Flashback Posts working again

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Because people have commented on it, I felt the need to announce a change to the BJS homepage.

The “Flashback” feature was originally designed to bring some of our “oldie but goodie” posts to your attention periodically. Unfortunately for a year or so it’s been broken — one of the WordPress upgrades broke it; I didn’t notice it immediately, and by the time I noticed it it was too late to try to figure out which update broke it.

Anyway, I finally got fed up with it and researched the problem and am pleased to announce that it’s now fixed!

You will notice the 6th box down on the homepage has the Flashback graphic on the left side of it. Each time the homepage is replotted, 10 random posts are pulled from the “Flashback” category and cycle through that box. You can use the left/right buttons to go to a post you want if you see one you want to read more of.

You can also review all of our Flashback posts by clicking here or on the Flashback graphic to the left of the slider.

We would welcome recommendations for other posts that should be placed in this category .. since it has been non-functional for so long we haven’t even attempted to classify any new posts, and we didn’t do a complete survey of all our posts when we initially came up with the idea at our last redesign of the website. I’m sure we have many posts written since we first created this blog in June of 2008 that would welcome a reread. Of course, I’m sure there are some posts that we’d all rather forget about, but that the life of a blog.

Thanks for your attention, and a very blessed Reformation celebration to you!

 

P.s. sorry to all those who “complained” about it not working .. yes, I read your comments; I just couldn’t fit the time in to dig into the code to figure out what went wrong.

 

 

And .. for your enjoyment, here’s a duplicate of the flashback slider as seen on the homepage:

 

Flashback

Pew and Lutherans

(from Mollie) Gene Veith pointed the way to a few other bloggers who have been looking at the LCMS-specific numbers coming out of that massive Pew report on religion in America:

The survey found that only 84% are absolutely certain there is a god; 12% are fairly certain.
9% seldom go to church; 2% never do.
Only 42% said the Bible should be taken literally.
28% believe there is one correct way to interpret scripture.

I gather that the assorted bloggers thought these numbers were bad. Actually, I’m not so sure. The percentage of people not going to church is very low compared to other churches and it’s somewhat out of our line of thinking to expect sinful people to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy 100 percent of the time.

As for the other figures, I kind of think the questions are bad. I wrote a little bit about this elsewhere, but here is just one of the questions that Pew asked:

Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded?

How would you answer that question? Yes? No? I believe in heaven — I don’t believe in people in people who have led good lives.

Another question asked people if they believe in a “literal” interpretation of Scripture. We hopefully all believe the Bible is the word of God. But do you believe in a “literal” thousand year reign? Do you believe Jesus is literally a door?

I think the survey had some serious limitations. But what do you think of the results?

The Call Process Primer

The best pastor is the one God has sent you.
The best pastor is the one God has sent you.

Calling a new pastor is a great and glorious occasion.  It can however be a hard time as well.  Your congregation is going through a lot of things after losing its pastor.  There is grief in many situations at his departure. There may be some who are glad.  To make matters worse everyone seems to get an opinion on what should happen next.

The following are some general thoughts/opinions/suggestions/clarifications about the Call Process.

First of all, you will want to be familiar with your congregation’s constitution and bylaws to see the procedure that needs to be followed.  It may be very specific, but could also be generic.  Whichever it is, you will want to follow it to the letter.

Your District President will likely want to be involved in the process.  The call process is your congregation’s call process.  It is not the District President’s process.  Follow your Constitution and Bylaws.  The Call List normally involves the input/counsel of the District President (and normally it should), but it does not always have to.  Here is the exact section of the LCMS Bylaws which spells out the congregation’s responsibility and also District’s in regards to calls (District Bylaws cannot contradict these).  Please note the only requirements are that you seek counsel of your District President (2.5.1) [the exact definition of “counsel” is not known] and that you call a man who is on the clergy roster of the LCMS (2.5.2) or follow the appropriate call process for calling from the seminaries.  That is the congregation’s responsibility to follow for its continued membership in the LCMS.  Anything else is recommendation or advice only.

2.5  Calling Ministers of Religion by Congregations

2.5.1       Congregations shall seek the counsel of their respective district presidents when calling ordained or commissioned ministers.

