The Lutheran Option

Catholics and Lutherans have not, historically, been on the “friendliest” terms, to put it mildly… but, you already knew that! That Catholicism has articulated a view that welcomes an old earth is not any particular inducement to the Lutheran denomination… despite its presence in their pews. They will have to deal with it, eventually.

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For some reason… American Catholics love to challenge the Vatican on just about every point!

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Matt Becker also affirmed evolution too. The tipping point in LCMS was ordination of women, not the age of the earth or evolution.

I was thinking of Matthew Becker.

I had not noticed a lot of support by laypersons in the LCMS for views other than YEC. But I only visited some churches without joining and didn’t really get to know anyone that well and I used to peruse some blogs and websites. Any pastor I asked, it was YEC all the way.

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Except 40% of their congregation is theistic evolution. That is the intriguing thing about Lutheranism.

Where do you get 40%? I find that rather surprising.

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I always misremember this. It is actually 50% of LCMS, not 40%.

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Ah, well, Catholic priests are almost 100% against birth control but their parishioners see things differently…

So it’s less of a surprise to me that flocks and their leaders may have different views as to where the ‘rubbers meet the road’ (pun intended).

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@acuriousmind have you been thinking about this at all? Have you had a chance to connect with @CPArand yet?

@Philosurfer and @JustAnotherLutheran, what is your thoughts on this?

Yes, I have thought about this a great deal. A little personal history may help clarify my perspective on a “distinctively Lutheran option.” I was one of the 1960s young people who was confirmed and then drifted away from the church. When I returned to the faith in my early 20s, my parents had left the Lutheran Church to become part of the charismatic renewal which flourished among mainline denominations in the 1970s. I followed their example, attending events and worship services with them. It was during that time that I experienced God’s call into the ministry. That Pentecostal / Charismatic experience had a powerful influence on my spiritual identity. From that time until now, and even though I ministered in a confessional Lutheran context for 34 years, I have considered myself to be a Christian first and a Lutheran second.

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I certainly understand, and very much appreciate, Lutheran distinctives such as properly distinguishing Law from Gospel, God ministering to people sacramentally through the means of grace, giving God total credit for our salvation and our rich liturgical heritage in worship. Lutheranism has much to offer Christendom. Trouble comes, however, when a denomination or synod becomes isolationist and highly critical of other Christians. In my years as a pastor I have belonged to several ministerial groups made up of individuals from various denominations. One of those groups asked each member to share what they would consider to be some special distinctive of their own denomination or synod. I spoke of CFW Walther’s Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel. When the meeting was over, several individuals approached me saying that they found Walther’s insights very helpful and that they would be more careful in how they spoke of the Law and the Gospel going forward. My point is this. Had I kept to myself in my own part of the vineyard and not associated with, or even prayed with, these other Christians, I wouldn’t have had a chance to share that important distinctive with my Christian brothers and sisters and that opportunity for mutual Christian growth would have been lost.

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What about what I wrote about in my article?

I point out three things:

  1. Lutheran Epistemology (centered on Jesus).
  2. Lutheran Theology (with its emphasis on paradox).
  3. Lutheran History (with an emphasis on Kepler and Luther).

The article by Saleska hits the notes on #1 really well:

I was very much surprised by the Pew research on the views of Missouri Synod Lutherans when it comes to acceptance of evolutionary theory. In the last three years or so, I have discussed this topic with a good number (probably 50 or more) laypeople. What I found, generally speaking, is a willingness to learn more. It would be interesting to find out how certain individuals are with the responses reported by Pew. On the surface, the Pew research indicates quite a sharp division between laypeople and clergy on the subject of evolution. The sample size was ~ 400 individuals. It would be interesting to see how things might change if the number of respondents was larger, or results from different geographical regions could be compared.

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The Catholic Church has a similar distinction, @acuriousmind. Priests speak the party line… while hundreds of American Catholics go about their lives ignoring the party line.

I would suggest that much of the struggle in LCMS circles regarding how to approach Genesis 1-3, for example, is a direct result of the “battle for the Bible” that blew up in the LCMS in the 1970s. It caused a very, very painful split in the church body which ripples are still very much felt today. In an attempt to maintain this historic Christian Faith in the face of the onslaught of radical historical criticism - a somewhat fundamentalist approach to the Scripture became standard. So, to raise questions regarding how to approach Gen 1-3 also brings with it a lot of painful baggage.

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Some of us are caught in the middle. To make a long story short, I grew up in one of the big Lutheran denominations in the U.S. It became too “liberal” for me over many issues and I eventually left. A sticking point with me with the LCMS was Young Earth Creationism and more than that, the fundamentalist attitude behind it. And this was after I left a church that I thought had too low a view of the Bible.

So, one thing I have noticed is that conservative Anglicans as well as conservative Catholics generally don’t have a problem with different interpretations of the first chapters of Genesis. They note that the Early Church Fathers had different ways of reading it (and no one can call them “modernists”). Some conservative Lutherans were able to borrow Young Earth Creationism from fundamentalism. Do you think that they could see that differing views of Genesis date back to the early church, so a number of things related to that could safely be secondary issues? I imagine one objection would be “Sola Scriptura.” But I think Lutherans have a more sophisticated understanding of this than the way fundamentalists usually try to apply Sola Scriptura.

