn’t be difficult to find one (or twenty).
But I digress. Because the men in the pews are familiar with this state of affairs, they tend to want to conserve it, even if unconsciously. They are, at the end of the day, conservative about what they know best, i.e., the moral norms of the post-WW2 consensus. Which is why they are called “conservatives” . . .
. . . and why they are worse than useless in the general effort to rebuild, reinstitute, and reenshrine the basic civilizational goods that have been destroyed, deconstructed, and desecrated — and that is the case even if they recognize that their churches (and their families, and their country) are on a bad path.
All of this is a problem because it means that nine times out of ten, when anon gives me his ZIP code, I cannot in good conscience send him to the nearest Lutheran church, because it is a den of liberalism.
Even if the church “does the liturgy.”
Even if it explicitly identifies as “confessional.”
I grew up in the LCMS, so the LCMS church locator is where I look first. When my results are grim — again: about nine times out of ten, they are — I query my (W)ELS friends. Sad to say, but this doesn’t usually improve the score.3
What about the one time out of ten that I tell anon “yeah, go visit St. Paul’s”?
In that case I know that the pastor would not persecute him for being right-wing.
That’s it. That’s the low bar. And most Lutheran congregations cannot clear it with a running start.
“Then why are you Lutheran?”
Because Lutheranism is true, and I have super low time preference.
The real question is, how are you, someone who maybe also believes that Lutheranism is true, going to go to church if the only option within two hours is pastored by a nerdy hireling who fantasizes about putting men like you under discipline for recommending the Stone Choir podcast to your friends?
For the sake of brevity, I will not deal with the “uh, that’s Donatism” flag that sometimes gets thrown at this point. I will simply note that it is bogus. It proceeds from ignorance or stupidity or both, and you should ignore it.
Thou shalt sanctify the holy day.
Are you alone, with no family or friends? Plan and build for the time when you are not. Begin setting aside time on Sunday, as the Lord’s Day and chief Christian holy day, to pray, read Scripture aloud, and sing (or read) some hymns.
I would highly recommend printing it out. It’s going to run between two or three sheets double-sided, sequenced so that you can fold the stack and have a neat little 5.5″ x 8.5″ booklet that’s 8-12 pages long.
If at all possible, print it out. If you can’t, you can’t. But the more offline and offscreen you can be during this time, the better. My personal recommendation is that you do not try to “gather” with others via webcam, voice call, etc. That isn’t gathering. If you can’t gather yet, because it’s just you, then embrace the time of exile that you find yourself in as a blessing from the Lord. Hug the cactus.
The basic inkjet printer I picked up at a garage sale for $10 — a Canon TR4720, looks like it retails for $100 — prints double-sided. I don’t know very much about printers, but from this I infer that double-sided printing, even with basic inkjets, is a common feature.
That said, if you have to read things from your phone, then do so with a good conscience. It’s tough out there.
Maybe you’re not alone. Maybe you have a family or some local friends or roommates. If so, do all of the above with them: set aside time for prayer, hymns, and the recitation and reading of the psalms and other passages of Scripture.
What about a sermon? Much could be said here. For now, I will suggest that you read something. There are several resources that I would recommend. As before, I would advise against piping something in digitally on Sunday morning. As edifying as that may be, save it for another time.
Instead, read aloud . . .
One (or both) of the devotions of N. J. Laache (these are shorter) (serial Tele channel)
All of these are going to be expositions of the lessons appointed for the day.
Appointed for the day by whom? By your Christian ancestors, anon — by way of custom, not of law.
At Holy Trinity we use a lectionary, or system of weekly appointed readings, corresponding to what is called the Church Calendar. To be very brief: this lectionary is largely the same one that prevailed throughout northern Europe since the time of Charlemagne’s reforms in AD 800. Virtually all lectionary-using Christians in the West used the same one until the 1960s, when some homosexual Jesuit higher critics persuaded the followers of the papacy to start using a different one. For reasons which we won’t get into today, most of the other calendar- and lectionary-respecting Christians in the West followed suit, post haste.
