← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Texas Dissident
Thread ID: 19754 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2005-08-20
2005-08-20 18:07 | User Profile
This might interest some here. I think the article makes some good points along the way.
[url=http://www.lutherannews.info/articles/abolition.htm]The Abolition of Lutherans[/url]
by Aaron D. Wolf
Lutheran Concerns/Lutherans United Dinner March 30, 2005
I grew up in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church—the kind that would consider Jerry Falwell to be a liberal. The kind that would insist that it is the most godly church in my hometown, because it sends out more of its members than all of the other, probably liberal, fundamentalist churches in our area on Thursday-night and Saturday-morning soul-winning and visitation. The kind that would disown you for fellowshipping with Southern Baptists or for attending a secular college—or, worse, a neo-evangelical college—or for going to a "so-called Christian rock concert."
Naturally, from the time I was 14, I wanted to be a Christian rock star. The cool kids in our fundamentalist high school ran a virtual black market peddling the wares of big-haired Christian metal bands such as Stryper and Bloodgood and Whitecross, as well as sexy gospel starlets such as Amy Grant and Kim Boyce, in the form of bootlegged tapes from the local Pentecostal radio station's weekend program, "PowerPlay!" hosted by Radical Rex and Doctrine Don. On a frigid Midwestern Saturday night, it was important that the cool kids stick together, in our Pintos and Impalas and TransAms, with radios and heaters blaring, so that, while we were combing Rockford for the next item in our Polaroid Scavenger Hunt—a picture of three members of the Youth Group standing on their heads in front of the Rock River, for example—no goody-goody snitch would tell the youth pastor that we were driving around playing air guitar to PowerPlay! Parents would be called! Lockers would be searched for contraband! My picture of lead guitarist Oz Foxx with his giant AquaNet do, his metal-warrior sneer, and signature yellow-and-black guitar would be found! Detentions would be handed out!
In fact, the drummer from my band was unceremoniously kicked out of our school for being a purveyor of so-called Christian rock. His mom immediately enrolled him in a nearby fundamentalist school with which we were not in fellowship—not because of any obvious doctrinal difference, but because . . . well . . . no one was really quite sure. The great distinctive of, to borrow a phrase from J.I. Packer, "Those who are happy to call themselves fundamentalists" is their commitment to "separation." In fact, they measure it by degrees. It is not enough for you to believe in "first-degree separation," as that is what the liberal "neo-evangelicals" do. Instead, you must believe in "second-degree separation," which means that you must not share pulpits (altars don't come into the picture, since "communion" is a rare event) with those who refuse to separate completely from apostates. For example, some fundamentalist friends of mine today are being harried out of the movement because they are willing to attend conferences sponsored by John MacArthur. John MacArthur agrees with them on every essential point of doctrine—he's a dispensationalist Baptist—but John MacArthur trades pulpits with Al Mohler, the conservative president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Now, Al Mohler agrees with them, too, on all of the chief points of their doctrine, but he has, in the past, helped to set up a Billy Graham Crusade. Billy Graham is an apostate, because he promotes "easy-believe-ism," says kind things about the pope, and doesn't emphasize the local church enough. Ergo, anyone who fellowships with John MacArthur is an apostate, worldly, unseparated brother.
This kind of thing happens all of the time in fundamentalism. Pensacola Christian College (whose cash-cow is its Christian-curriculum publishing house, ABeka Books) is at war with Bob Jones University because of "King James Only-ism." Both schools are basically King James Only. But, in Pensacola's opinion, Bob Jones is not KJV Only for the right reasons. BJU's understanding of "preservation theory" does not duly emphasize the inspiration of the Byzantine manuscripts, so BJU is liberal—just like John MacArthur, Billy Graham, the pope, and all the Christian rock stars. Believe it or not, I'd been told what to think about the corrupt Alexandrian manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, by the time I was clandestinely rocking out to Stryper during youth activities. "The two most reliable manuscripts omit"—it was all a Darwinian, secular humanist plot, hatched by the long-haired neo-evangelicals who wear "skimpy skirts and hippie hair" (to borrow a phrase from the late Jack Hyles) deny the fundamentals, and sit around singing "As the Deer" and holding hands in small groups instead of preaching revival, Hell, and the importance of getting saved. We must separate from these unruly workers of darkness, or else we will walk near the edge of the camp of the saints and be overtaken by Philistines. Yet, as a teenage boy submerged in the popular culture, the more I listened to Michael W. Smith, Petra, Whiteheart, and the like, the more I convinced myself that the fundamentalists had to be wrong: The so-called neo-evangelicals couldn't be the unruly workers of darkness. They basically believed in all of the same things that we did: They were dispensationalists, affirmed the inerrancy and plenary inspiration of Scripture, and even had altar calls at the end of their concerts. The only difference was, these neos didn't spend all of their time carping about how everyone else was liberal, why they were the only true believers. They believed in Hell just the same, even if they didn't talk about it much. Why else did Stryper call its multiplatinum album To Hell With the Devil?! Instead of talking about those wicked liberals everywhere else, they just praised the Lord, praised the Lord. They'd just lift their hearts to Heaven, and praise the Lord. And, let's face it, they were much, much cooler!