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@Intjer - I think what you have said is very insightful.

I’m one of the “conservative” Lutherans. However, in the last couple years have been struggling through the hermeneutical issues pertaining to Genesis 1-11. I have come to believe that a YEC approach is not necessary and may, in fact, be doing a disservice to the text. Walton and Lamoureux have been helpful for me working through some of the issues. I still have a lot to learn and I have not personally landed on some of the important questions yet. Forums such as these are appreciated and helpful

I hold to the “Solas” of the Reformation. However, sola scriptura is often misunderstood and leads to interpreting the Bible apart from the Church in isolation. This is not how the Lutherans approached the Scriptures. I think you are quite correct that Lutherans have a more sophisticated understanding of sola scriptura than with fundamentalist approaches. However, I’d suggest that in the LCMS circles (of which circle I am a part and which I believe has Christ at the centre in a way that is unique and is why I happily remian) after the controversies of the 1970s we have an odd mixture of understanding genre and make use of some of the exegetical tools - but when some of those results bring up some uncomfortable questions we revert to a more fundamentalist approach - because we have seen where radical higher criticism has taken the more “liberal” churches…and there be dragons. I speak from personal experience as one who found himself do this until relatively recently. The concerns for going down that dangerous road to oblivion…is a real concern. I’m still trying to figure out precisely how to navigate that.

However, most of us were trained with decent hermeneutics and are conversant with the hermeneutical and isagagogical issues - so when we begin reading Walton or Lamoureux or Swamidass - if we don’t right away write off what we’re reading as dangerous heresy and go a little deeper…I think we see that such an approach to Genesis 1-11 fits our understanding of hermeneutics and the Scriptures well and does not imperil our faith in Jesus and the historicity of the resurrection.

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Greetings Dr. @swamidass. Has there been an update on the final positions from @CPArand on this topic yet? I’m a bit late to the party here. Thanks @mlkluther for recommending this site and a shoutout to my other LCMS brother @J.E.S.

I think any formulation of a forward path for us in the LCMS requires some understanding of our history because of the legacy of three towering personalities in particular, C.F.W. Walther, Franz Pieper, and Theodore Graebner. Some of that ties into a question that was nagging me, one posed to Dr. @TedDavis during his presentation at Concordia’s Theological History of Science presentation several years back. It may answer some of what @Intjer noted as well. Dr. Davis noted how the fundamentalists of the early 20th century were not YEC. I found this surprising because I couldn’t figure out then why the LCMS had adopted a clear literal 6 day position by that time when so many others espoused Day/Age and Gap Theory.

We should remember at the time we were a German church, speaking and writing in German to our people, and connected to Germany. We were struggling with what it meant to be Lutheran in America and it really wasn’t until WWI and II that we really began shifting to being a more Americanized Lutheran church.

We were however very much aware of what was going on in the German theological schools throughout the 19th century with the rise of Higher Criticism. We were very concerned about what such rationalism did to undermine the trustworthiness of the Word of God. After Origin of Species was released, the Anglican Church published it’s Essays & Reviews which had an even wider publication. These documents supported the German Higher Criticism as well as Origins.

So Origins was wrapped up in the whole kit and caboodle of Higher Criticism, and my educated guess is that this is how Walther first became aware of it. He’s noted as dismissively referring to it as “Ape Theory”.

Pieper, our chief dogmatician groomed to be Walther’s successor, and who held the post at Concordia Seminary for many many years, likely shared Walther’s view. It would be hard to imagine the didn’t influence one another. So its no surprise that he subsequently codified a strong literalist 6 day view into his Christian Dogmatics and our famous Brief Statement of 1932 just before his death.

Theodore Graebner was a professor under Pieper at Concordia and wrote prolifically on the subject of Evolution. He even wrote to President Roosevelt to question an article he wrote in National Geographic in favor of evolution and got a personal response. This piece he wrote on the subject shows how very well aware he was of Darwin and Huxley in particular.
https://www.lutheranlibrary.org/pdf/377-graebner-evolution-an-investigation.pdf

Graebner was invited at one point to join the Deluge Geology Society as noted by Dr. Arand. I believe I’m correct in saying 6 of the 18 original members were LCMS. Graebner however was not convinced of the science of the Flood Geology of George MacCready Price and didn’t stay with the group.

My point of all of this is to show how a high concern for Scripture in a world of higher criticism that was seeking to undermine it, led to a literal 6 day view as well as a hardening against Darwinian evolution early in our synod.

Any way forward has to work with that history in mind.

My personal belief is that however its done it should include an approach that includes:
The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms and
The Doctrine of Vocation/Priesthood of All Believers

This fits with how we approach the distinct functions of Law and Gospel, Church and State, and fits nicely with the Two Books view of Nature and Revelation. And Vocation would recognize the distinct office of the Scientist as a holy calling for the Christian that is just as holy as the office of Pastor, but serves a distinct and separate function.

These would be necessary in addition to the interpretive issues already mentioned by others in regard to Genre, Isagogics, etc.

Sorry for the length of this answer, but I had time on my hands tonight.
Blessings!

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