That said, the revised version of the new lectionary, called the Revised Common Lectionary or Three-Year Lectionary, is not evil (but it has certain problems). The Word of God is still the Word of God. If you prefer this new lectionary, that is fine. That said, we do not use it. We use the old one, so if you’re going to start using our weekly bulletins to help you get things up and running where you are, you’re going to use it, too, or you’re going to spend an awful lot of time retrofitting things, at which point it might not be worthwhile.
“I think using a lectionary and church calendar are strange fire and the sin of Jeroboam, and I think the same thing about hymns that aren’t from the psalter. Yourbulletin violates the Second Commandment.”
Well, you’re wrong, but don’t go against your conscience. There’s probably not a whole lot for you here, to be honest. God bless you as you go about worshiping Him according to the dictates of your conscience.
The Lord’s Supper
You should hold off on celebrating the Lord’s Supper until a congregation is formally established, which act should entail the calling of regular ministers. This gets into other topics which we will address here eventually, but not today.
Lord willing, you will get there. But a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For the moment, we are just focusing on squaring up the compass and taking those initial steps.
Miscellaneous Notes
Everything is meant to be done out loud. Yes, even if you’re all by yourself.
In the bulletin, italics are ordinarily sung. Plain italic is the part of the minister or leader. Bold italic is everyone together.
We will eventually provide guidance on chanting and singing. For now, if you don’t know how to sing what’s in front of you, just read it.
The various parts of the rite are not labeled in our bulletin. Upon seeing our bulletin, a friend of mine described it as very “Spartan.” He’s not wrong. But it works for us. (It also helps us save on ink.) For you who may be coming from the outside, it might be confusing at first. But I would submit that taking an inductive, gradual approach to learning what each of these different parts is called will pay dividends in the long run. At some point I will publish an outline and explanation. For now, just take it as presented, as an organic whole.
Some churches include an Old Testament lesson during the Sunday service. We do not, because we read and study the Old Testament congregationally at a different time on Sunday. If you want to include an Old Testament lesson, use the suggested lessons here. In fact that page should be a very useful resource just in general.
We use the Authorized (King James) Version for the New Testament — not because we think other versions aren’t the Bible, but because it comes from the most stable NT textual tradition (the Textus Receptus, 98-99% overlap with the Majority Text), and because we find it to be beautiful and reverent. We like it. You might not. That is fine. If you don’t, use a version of your choosing instead.
Yes, anon, we use the Septuagint for the Old Testament— Lancelot Brenton is preferred. That said, for the various psalm verses interspersed throughout the rite, if there is no material difference, we generally stick with the AV.
We review the Small Catechism every Sunday before the sermon, two questions at a time. Each question gets repeated two weeks in a row. (Old Missouri inside baseball: we use the text of the old 1912 catechism from Concordia Publishing House because it is in the public domain, and there are things about it that we prefer to the 1943.)
Third sex Dunning-Kruger Lutheran liturgy spergs keep walking. Every modification I made was conscientious and deliberate. Does it make you mad? No one cares.
Lighting the Beacon
As the OP states, meeting regularly for prayer, Scripture-reading, etc., on the Lord’s Day is the first step in the process of discerning the possibility of establishing a congregation.
If you do this with a core group consistently for the better part of a year, you are ready to start that conversation.
But how do you assemble that group? How do you find your fellows? How do you establish concord?
That will be the topic of the next installment, which, since it will require less in the way of introduction and ramp-up, should be forthcoming much sooner.
+SDG+
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
The Missouri Synod in convention voted to allow female suffrage in 1969, but adoption by congregations rolled out gradually over the course of succeeding decades. ↩︎
“Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod” and “Evangelical Lutheran Synod,” two small Lutheran synods that are in communion with each other but not with the Missouri Synod. (W)ELS congregations are a lot fewer and further between than LCMS ones, and although they do not formally allow women’s suffrage . . . well, they wish they did. So the women just rule them through the usual means: by dominating their whipped husbands. Ultimately liberalism dominates in (W)ELS congregations just as much as in LCMS congregations. Exceptions are exceptional, just like they are in the LCMS.
To round things out: I don’t bother checking AALC congregations, and there is a snowball’s chance in hell that anon is near a micro-synod church or an independent one that’s any good — most of these are just LCMS or (W)ELS in miniature with no realistic plan for perpetuating themselves. But there are a few that are very good, with more shrewd and sanguine leadership, and I have sent men to them. ↩︎
Johannes Andreas Quenstedt, Matthias Hafenreffer, Johann Wilhelm Baier.