To this day, I have a visceral reaction whenever I hear a fundamentalist preacher with “the unction.” Thanks to the Internet, I can watch a service from my relatives’ church in Southern California whenever I like, and, by clicking on the Windows Media Player, I am transported back to those halcyon days of fundamentalism. Here are some of the titles of the sermons that are featured on their preaching page from the last month: “Why We Use the King James Version”; “Keeping God’s Law”; “Getting Ready Today, Moving Out Tomorrow—The Rapture.” The official title changes from week to week, but the content is always the same. The preacher will read a text from the Bible, then, through pithy stories and detailed descriptions of worldliness and debauchery, build you up to a fever pitch of hollering about the need, of each and every one of you, to respond to today’s altar call and either get saved or rededicate your life to the Lord. These sermons are a planned rollercoaster ride, the end of which being a kind of cathartic re-re-re-commitment to tithe, soul-win, refrain from Hollywood movies, get a haircut, wear modest clothes, be faithful to God’s house, etc. They usually end with heads bowed and eyes closed and a special, one minute and thirty second rendition of the Romans Road for those in the audience who may not yet have received the Lord as personal Savior. The altars are almost always flooded with people, and, if they aren’t, singing four or five more verses of “I Surrender All” usually does the trick. When all is said and done, and the numbers are counted, the fact remains that we see more souls won to Christ and more set on fire (Ablaze! If you will) for Him here than they do at any of the other churches in our town. God is blessing!
My fascination with Christian rock and my stated intentions to go to a secular college to study English literature meant the severing of all ties to fundamentalism. I was now free of the legalism that kept me from growing out my hair and kept my girlfriend from wearing blue jeans. Soon, I was leading worship at a "liberal neo-evangelical church," writing songs, and in charge of a youth ministry. And here, we were so interested in getting more people to make a commitment to Christ that we began to study an important tape series from a church down the highway in Barrington, where the innovative leaders had discovered that "lost people matter to God," had gone "inside the mind of unchurched Harry and Mary," and had realized that unbelievers are really just "seekers" who need a church free of ecclesiastical jargon—a "safe place." Why, in the world, would we want to cling to our legalistic church jargon and methodology, if that kept us from getting one soul to commit his life to Christ? Our poorly attended Wednesday night service was transformed into a small group for leaders at the pastor's house, where we listened to Bill Hybels explain the Willow Creek philosophy, carefully and methodically debunking our traditionalist, legalistic mentality. I knew that my calling to “rock for God” was, in reality, much deeper: Lost people matter to God, and I needed to become a pastor and dedicate myself to creating environments where they would be free to respond to His invitation. Before I knew it, I was enrolled at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, though, in hopes of quieting some of my lingering guilt and doubt for leaving fundamentalism behind, I took the Church History track.
That's when a funny thing happened. To cut to the autobiographical chase, I left Trinity Evangelical Divinity School a Missouri-Synod Lutheran, which was, I'm sure, not the school's intention. Since college, I'd been reading Francis Schaeffer, David Wells, and just about anyone else I could find who spoke to my nagging thoughts about neo-evangelicalism—but not from a fundamentalist perspective. For the truth was, the more I matured, the more I found evangelicalism to be vapid—a mile wide and an inch deep. Because of Schaeffer, I'd switched majors from English to philosophy, and, to maintain my sanity while reading Kant, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard, I had become friends with T.S. Eliot, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis. So now, the more I experienced evangelicalism, and the more I studied Church history, the more I realized that the great gulf between fundamentalism and evangelicalism was not really that great. Both were products of the American frontier; both were anti-intellectual and focused on stimulating emotional responses; and both were technically committed to a core of Christian teachings that mattered little in real life. Sure, the layman needed to learn all of the shibboleths, lest he be easily identified as not one of us, but dogma was not something to study, to assimilate, to cherish; it was something by which we could negatively define our enemies. For both evangelicals and fundamentalists, doctrine is mainly for pastors and professors. Thoughts about the nature of sanctification are about as relevant to everyday life as thoughts about how to perform an appendectomy. They just don’t matter to laymen. What matters to the layman is the delivery of a genuine encounter with God, whether through the guilt induced by a hellfire sermon or the intimacy of “praise and worship.” Laymen are interested in precepts, in life-application Bible study, in connecting with God.