2.5.2       Congregations that are members of the Synod shall call and be served only by (1) ordained ministers who have been admitted to their respective ministries in accordance with the rules and regulations set forth in these Bylaws and have thereby become members of the Synod; (2) candidates for the pastoral ministry who have satisfied the qualifications and requirements for assignment of first calls by the Council of Presidents acting as the Board of Assignments; or (3) ordained ministers who are members in good standing of church bodies that have been formally recognized to be in altar and pulpit fellowship with the Synod when agreements for such calls are in place.

2.5.3       Congregations that are members of the Synod shall call only (1) commissioned ministers who have been admitted to their ministries in accordance with the rules and regulations set forth in these Bylaws and have thereby become members of the Synod; (2) candidates of LCMS colleges and universities who have satisfied the qualifications and requirements for assignment of first calls by the Council of Presidents acting as the Board of Assignments; or (3) commissioned ministers (or those holding positions comparable to commissioned ministers) who are members in good standing of church bodies that have been formally recognized to be in altar and pulpit fellowship with the Synod when agreements for such calls are in place.

2.5.4       Congregations that violate these requirements and persist in such violation shall, after due admonition, forfeit their membership in the Synod.

(the LCMS Handbook can be found at lcms.org or a PDF copy: 2013 LCMS Handbook_January_12_2015_v2)

There are really two directions which a call can go out to – the field and the seminary.  The process changes based upon which type of call you want to pursue.  Calling from the seminary involves an application for a candidate (a man ready to be ordained) and follows the bylaws involving the seminary and the Council of Presidents placement procedures.

Calling from the field will follow more of what I describe below with nominations, sorting through the mix, and finally calling.  Calling from the field indicates that the man you want to call is already ordained and on the roster (Minister of Religion – Ordained [we use IRS language]) of the LCMS.  This man could already serve a congregation or could be on what is called “candidate” status.  Much has been written on Candidate (formerly CRM) status, but to put it simply – a “Candidate” who is already ordained is a man ready and willing to serve an LCMS congregation.  The rhetoric used about “damaged goods” or whatever about a Candidate is a violation of the 8th Commandment and should be rebuked.  There are many reasons men may end up as candidates, but their official LCMS status says they are ready, able, and willing to be actively serving congregations as pastors.  If such a man was unfit for the ministry he would be removed from the roster (which is the job of the District Presidents).

There are different things which may be brought up in the way of counsel from District Presidents.  These things are I believe brought up with the best of intentions, but may not serve the best interest of the congregation – getting a regular, faithful pastor sooner rather than later.  Also, they tend to increase the length of pastoral vacancies (and in general the shorter the vacancy the better).  Things like Intentional Interim Ministers might be brought up.  In my opinion they are not a good option because of the temporary nature of their call, which is rather muddy when considered against the lifelong nature of a Divine Call (here is a good presentation paper on the topic of Interim Ministry).  If there is reason to try an interim, why not just call a pastor who can help and stay rather than a man who is there for a bit and then gone?  Having a regular, faithful pastor is the best (and simplest) option for any congregational situation.  Similarly there are numerous self-studies or inventories or surveys which can be done in the congregation.  This may provide some information as to the condition of catechesis in the congregation, but not much more.  In my opinion they delay the best thing for a congregation – a regular, faithful pastor serving among God’s people.

Usually there is a time when the congregation takes nominations from its own members.  This can be a very good thing.  Some members may ask other pastors for input or names.  They may be familiar with pastors from their travels. They may be familiar with pastors from the internet.  The #1 quality you want in any pastor is faithfulness to the Scriptures and Lutheran Confessions.  Sadly, in a Synodical situation such as ours, some research about candidates may be necessary.  The internet can very helpful in seeing the kind of pastors that are faithful shepherd types.  Do a search for each pastors name and read some of his writings (Google Tip — put quotes around his name to find the specific pastor if it is a common last name).  These names may be submitted to the counsel of the District President (remember it is still the congregation’s call process) and often will make it onto the official Call List for the call committee and congregation to consider.  If the District President removes names from the nominations it is permissible to ask why the names were removed (sometimes reasons may be that the pastor has just taken another call, sometimes it may be an arbitrary rule like a pastor has to serve 3 years in his first parish [an unwritten rule which by no means has to be followed if the congregation desires to call a rostered clergyman with less than 3 years parish experience]).  If he adds names to the ones nominated it is permissible and a good suggestion to ask why the names were added (in my present parish situation, the District President added some excellent names that had not come up from the congregation).  In the end, so long as the congregation follows their constitution and bylaws with regards to process, consults the District President and then calls a man who is on the clergy roster of the LCMS, they can call anyone.  Remember, it is the congregation’s call process.