Is there a difference between Holy Baptism as received by infants vs. adults?
As the title avers — in accordance with the Nicene Creed — there is but “one Baptism for the remission of sins” (TLH, p. 22). Yet it is undeniable that adult converts to Christianity who have not been baptized come to faith first and are baptized second.
Does this overthrow the contention that Baptism regenerates? Does it mean that Baptism should not be administered to infants or young children?
By no means. And yet there is a difference between the one Baptism for the remission of sins as it is received by adults vs. infants. The explication of this difference is wonderfully clarifying and furnishes true Christian comfort to every believer, whether he entered the Lord’s vineyard at the dawn of his life or only recently — or at some point in between.
From Heinrich Schmid’s Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church1:
In opposition to the assertion of the Papal Church, that “sin is destroyed by Baptism, so that it no longer exists,” the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins by Baptism is thus more particularly defined: “The guilt and dominion of sin is taken away by Baptism, but not the root or incentive (fomes) of sin.” (Holl. [David Hollaz], 1096)
Ap. Conf. [Apology of the Augsburg Confession] (II, 35): “(Luther) always thus wrote, that Baptism removes the guilt of original sin, although the material of sin, as they call it, remains, i.e., concupiscence. He also affirmed of this material, that the Holy Spirit, given by Baptism, begins to mortify concupiscence and creates new emotions in man. Augustine speaks to the same effect when he says: ‘Sin is forgiven in Baptism, not that it does not exist, but that it is not imputed.’”
Grh. [Johann Gerhard] (IX, 236): “There is no other ordinary means of regeneration than the Word and the Sacrament of Baptism. By the Word infants cannot be influenced, but only adults, who have come to years of discretion. It remains, therefore, that they are regenerated, cleansed from the contagion of original sin, and made partakers of eternal life, through Baptism.”
Br. [Johann Wilhelm Baier] (690): “But here, as regards the immediate design [of Baptism] a diversity exists in respect to the different subjects. For faith is at first conferred upon and sealed to all infants alike by Baptism, and by this faith the merit of Christ is applied to them. But adults, who receive faith from hearing the Word before their Baptism, are only sealed and confirmed in their faith by it. (Examples, Acts 2:41; 8:12, 36–38; 16:14, 15, 31, 33; 18:8.) And not only now, when Baptism is received, but afterwards, and throughout their whole life, it efficaciously contributes to the confirmation of their faith and further renewal.”
Grh. (IX, 169): “To infants Baptism is, primarily, the ordinary means of regeneration and purification from sin; … secondarily, it is the seal of righteousness and the confirmation of faith; to adult believers it serves principally as a seal and testimony of the grace of God, sonship and eternal life, but in a less principal sense it increases renovation and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Infants by Baptism receive the first fruits of the Spirit and of faith; adults, who through the Word have received the first fruits of faith and of the Holy Spirit, procure an increase of these gifts by Baptism.”
Hfrffr. [Matthias Hafenreffer](500): “But what? Suppose one is regenerated by the Word. Has he need of Baptism also? And can Baptism be said to be to him the laver of regeneration? Answer: Both. For believers, too, ought to be baptized, unless they be excluded by a case of necessity. And when they are baptized, Baptism is truly to them the laver of regeneration, because it augments regeneration, wrought by the Word, by a wonderful addition; because, also, the sacramental act seals the regeneration of faith to absolute certainty.”
Although Baptism, where it is rightly performed, is a Sacrament and offers saving grace, without any respect to the faith of the recipient, yet it is also true that, in the case of adults, a beneficial result follows only where Baptism is received by faith.
The question: Is a hypocrite, therefore, also regenerated, if he receive Baptism? is thus answered by Hfrffr. (499): “In such a case we must distinguish between the substance of Baptism and its fruits. For a hypocrite, if he be baptized, receives indeed true Baptism, as to its substance, which consists in the legitimate administration of the Sacrament according to the words of the institution and in the promise of divine grace. But as long as he perseveres in his hypocrisy and infidelity, he is destitute of its salutary fruits and effects, which only believers experience. There fore, God really offers his grace and the forgiveness of sins to him who is baptized, and desires on his part to preserve that covenant perpetually firm and entire without any change, so that the grace promised in the covenant may always be accessible to him who is baptized, and that he may enjoy it as soon as he repents; but, as long as he remain a hypocrite and impenitent, he is destitute of it.”