Yet, to anyone who watches this with a critical eye, it is obvious that this cycle of highs and lows is just conditioning—a sort of behavior modification therapy. I could be sitting in class with Carl F.H. Henry and talking about Neoliberalism and the new emphasis on narrative over dogma, and my mind would wander over to this simple fact: We will get up from this table and go over to chapel, where we'll sing "Alleluia" 85 times, after which someone will "preach" about spiritual disciplines, or the need to be relevant to the unchurched, or the way that postmodernism should shape our approach to evangelism.
It was at this time that's when I discovered Martin Luther. There in my Introduction to the Reformation class—beyond learning the definitions of the formal principle and the material principle, beyond October 31, 1517, beyond what we were told was the disaster of the Marburg Colloquy caused by Luther's brutish behavior—was the antidote to all of this modern disease infecting Christianity as I knew it. Read Martin Luther, read the Augsburg Confession, read the Schmalkald Articles, read the Loci, read the Examination of Trent, and there is the Gospel—Christ crucified pro me, for the forgiveness of sins—boldly and lucidly and objectively proclaimed, as if such forthright proclamation, by the power of the Holy Ghost, were all that is needed for you to hear it and believe it. There was the answer to the semi-Pelagian altar calls: Word and Sacrament. There was the answer to legalism: Law and Gospel. There was the answer to mindless yet relevant worship: The Mass! The Divine Service! Irrelevant worship! There was the answer to "O wretched man that I am": Confession and Absolution. The Lutherans, the first Evangelicals, the church that is not Protestant, teaching nothing new—the church catholic standing on the article of justification by grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone. A conscience captive to the Word of God! This is where I belonged! This is where I would go!
Then, to borrow a line from Eliot, "human voices wake us, and we drown." Quickly, I discovered that many, too many, of our Lutheran churches simply are not Lutheran. They are ashamed of traditional Lutheran dogma. They are afraid that they look too Catholic. They don't even like Martin Luther, and they prove it by refusing ever to read his sermons or his biography. Like the churches of my former life, they are concerned deeply with either relevance or separation—or both at once—yet they are filled with people who do not know that, on the Day of Judgment, the only thing that will be relevant is that Gospel, that water comprehended in God’s command and connected to God's word, that Body and Blood given and shed for the forgiveness of sins. Some even have members who are ready to separate from the liberals who have taken over their Synod: But separate unto what? Something called "confessional Lutheranism.” But what would we discover, I wonder, if we were to examine the laity who profess confessional Lutheranism? Specifically, what could they tell us about those Confessions? What about their children?
Because of my line of work, I had occasion to watch C-SPAN that fateful day in September 2001 when one of our synod's ecclesiastical supervisors told an audience full of unbelievers, revilers, and even persecutors of the One True Faith that the prayers of God-hating pagans and blasphemers had "made us stronger than we were before." I was stunned when I heard the African-American gentleman refer to my "Missouri Sigh-Nod" while introducing David Benke, who invoked the Name of the Pantokrator, while sitting in the seat of the scornful. He invited the ungodly, "who will not stand in the judgment," to join hands and find their help in a God whose Triune Name they despise. He pretended that God hears the patronizing prayers of Jews and Muslims who, while rejecting the Son of God, are, apparently unwittingly "leaning on Him today." He told papists and pagans that their god, "our god," is a mighty fortress. And for this, he was exalted last summer by the Missouri Synod and "re-absolved" publicly at her convention, while being assured that there was nothing, really, to absolve.