Usually a formal Call List will be established with the help of the District President.  When you start getting official information about pastors, each one will have two documents, one will be called a SET (Self-Evaluation Tool).  This includes a number of questions and answers on hot topic issues in the LCMS (worship practices, closed communion stuff, women and men, etc.).  These answers will vary greatly.  Plain speech is good to read, but often answers are not so plain.  Some pastors will fill every space with their beliefs/practices, some will be brief.  Some specific, some generic.  Some theological, some political.  It can be a hard document to read, and even harder to read between the lines.  An opinion on the SET – The SET is a sad piece of evidence to the diversity of beliefs and practices allowed in the LCMS.  It should be unnecessary, but since there is such diversity, it is necessary to be able to try to ascertain the beliefs and practices of the man you want to call.

See a blank SET form here (PDF).

The second document is the PIF (Personal Information Form) which is usually completed by both the pastor and his own District President.  This has more basic family and living situation information with some theological/practical commentary by the District President.  The commentary (often in the form of rating) is usually on strengths and weaknesses of the pastor.  There is also some commentary (rating) on worship and preaching.  The commentary (rating) is very subjective to the individual District President’s own views of things (or possibly another District President’s view if it has not been updated), which can be helpful if you know that District President, less so if you don’t.  The PIF comes from the candidate pastor’s District President, which of course may not be the same as your own.  Some tips for dealing with the subjectivity of the ratings could include asking the District President how many times he has heard the pastor preach (sometimes they may not have heard a sermon but still have to give a rating), what his last sermon was like, what does he mean by rating him as “liturgically flexible”, etc.  Clarifying questions like those can help get a sense for what the District President really means (after all, that way of rating things isn’t exactly fair to them either).

In more recent years, interviewing has become another way to sort through the candidates for a call.  Interviewing in my opinion should be unnecessary, but in such an environment of the LCMS today it may indeed be necessary.  This and the SET (and section of commentary on the PIF) are things that testify against us and we should grieve over their need to be used.

From these things and your requirements for the call process (from your congregation’s constitution and bylaws) the Call meetings should proceed.  The best result for any Lutheran congregation is to extend a call to a faithful candidate and have him accept it and work to begin his new pastorate serving God’s baptized people in your congregation.  Some things along this:

After a congregation extends (or issues) a call after the appropriate procedure, that pastor will need to be notified and information will need to be sent (Call Paperwork, other information [the sky is the limit here, newspapers, school information, extra congregational information, Constitution and Bylaws, anything to help in the deliberation process]).  The pastor will begin his deliberations of the call (using prayerful reason).  If he serves a congregation already he will need to notify them (this can be a time of anxiety in his current congregation).  It is also an anxious time in the pastor’s family (if he has one).  In the era of facebook and so forth, it is best to keep the call private until it has been publicly announced to the congregation he currently serves.  He may set a deadline to his deliberation, but he may not (there is no hard and fast rule).  If he accepts the call, he will begin his transition to your congregation (wrapping up at his current congregation, moving, installation dates, etc.).  If he doesn’t accept it (returns the call), your congregation will have to have another Call meeting to extend the call to another pastor.

This process is one that is a great and glorious, although as you can tell it has any number of opportunities for sin and temptation as well.  Work together as a congregation, knowing that the Lord God who sends out laborers into the harvest is going to send a man to serve Him in your congregation.

Here are some other tips while this process is ongoing:

Pray.  Prayer is essential to the call process.  God has commanded us to pray in all situations, and even better, He has promised to hear our prayers.  We expect God to provide pastors for His flocks (having a pastor is a need of the baptized, God supplies our needs).  We are tempted to become anxious or despair.  Prayer teaches us who is in control.  It is an exercise of faith and piety.  It helps us guard against the evil one.  Pray for your congregation, your future pastor, his family, his congregation (if he is currently serving), your District President and Circuit Visitor, your congregational leadership, your vacancy pastor and whoever else is involved in the process.

Love each other.  The call process can quickly bring up divisions in congregations.  Love covers a multitude of sins.  Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you (see the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism).