Quen. [Johannes Andreas Quenstedt] (IV, 117): “Even to all hypocrites Baptism offers spiritual gifts, as regeneration and whatever is comprehended under it, the gift of faith, remission of sins, etc., … but some adults, by actual impenitence, hypocrisy, and obstinacy, defraud themselves of the saving efficacy of Baptism; and hence, although these gifts be offered to them, they are not actually conferred; yet, in the meantime, it is and remains in itself a salutary organ and means of regeneration, since the deprival of the first act does not follow from the deprival of the second act through some fault of the subject.”
Cat. Maj. [Large Catechism] (IV, 33): “Faith alone makes the person worthy to receive profitably this salutary and divine water. For, as this is offered and promised to us in the words together with the water, it cannot be received otherwise than by cordially believing it. Without faith, Baptism profits nothing; although it cannot be denied that in itself it is a heavenly and inestimable treasure.”
For all who have received the Lord’s Baptism at any point in their lives, it was — and it is, and it will remain your whole life long — “a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost,” in the words of the Catechism, as St. Paul teaches in Titus 3: “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, that, being justified by His grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. This is a faithful saying” (vv. 5-8).
As certainly as Christ gave His body and shed His blood in death for the forgiveness of sins and brought life and immortality to light by His rising again, just as surely were you “buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead” (Colossians 2:10).
Thank you for reading. The Boniface Group is the mission society of Holy Trinity Ev.-Lutheran Church of Gem County. If you would like to support our work, you may do so here. (Crypto options coming soon.) To learn more, visit our homepage and start reading from the top. Thank you, and God bless you.
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Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Verified from the Original Sources. C. A. Hay & H. E. Jacobs, Trans. Second English Edition, Revised according to the Sixth German Edition, Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889; pp. 549–551. Nota Bene: additional line breaks have been added for clarity. —ed.↩︎
In the apostolic and primitive church there were two kinds of presbyters who in Latin were called seniores, as we conclude from 1 Tim. 5:17. Some administered the office of teaching, or as the apostle there says, they labored in the Word and doctrine; these were called bishops, pastors, etc. Others, however, were appointed to be censors of morals and guardians of church discipline, since the pagan government did not support the teachers of the church in this manner; these were called governors and leaders (as we conclude from 1 Cor 12:28 and Rom. 12:8). Ambrose comments on 1 Tim. 5 at the beginning: “Also the synagogue and the church had seniors without whose advice nothing was undertaken. I do not know by what kind of carelessness this fell into disuse — perhaps by indolence or rather by the pride of the teachers who alone wanted to be esteemed as being something.”
Both kinds were commonly called elders (Acts 15:22; 1 Tim. 5:17) and rulers (Heb 13:7, 17, 24). Both formed the sacred college that Paul calls the presbytery, saying: “Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery” (1 Tim 4:14). From this passage we conclude that at the ordination of ministers, not only the pastors but also the elders chosen from the people laid their hands on the ordained person in the name of the entire congregation, just as not only Aaron but also the elders of Israel laid their hands on the Levites who were ordained (Num 8:10). Some, however, think that here the term presbytery signifies in a special sense those elders who were pastors and bishops. Today the consistory or the church council [senatus ecclesiasticus], over which ecclesiastical and political officials preside and that concerns itself especially with church discipline, corresponds to the presbytery.
— Johann Gerhard, Loci theologici, “De minist. eccl.,” par. 232; qtd. in C. F. W. Walther, Church & Ministry, tr. J. T. Mueller, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, 1875/1987, pp. 264-265
Some wag put my name down as a signer of the Antioch Declaration. For the record, I did not sign it, and furthermore I never would. I also do not reside in “Emmet” (the town’s name is spelled “Emmett”).
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It has come to our attention that someone has put the name of one of our directors on the list of signatories to the "Antioch Declaration."
Trent Demarest did not, and does not, subscribe to the Antioch Declaration, nor does St. Boniface Lutheran School of Western Idaho.
The Boniface Group 