To an observer of culture, that infamous episode of the Oprah Winfrey Show was, perhaps, the single greatest microcosm of modernity that anyone could witness. Yankee Stadium was truly the theatre of the absurd. In the world of conservative cultural commentary, the “Oprah Winfrey effect” is shorthand for postmodern, guru-driven, mindless catharsis. And Yankee Stadium was the Oprah Winfrey effect in full force. The event was, in many ways, made for television—why else would we hear from the comforting and authoritative voice of Darth Vader and "this is CNN" at such a time? Who, in his right mind, after witnessing the deaths of friends, family, thousands of Americans, wants to hear Bette Midler singing "Wind Beneath My Wings"?
Yet this theatre of the absurd is nothing new, nor has it since gone away. Conservatives in the Synod are still commenting on President Kieschnick's invitation to his wife to say a few words during his homily at the National Youth Gathering. I have read scores of accounts of those who were shocked—shocked!—that he would dare to let a woman speak during the sermon, as well as complaints that the overall theme was too Law-oriented. Yes, we have had many indicators that President Kieschnick is off the rails, but this! We can produce Scriptures that say "Let your women keep silent"!
I submit to you that we don't need any more signs that the Missouri Synod is off the rails. When conservative pastors have to spend weeks explaining to their people why public devil worship is not acceptable for a district president, we can be sure that there is a sickness unto death. Yankee Stadium, Kieschnick's wife, Resolution 8-01a, Jesus First, holdovers from Seminex—these are not the problem anyway, but the natural behaviors of what T.S. Eliot called the hollow men. Our jeremiads about the Missouri Synod, peppered with the latest list of offenses committed by the liberal left are falling on deaf ears because the ears of the people to whom we are speaking are, in large part, . . . deaf.
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
Only stuffed men can be swayed by word games about sequential prayers, "gender" equality, the need for relevance. Only hollow men can be tempted by manufactured feelings of belonging, of meaning, of community when they hear "I can fly higher than an eagle / 'Cause you are the wind beneath my wings." Only men without chests will send their adolescents to a colossal gathering of Christian rock stars and 35,000 teenagers in shorts and T-shirts for some sort of catechesis in Christianity, no matter who sponsors it. But this is the age in which we find ourselves, the age of the hollow men, and, I am afraid that this modern mind-set is not limited to the left—whether in the Western world, the United States, the Missouri Synod, or Lutheranism in general.
That term, "men without chests," belongs to C.S. Lewis, from his prophetic work, The Abolition of Man. This book is a brilliant distillation of the spirit of modernity, that universal Zeitgeist that rules the hearts and minds of nearly everyone in the Western world today, conservative and liberal alike. That spirit is the product of constant conditioning by the culture—its media, its deracinated way of life, its therapeutic leadership, its hatred for natural law, its animosity toward the traditional social order, authority in general, and the family in particular. And the result of this constant conditioning is that men are made empty, convinced that everything outside of them is not knowledge to assimilate but rather stimulus for their affections. This modern confusion of knowledge with affections is a kind of superantinomianism, which works on a society, to borrow from my friend, Harold O.J. Brown, like AIDS works on a body. The Devil no longer has to worry about propagating false teaching: The very words by which the true doctrine is expressed are rendered meaningless and unhearable.
In a separate essay, called “The Death of Words,” Lewis tells how the corruption of language leads to the destruction of thought. “There are,” he said, “indeed, few words which were once insulting and are now complimentary—democrat is the only one that comes readily to mind. But surely there are words that have become merely complementary—words which once had a definable sense and which are now nothing more than noises of vague approval? The clearest example is the word gentleman. This was once a term which defined a social and heraldic fact [namely, that a man belonged to the landed gentry, bearing a coat of arms]. The question whether Snooks was a gentleman was almost as soluable as the question whether he was a barrister or a Master of Arts. . . . The word ha[s] become merely eulogistic, and the qualities on which it [is now] based var[y] from moment to moment even in the mind of the same speaker. This is one of the ways in which words die. A skillful doctor of words will pronounce the disease to be mortal at that moment when the word in question begins to harbour the adjectival parasites real or true. . . . When we begin saying that he is a ‘real gentleman’ or a ‘true gentleman’ . . . we may be sure that the word has not long to live.”