Study the Scriptures.  The Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy; Titus) are a great resource when thinking about pastors.  The texts about the pastoral office are also a great read.  Here are just a “few” that you will likely hear at an ordination (a pastor’s first call) or installation (at any pastor’s subsequent call):

Matthew 5:13-16; Matthew 9:35-38; Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-18; Luke 22:24-30; Luke 44-49; John 10:11-16; John 20:21-23; John 21:15-17; Acts 20:28; Romans 10:14-17; 1 Corinthians 4:1-5; 1 Corinthians 11:23-25; 1 Corinthians 15:58; 2 Corinthians 3:4-9; 2 Corinthians 4:6-7; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; 2 Corinthians 10:17-18; Ephesians 4:11-12; Philippians 1:3-8; 1 Timothy 3:1-7; 1 Timothy 4:6-7; 1 Timothy 4:14-16; 2 Timothy 1:13-14; 2 Timothy 2:1-5; 2 Timothy 3:14-17; 2 Timothy 4:1-5; Titus 1:5-9; Hebrews 13:17; Hebrews 13:20-21; 1 Peter 5:2-4; Joshua 1:7-8; Psalm 20:1-2; Psalm 27:1, 14; Psalm 84:7-8; Isaiah 6:1-8; Isaiah 40:9-11; Isaiah 42:1-9; Isaiah 52:7-10; Jeremiah 1:4-9; Jeremiah 15:19-21; Ezekiel 33:7-9; Ezekiel 34:11-16; Daniel 12:3.

Study the Catechism.  Here two parts are very important (study it all – its very short and even the most “mature” Christians ought to study it regularly).  The Fifth Chief part on the Office of the Keys and Confession (absolution) and the Table of Duties on Preachers and Hearers.

Prepare yourselves to receive your new pastor.  Yes, this means planning for helping with the move and settling in.  Yes, this means congregational celebrations.  Yes, this means being a big help to your pastor’s family wherever you can (in the ways they would receive help also in mind).  Yes, this means helping your pastor get settled and encouraging him as he settles in (he will be going through a strange “bitter sweet” time as he has left people dear to him and is glad to be now serving you).  Perhaps you would want to help him by having some of the congregation’s current traditions and practices written down so he can know those things that are free (for an article on this click here).  The absolute best way to receive your pastor is to attend Church (including his installation) and Bible studies.

Augsburg Confession, article V

1 So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted. 2 Through the Word and Sacraments, as through instruments, the Holy Spirit is given [John 20:22]. He works faith, when and where it pleases God [John 3:8], in those who hear the good news that God justifies those who believe that they are received into grace for Christ’s sake. 3 This happens not through our own merits, but for Christ’s sake.

4 Our churches condemn the Anabaptists and others who think that through their own preparations and works the Holy Spirit comes to them without the external Word.

Concordia : The Lutheran Confessions, Edited by Paul Timothy McCain (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 33.

 

Augsburg Confession, article XIV

Our churches teach that no one should publicly teach in the Church, or administer the Sacraments, without a rightly ordered call.

Concordia : The Lutheran Confessions, Edited by Paul Timothy McCain (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 39.

Communion Every Sunday: Surprise, Surprise

The reasons for Communion every Sunday are surprising. The reasons Lutheran churches fell away from this practice also are surprising.

Pr Klemet Preus, the author of the article republished below, was surprised about the reasons for and against. After visiting a congregation that had written into its constitution that Communion would be given at each Sunday service and hearing its pastor, John T. Pless, speaking definitely in favor of it, he was prompted to study.

communion wafer offeredHe found reasons for frequent Communion in the:

•  Gospel
•  Bible
•  early Church
•  Church before the Reformation
•  Lutheran Reformation

But suddenly, in the 19th Century, things changed. Many Lutheran churches offered Communion only monthly, and some only four times a year. Why? What happened? Oh, of course ….

More recently, every Sunday Communion has been making a comeback, and that is a good thing. Still, there are some practical concerns.

All of this and more are revealed in the following article, “Communion Every Sunday, Why?” written by Pr Klemet Preus, Epiphany, 2001.

+ + +

Communion Every Sunday, Why?
by Pr Klemet Preus

In the early 80s I was the Campus Pastor at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Each year we would get together with college students from the various Universities in the Upper mid-west and have a joint retreat. In 1983 we traveled from Grand Forks down to Minneapolis to the University of Minnesota and were hosted by Pastor John Pless and University Lutheran Church. During the Sunday service we celebrated Holy Communion as was typical at these retreats. But this time I noticed something different. ULC had written into its constitution that Communion would be given at each Sunday service. The Augsburg Confession was sited as support for this practice. “Among us the Mass is celebrated every Lord’s day and on other festivals, when the sacrament is made available to those who wish to partake of it, after they have been examined and absolved.”[1] Pastor Pless explained that the church had committed itself to the practice every Sunday communion.

