Yep. You are correct. I imagine that a lot of the Lutheran absence from large public conversations regarding theology and culture is due to something akin to what you are worried about.
I do not have a nice set of rules that demarcate proper paradox use! However, I follow an insight that I find in St. Augustine’s Confessions, chapter seven I believe. St. Augustine discusses his rediscovery of St. Paul. It is a wonderful piece of text where he pits the Gospel message against his learning from the Greeks. He recognizes that the Greeks had nothing on the notion of forgiveness. That the forgiveness in Christ IS one’s identity and that the Greek systems of thought were seriously lacking in this regard.
However, he doesn’t simply dump the Greek notions of thought. Instead he reinvests in them knowing that his identity is NOT Platonism. Augustine is now free to explore the possibilities that Plato offers to Christianity. It is similar with Aquinas, he was free to explore Aristotle as it didn’t matter one iota if Aristotelian proved inadequate. He was simply exploring the ideas. They are penultimate identities/conceptual schemes that shatter at the foot of the cross. For an artistic rendition of this thought look and read about the Constantine Room at Vatican City. All is man’s conquest (Constantine’s), but at the center height of the ceiling is this image – a body broken on the Cross that breaks Sophia at His feet.
Thus, due to our identity in Christ, we are free to explore this world in all its strangeness. Nothing hinges on whether we are correct or incorrect. That kind of freedom can be abused in terms of ignoring the world and hiding behind the paradoxes we face, but it also motivates creative thinking. It isn’t that paradox necessitates a retreat from problems, but often ignites the imagination to try and figure out what the hell is going on… Thus, as I said to @dga471, he is free to explore and adopt A-T thinking if he thinks it best fits his understanding of the world, just please don’t force all of us to be A-T thinkers (or Reformed for that matter)!
This freedom to explore the world around us then gets codified in a strong sense of vocation as getting your hands dirty in the world. @Intjer brought this idea up nicely in his comment on this post. One might accuse the Lutheran dissuasion from metaphysics as being related to the impracticality of it all. In what way’s does metaphysics help me serve my neighbor? That sounds weird to my ear as a philosopher, having spent many years of my life around metaphysicians, but the idea is that metaphysical problems pale in relation to my daily life in community with neighbors who could care less about metaphysics as their needs are more direct.