Why does this happen? What is it about modern culture that causes our words, “in their last decay, to go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad”? The answer seems to be the moment at which the society in question ceases to be taught, through words and living examples, the correct meaning of those words. Lewis takes us through a list of examples: Whereas abstract and concrete used to “express a distinction that is necessary to thought,” they are now synonyms for vague and clear. So, too, have practical and modern become worthless words, as have medieval and barbarian. Lewis, having died the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated, had the good fortune not to be around to witness what became of verbs such as judge and discriminate, let alone the adjective inappropriate. I’m sure that he would have enjoyed the inner logic of such common utterances as “I don’t hang around with people who discriminate.”
Now, look at the word Christian. Why do we talk about “conservative Christians” versus “liberal Christians”? Because, by itself, Christian means “nice.” Are you judging me? That’s not Christian! “The other day,” says Lewis, “I had occasion to say that certain people were not Christians; a critic asked how I dared say so, being unable (as of course I am) to read their hearts. I had used the word to mean ‘persons who profess belief in the specific doctrines of Christianity’; my critic wanted me to use it in what he would (rightly) call ‘a far deeper sense’—a sense so deep that no human observer can tell to whom it applies.” Now, consider the word Lutheran. In the popular imagination, I think that Garrison Keillor has managed to associate Lutheran with dour, anal retentive, and sentimental. If the tagger line for the recent and widely praised Luther movie (in which the article on which the Church stands and falls is not mentioned) is any indication, Lutheran means “rebellious, ingenious, liberationist.” Others might say it means “free-thinking” or “given to defer to conscience.” For many, it simply means
“us” as opposed to “them.” “Are you a Lutheran?” “Well, I was raised Lutheran.” “How so?” “Well, I was confirmed in the eighth grade.”
Now, we have to go about distinguishing ourselves as “confessional Lutherans” or “conservative Lutherans.” One has to wonder: Is the word Lutheran dead? We can take it to the next level and inquire about the Lutheran . . . Church . . . Missouri . . . Synod. Are we walking together with David Benke, the charismatics, Bill Hybels, Michael W. Smith, Rick Warren, and the Pastoral Leadership Institute? Is it Lutheran to abolish the Mass or to “keep it special” by refusing to celebrate it on Sundays and Holy Days? Can gatherings where men are communed who reject the Real Presence be known as “church,” which presupposes the right administration of the Sacraments? Perhaps Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is just another synonym for good or us as opposed to them.
In fact, as Lewis contends in “Men Without Chests,” good does not really mean good any more. Rather, it implies, “I feel good,” or “I approve.” Lewis mentions an English textbook he’d been sent as a review copy, which he refers to as The Green Book. He calls the authors “Gaius and Titius,” in order to protect their identities. In one portion of The Green Book, Gaius and Titius criticize the poet Coleridge for daring to judge that one person’s description of a waterfall was correct (he who called it “sublime”), while the other person’s wasn’t (namely, he who called it “pretty”). Now, Coleridge was right, of course, because a waterfall cannot be “pleasing because of it’s gracefulness,” the way a woman or even a trinket can rightly be said to be “pretty.” But this waterfall had lofty grandeur, and so it was, indeed, called “sublime,” for, indeed, it was sublime. What Gaius and Titius do, though, is to criticize Coleridge’s ability to make any such judgment at all. “What [the man] was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word “Sublime” or, shortly, “I have sublime feelings.” They go on to conclude that “we appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.”
First, Lewis points out the simple lapse in logic here. “This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites of the qualities projected.” In other words, what I feel in the presence of a sublime waterfall is not sublimity but humility. But never mind that. The deeper problem is the judgment against judgment, which is a judgment against the precise and objective meaning of words. What Gaius and Titius—and Benke and Kieschnick—are saying is that a word such as Lutheran cannot and should not be defined by an objective standard such as the Book of Concord but, rather, by the consensus or the feelings of the voting delegates (or, perhaps, the members of some Blue Ribbon Panel).
“You, sir, simply are not a Lutheran if you believe and teach that.” “Nonsense. I’m the president of the Atlantic District. And I know in my heart that I’m a Lutheran.”
When words die, the result is that those who use them communicate precisely nothing, while those who hear them learn precisely nothing. Instead, we all become like the navel-gazing Socrates, knowing ourselves, and, when I speak, I am, like Walt Whitman, singing a song of myself. We know nothing really of our own condition as fallen, hollow men, but rather are Lewis’ “trousered apes,” aware only of our own brute desires. How, exactly do you reason with a trousered ape? “I don’t know,” he says, “I just prefer a more contemporary style of worship.” The answer, of course, is “You prefer that which is wrong. Here’s why,” but now you’ve gone and judged, so now it is time to turn you off.