Two things initially struck me. First, I thought that Pastor Pless was being a little extreme. This was a very radical notion I thought. And all the reasons why I would oppose such an idea immediately rushed into my mind. Wouldn’t this require much more work for the altar guild, the secretary, the pastor and the communion assistants? When would the church do Matins or Morning Prayer? Wouldn’t people begin to take Holy Communion for granted? People like to invite non-Lutheran family and friends to church when there is no communion. With communion every Sunday how could you do this? Isn’t this kind of Catholic? John is high church and very liturgical. So I initially figured this was a high church fad. But I wondered.

Second, I was surprised and a little miffed at myself that I had not really read this in the Lutheran Confessions before. Of course I had read the Confessions. I had read them at least four times, and many times since. And I had pledged to teach according to these documents as every Lutheran Pastor has. But I had not noticed this particular phrase before. Since I have always prided myself in being a true and faithful Lutheran pastor and theologian I was put off that I had to be educated by someone else. I had taken one course on the liturgy in the seminary. In it we learned how to do the various liturgies. We never really thought about how often to have the sacrament. We were taught to give it “often” whatever that meant. In the doctrine courses we learned that the true body and blood were given for the forgiveness of sins. But we had simply accepted the practices of our churches as proper. That practice was communion once a month or twice a month. Now I was being challenged to think again about the frequency of communion.

So, I spent the next year studying the issue. And I asked the right questions. What does the Bible say? What does our doctrine say? What do the Lutheran Confessions say? What was the practice of the earliest Christians? What is the custom of the church throughout the centuries? What are the positive and negative influences in history which shaped the church’s practice throughout the centuries and particularly our practice? Is the whole issue worth all the trouble? It took me about a year of thought, study and discussion with other pastors and Christians. I was not about to change my mind and worship patterns easily. This is what I found.

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
AND THE GOSPEL

The Bible never tells us exactly how often to have communion. Of course the Bible never tells us how often to have church services either. And the Bible never tells us how often to receive absolution. The Bible never says at exactly what age to baptize children.

There is a reason for this.

You can’t place laws and rules upon the gifts of the gospel. God tells us that we are saved in our baptism, in the Gospel and the Lord’s Supper. He never tells us how often to hear his word. He just figures that we will hear it as often as we can. He does not place rules on how often we should be absolved of our sins. He figures that we will take the forgiveness as often as we can. He simply forgives us through the gospel all the time. He never tells us how soon to baptize our babies. He just tells us how much they need it and what a blessing we have in Baptism. He figures we will baptize as early as possible.

So also with Holy Communion. He never tells us to receive it daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or once in your life. He simply tells us how much we need it and how great it is and He figures we will act accordingly. Then He tells us to do it often. He figures we will receive the Lord’s Supper as often as we can.

The Lord’s Supper is like kissing your wife or husband. The minute you have to place rules on how often, then the kiss loses its affectionate force. No one who is in love would ever say, “I think we have kissed enough,” or “That kiss will have to do for the rest of the day.” No one says, “How often do we have to kiss?” Instead we ask, “How often do we get to kiss?” We kiss and get kissed as often as we can.

The Lord’s Supper is more than a kiss from God. Through Holy Communion God gives us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation through the body and blood of Jesus. We need and want these blessings all the time. So the question should not be, “How often do we have to take communion?” Rather we should ask, “How often do we get to take communion.”

Logistically, the Lord’s Supper is more difficult to give than a kiss. First you have to gather the church together. You have to provide a place as well as the elements of unleavened bread and wine. You need to instruct as to the proper meaning of the Sacrament. And you have to do all this with a sense of respect and decorum. So, how often should the Lord’s Supper be given? In the Scriptures, in the practice of the early church, at the time of the Reformation, in the Lutheran Confessions, and until quite recently the answer has always been, “We give the Lord’s Supper at every Sunday Service.”