“You are a syncretist.” “No, I certainly don’t feel that way.” “But you just prayed with a Muslim and a Jew.” “No, the Muslim prayed, then I prayed, and a Christian should never feel like he cannot pray.”
Men such as Gaius, Titius, Benke, and Kieschnick are, in Lewis’ term, conditioners. In other words, they believe that the whole business of leading, teaching, and even ministering involves producing certain emotional responses in people through employing particular conditions. In Lewis’ day, the conditioners set about their task by debunking all of the traditional understandings of literature. The action of literary debunking is really an exercise in forcing young minds to read their own emotions through the text.
“David and Jonathan must’ve been gay.” “Why do you say that?” “Because I am gay, and that’s how I feel when I read about their love.”
What Gaius and Titius did not have was 24-hour-a-day cable television and rock music at their disposal. Life, as we know it, revolves around a technology whose purpose is to convey advertisements, which is to say, conditioning. Surrounded by the medium of emotional manipulation and marketing, with everything set to an unconscious dance rhythm (with accents on two and four), we have no need for vigorous debunking. The medium is, indeed, the message, and the message is this: Your happiness is all that matters. The customer is always right. Be true to yourself. The truth is where you find it. Our entire society is devoted to entertainment—and not just entertainment qua entertainment. We get our news through members of the screen actors’ guild, in the form of infotainment. Entertainment is our babysitter. Entertainment teaches us our letters and numbers. Entertainment helps us with Sunday School, VBS, and Bible Class. Entertainment keeps us company and helps us go to sleep. Entertainment is in our hospital rooms, our minivans, and, of course, in our churches. I can pay $50 for Bears tickets, so I can go watch the plays up close on the jumbotron. And, in each case, what I take with me is this: I enjoyed that. That was good.
“What was the Bible Class about?” “Oh, we watched a video of Art Just talking about the liturgy.” “Oh, good. Did you enjoy it?” “Yeah, it was good.”
The hideous assumption that lies beneath the world of conditioning is that self-fulfillment, feeling something, is the measure of all things. I can be a liberal and really believe that “when we use the more contemporary songs, I just really feel like I’m in God’s presence.” Or, I can be a conservative, reared in a conservative church, and say, “No, I don’t much care for that contemporary stuff. That’s not Lutheran.” But, in the modern world, both can come from the same place. “That’s not Lutheran” can simply mean, “I don’t like that, and no one should like that,” but, if such a statement is not based on an objective definition of what it means to be Lutheran, then what we have in the above disagreement is a distinction without a difference. The terms of the debate have determined its outcome: We have different tastes. Of course, what the author of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe was not saying is that emotions have no place. “Until quite modern times,” he writes, “all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.” But sons of Adam have to be taught the objective meaning of those objects, else they will never arrive at the properly merited reverence or contempt. Trousered apes, of course, can know nothing of this, because they can only be taught to react, not to think or to know. But Coleridge, on the other hand, was pleased by the sublime waterfall, and that was all due to the waterfall, and the knowledge that he possessed, not to his visceral experience of it.
The knowledge that God established a natural order that is known universally is what we call the natural law. Lewis used the term “Tao” as shorthand to refer to it. We Lutherans are right to add that the Law is powerless to save and lex semper accusavit, but we also admit along with St. Paul that those without the Law were a law unto themselves, having known what can be known through the things that are created. Hence, for example, St. Paul refers to sodomy as “that which is unnatural,” an observation that even a mind darkened by sin can make. Knowledge of the natural order cannot save, but neither can simple breathing or eating or drinking—all of which are essential for our survival. “If children were instructed and trained in schools,” said not Lewis but Luther, “or wherever learned and well-trained schoolmasters and schoolmistresses were available to teach the languages, the other arts, and history, they would then hear of the doings and sayings of the entire world, and how things went with various cities, kingdoms, princes, men, and women. Thus, they could, in a short time set before themselves as in a mirror the character, life, counsels, and purposes—successful and unsuccessful—of the whole world from the beginning; on the basis of which they could then draw the proper inferences and in the fear of God take their own place in the stream of human events. In addition, they could gain from history the knowledge and understanding of what to seek and what to avoid in this outward life, and be able to advise and direct others accordingly.”
What Luther describes here is not what we have in today’s schools, whether public or, in most cases, Christian or Lutheran. Instead, even when teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, our modern schools are devoted to conditioning. We have long since disposed of the classical Trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, because that is completely out of step with the age of hollow men. In its place, we have, from the earliest ages, propaganda (which is to say, conditioning) followed by discussions, which is to say, emoting, the fruit of conditioning.
“May God preserve for our German Lutheran Church the treasure of her parochial schools!” cried C.F.W. Walther, after which he prophesied, “Everything depends on that for the future of our church in America.” I often jest that the Missouri Synod is about a generation behind the American evangelicals, who are about a generation behind the American liberals. One reason for this is the separation that Missouri used to enjoy by virtue of her clannish (I do not mean that as a synonym for bad) existence as German speakers who lived in their own neighborhoods and had their own peculiar customs, traditions, and schools. This isolation insulated Missouri for a time from the age of hollow men. Now we are suburbanized, Americanized, and rejoice to have the Internet in our classrooms.
Anyone who knows the history of Missouri knows of her commitment to parish education. Walther (following Luther) ascribed the responsibility of visiting the schools to the pastoral office. This is, in fact, one way that we “can distinguish between a true pastor of the church and an hireling, between a pastor in name only and a real pastor. For how can someone who does not care about the foundation be seriously concerned about the building?” The crumbling foundations of the LCMS, therefore, reflect, in part, a neglect of the pastoral office.
It is easier to see that the conditioners of modernity have a full grasp on the left and center of the Missouri Synod. Through their acceptance of the philosophy of Willow Creek and the general Church Growth Movement, they have bowed the knee to what Lewis called “that hideous strength,” since the very philosophy of Willow Creek is for pastors to see themselves as managers and embrace their role as conditioners! But what can we say of the laity in confessional Missouri? How much Lutheran dogma has penetrated their minds and imaginations? What can we do to counter an entire lifetime spent in the culture of trousered apes? How does a solid Law-Gospel sermon stack up against ten or twenty hours of conditioning in front of the television, or car rides and shopping trips and airports and restaurants filled with mind-numbing pop music, or two decades spent in the classroom with Gaius and Titius? Can one hour a week spent attempting to memorize the Small Catechism transcend the death of words? How do we switch out of conditioning mode? The answer, in part, of course, is the power of the preached word. God still accompanies His Gospel, to be sure, and breaks the hearts of unwilling sinners, converting them and making them willing. However, there is, here, to some extent, a parallel to speaking in tongues. If my mind is conditioned not to hear words for what they are, if my heart is trained to look for a fix instead of thrilling at the objective truth that the Lord has condescended to save me, then I don’t have ears to hear. We are neck-deep in the quicksand of dead words and dead minds, and what we are faced with is nothing short of the abolition of Lutherans.
This problem can only be addressed by pastors and parents who are willing to do whatever it takes to preserve Lutheranism here in the United States. Those are strong words, but not nearly as strong as Luther’s. “What do you think?” he asks. “Are you not in danger that the wrath of God may suddenly overtake you, who go on heedlessly, as if you were doing right in not instructing your children? And when his judgment comes, you will have to say that you are righteously condemned to hell as one of the most impious and most hurtful of men. And if you would now, in the present life, rightly consider the matter, you would be filled with terror.” Luther understood that the survival of his people depended on this. How much more so is this true today, when public schools and media (and many, many churches!) do not merely teach what is wrong but inoculate young minds to the very concept of truth, of objectivity, of the Tao, of nomos, of words?
However, in the midst of the chaos, as Jack would say, Aslan is on the move. There are Lutherans who are turning back toward classical learning. Not only are they catechizing using a classical method (grammar first, then logic, then rhetoric), but they are teaching language, science, and history in this manner as well. Some are organizing classical Lutheran schools, which is encouraging and which places the pastor in the hands-on role of shepherd and not mere hireling, in Walther’s words. Perhaps more encouraging are the little enclaves of homeschoolers who are using the classical method and eschewing Gaius and Titius so that their children will instinctively eschew Benke and Kieschnick. And, contrary to the modern Lutheran practice, they are not leaving the role of catechizing their children to the pastor, but using classically oriented curricula such as Pastor Bender’s fine materials, and teaching their children in a simple way, at home, as Luther prescribed. I say “more encouraging,” because this has so many benefits beyond the imparting of knowledge, as opposed to conditioning, to the child (which is, itself, an immeasurable benefit): Homeschooling, when properly undertaken, pulls families together and mothers out of the workplace, destroys frivolous activities in all-too-busy schedules, and reinforces the authority of parents in the eyes of their children. (I have seen this happen time and again, where the relationships between father and son, mother and daughter, are profoundly bolstered, because parent is now sitting down at his own table to teach his child.) In addition, and perhaps equally important, the pursuit of classical homeschooling so often means the re-education of parents, whose own learning was at the hands of the conditioners. Eyes that were once glassy during sermons and Bible studies are now come to life, as the exercise of objective learning throughout the week has retrained the mind to hear the words that are being spoken from the pulpit.