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
IN THE BIBLE

In the New Testament there is no mention of Sunday services without a mention of the Lord’s Supper. In Acts 2:42 Paul describes the earliest Services, “And they continued steadfastly in the Apostle’s teaching, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayer.” So the “breaking of bread” or Communion was a common part of the normal Christian services. These services were held in the evening since most of the people worked on Sundays. (It wasn’t until the year 321 AD that Sunday became a day of rest for Christians.) Another reference to Sunday services is found in Acts 20:7 where Luke says, “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” Then it describes a service with preaching followed by the “breaking of bread.” You get the impression from these verses that Sunday evening were reserved for two things: instruction in doctrine and Holy Communion.

I Corinthians shows the same thing. In chapter 11 the people “come together as a church.” Part of the coming together was to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Here the people would precede their services with a meal called “the love feast.” These feasts are also mention in Jude 12. In Corinth the people would exclude some of the poorer people from the love feast by starting the dinner before the common laborers got off work. “Wait for them,” Paul says. The people had gathered for the Lord’s Supper but were abusing it. Paul criticizes them for their abuse and corrects it by explaining how their services should be done. Listen to his works,

I hear that when you come together as a church there are divisions among you and to some extent I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval. When you come together, it is not the Lord’s supper you eat…I received from the Lord what I also give to you: that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread, etc. [2]

So Paul corrected the bad and kept the good. To Paul, the exclusion of people who were part of the church was bad. To Paul, Communion at every service was good.

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
IN THE EARLY CHURCH

The Earliest Christians gathered together on Sunday evenings. The services had two parts: the instruction and the Communion. Today these two parts of the service are reflected in some of our hymnals and our bulletins. There is the service of the Word and the service of the Sacrament. The recently published Lutheran Service Book, a hymnal of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, divides the Sunday services into three parts, “Confession and Absolution,” “Service of the Word” and “Service of the Sacrament.”[3] These divisions reflect what the church of Paul and the earliest Christians did in their services. The early Christians may not in all cases have had services every Sunday. Persecution, hardship, travel difficulty, and large distances may have made this impossible. But every time these Christians gathered together they received from their Lord His Word and His Sacrament.

The literature of the fist two centuries shows that Word and Sacrament were the universally common Sunday practice among Christians. One of the earliest Christian writings besides the Bible is called the Didache. It was written about the year 100 AD and possibly earlier, even before the last apostles had died. In this writing the people are directed to, “Assemble in common on the Lord’s own day to break bread and offer thanks; but first confess your sins so that your sacrifice may be pure.”[4] The earliest account of a Sunday service was written by a man named Justin Martyr in about the year 150 AD. This is his account:

On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good thing. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president [the pastor or minister who presided] in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.[5]

Notice how the Lord’s Supper was just as much part of the services as was the instruction in the Word. The earliest surviving Christian liturgy, called the Apostolic Traditions, was written about the year 215 by Hippolytus. This work is something like our Lutheran Agenda, the book which the pastor uses in leading the services. In Apostolic Traditions the Bishop and the people exchange greetings, “The Lord be with you, And with your spirit, Lift up you hearts, We lift them to the Lord, Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, It is right and proper to do so.” Then immediately follows the Words of institution. This was the every Sunday expectation of the early churches.[6]

I could provide quotations from the liturgies or theology books from almost every century until recently. All would show that the Sacrament of the Altar was celebrated every time the people of God gathered.

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
BEFORE THE REFORMATION

Over the years the church corrupted the sacrament. Sermons were eliminated from the Divine Service. The Sacrament gradually was viewed as a sacrificial act of worship by the priest rather than the gift of God’s salvation. The language used in the liturgy was Latin and not the language of the common people. It was thought that those in the pew didn’t really need to understand the words since they were spoken to God and not to the people. The people communed less and less often while the priests communed more and more. At the time of Thomas Aquinas (1277) communion was considered frequent if a person went two to four times a year. Alarmed at this paucity of participation edicts were periodically pronounced mandating the reception of the Sacrament. Everyone was to go to communion at least four times a year and especially on Easter. The press of the masses at Easter would require so much time that the custom of withholding the cup from the laity became widespread. This custom became church law in the church in 1415 AD so that by the time of Luther no lay-Christian had sipped upon the blood of Christ for more than a century. Superstition lead people to pilfer pieces of the bread and bring them home to worship. The people no longer sang the hymns or liturgical parts. The monks did this. Christianity had truly become a spectator religion. The grace of God was simply not received and consequently not treasured by the common Christian.[7]

Yet, through all the centuries and despite the crass and Christless corruptions of the Eucharist, the services in God’s house always featured the Sacrament of the Altar.