In order to stay the abolition of Lutherans, however, we must go further. There must be nothing short of rigorous teaching of the Lutheran Confessions in the parish, particularly targeting heads of households, who can then transmit their knowledge to their families. Sinful, neglectful hearts must be awakened by the thunder of the Law, and compelled to learn the Faith, even as Luther did five centuries ago. Parents and, particularly, heads of households, must be presented with no other option: To neglect the Word is to sin. Of course, there can be no Law without the Gospel, and broken, repentant hearts must be salved with the objective forgiveness of sins given by the cross of Jesus Christ. That is, in fact, the end of all our efforts: the proclamation of the glorious Gospel.
I envision a revived church of the Augsburg Confession that is small but solid, comprising small enclaves of churches that are little universities. Where classical schools cannot be formed, classical homeschooling co-ops can, with pastors who have, by virtue of their seminary training, learned at least one classical language, there to advise, guide, and teach. I envision heads of households, broken from hearing of their transgression of the Law, forgiven through eating the Body and Blood of Christ, and committed to faithful attendance at the pastor’s regular class on the Book of Concord. I envision children who are much, much younger than today’s eighth-grade confirmands, who will be able to be examined because their parents have taught them the catechism. I envision churches full of people for whom vacuous, modern worship is never a temptation, because they know that the Church’s liturgy is sublime. I envision a Lutheran laity that knows what it means to be Lutheran and can tell you why the church stands and falls on justification by grace alone through faith alone.
This goes beyond the preservation of a corporate entity headquartered in St. Louis. In the words of another St. Lewis, “The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.” The hand of the conditioners is all around us—around the very throats of our children. If we do not rise up to defend them, we may live to see the abolition of Lutherans.
Aaron D. Wolf is the associate editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and attends Reformation Evangelical Lutheran Church, U.A.C. (LCMS), in Rockford, Illinois.
2005-08-20 21:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE]And here, we were so interested in getting more people to make a commitment to Christ that we began to study an important tape series from a church down the highway in Barrington, where the innovative leaders had discovered that "lost people matter to God," had gone "inside the mind of unchurched Harry and Mary," and had realized that unbelievers are really just "seekers" who need a church free of ecclesiastical jargonââ¬âa "safe place." Why, in the world, would we want to cling to our legalistic church jargon and methodology, if that kept us from getting one soul to commit his life to Christ? Our poorly attended Wednesday night service was transformed into a small group for leaders at the pastor's house, where we listened to Bill Hybels explain the Willow Creek philosophy, carefully and methodically debunking our traditionalist, legalistic mentality. I knew that my calling to ââ¬Årock for Godââ¬Â was, in reality, much deeper: Lost people matter to God, and I needed to become a pastor and dedicate myself to creating environments where they would be free to respond to His invitation.................................................................................
It is easier to see that the conditioners of modernity have a full grasp on the left and center of the Missouri Synod. Through their acceptance of the philosophy of Willow Creek and the general Church Growth Movement, they have bowed the knee to what Lewis called ââ¬Åthat hideous strength,ââ¬Â since the very philosophy of Willow Creek is for pastors to see themselves as managers and embrace their role as conditioners[/QUOTE]Fascinating article, by someone who clearly has grasped the whole [weltenshaung of fundamentalism. I especially enjoyed his familiarity with the Willow Creek philosophy, and these other little code words which permeate the consiousness of those in fundamentalism aware in a general sense that something is going on, but aren't exactly sure what, let alone articulate this to skeptics outside of this weltenshaung.
I never BTW realized Wolf was a MS Lutheran. It seems like I'd read something with this rough title in [I]Chronicles [/I], but I'm not exactly sure what it said. (This title from C.S. Lewis I think is a rather popular one).