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
AND THE LUTHERAN REFORMATION

Martin Luther became embroiled with the Papists over the church’s understanding of grace. (Early Lutherans never viewed themselves as fighting with the Catholic Church but with the Pope, so they referred to their opponent as Papists.) Luther believed that grace was the forgiveness of sins earned for all by Christ and freely given in the Absolution, the Word, Baptism and the Lord’s supper. The Lord’s Supper, to Luther, is not something that the priest did for God but something that Christ has given to us. You can imagine the changes that were made.

Luther refused to change anything that was not wrong. He retained as much of the liturgy as the gospel would allow. So the collects, the prayers, the creeds, the readings, the order of service and the basic structure of Word and Sacrament were retained. And these are faithfully employed today in all Confessional Lutheran churches.Saulgau_Antoniuskirche_Seitenaltarblatt_Apostelkommunion

But changes were required. The Lutherans’ greatest concern was that the people get to know God better. Preaching was reestablished in the churches, since it had fallen into disuse. Luther wrote the liturgy in German. Now the people were treated to the Divine Service in their own language. They could understand what was being said and done. The Bible was translated into German so that the readings could be understood. Luther and many of his contemporaries wrote hymns so that the people could be taught the truths of Christ simply and could participate in the proclamation in the service. Catechisms were written and produced so that the people could be trained easily. The words of institution were no longer mumbled in Latin by the Priests. They were spoken or chanted loudly to the people in their own language. The main emphasis of the Reformation was that the people could understand the grace of God. These changes had salutary effects on the hearts and habits of God’s people. Communion attendance increased dramatically. In fact the Lutherans were attending the Sacrament so often that their Roman Catholic neighbors got a little jealous. Ironically, “the practice of frequent communions in the Church of Rome today owes much to Reformation inspiration.”[8]

But old habits die hard. Many Lutherans were reluctant to take communion every week. Some were afraid to receive the blood in the Sacrament. So the early Lutherans slowly and painstakingly taught and explained the need and blessings of the Lord’s Supper. They did not force. They simply taught. And they realized that people need time to adjust to change, even necessary change.

One change that Luther and the early Lutherans never considered was to drop the celebration of the Sacrament from the Sunday morning service. Luther Reed summarized the practice of the Early Lutherans.

“The appreciation and unbroken use of the Service by the Lutheran Church in all lands is noteworthy…. The church has everywhere retained the Service for its normal Sunday service. Other Protestant churches promptly abandoned the historic liturgy and established a type of preaching service separate from the Holy Communion…. The Lutheran Church restored the “primitive synthesis” of the early church by including in balanced proportion the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacrament in the principal service of the day.[9]

COMMUNION FREQUENCY
IN THE 19TH CENTURY

What happened? At the time of Luther the church celebrated communion every Sunday. By the middle of the twentieth century, when I was born, most Lutheran churches offered communion only once a month. What happened? It was my discovery of the answer to this question that convinced me to teach that we must return to the historic practice of communion every Sunday.

Old habits die hard. And praiseworthy liturgical habits must be guarded with great vigilance. Three factors lead to the loss of the practice of weekly communion among the Lutherans. The first is called Pietism. The Pietists stressed the importance of personal preparation for communion. This, in itself, is good. Luther said that fasting is good outward preparation. And the Lutheran Church has always insisted that communicant be prepared by learning the basic teachings of the catechism and by making a confession of sins. These practices are reflected in the Book of Concord, “Among us…the sacrament is available for all who wish to partake of it after they have been examined and absolved.”[10] But the preparation expected by the Pietists was different. It was not learning the true faith at all.

The Sacrament was surrounded with an atmosphere of awe and fear; excessive emphasis was place upon personal and intensely introspective preparation; and there grew up in the people’s minds a dread of possibly being unworthy and of “being guilty” of the body and blood of Christ. These morbid and exaggerated emphases upon preparation for the Sacrament, rather than upon the Sacrament itself, are still occasionally in evidence.[11]

I see this fear of the Sacrament occasionally today. I’ve heard people say that the reason they are uncomfortable with weekly communion is that they require time and spiritual effort to prepare themselves for the Sacrament. “If I take it too often I will not be able to be prepared.” These sentiments, while sincere, are not what Jesus wants. He does not want us to focus on our sins and our repentance so much that we neglect the forgiveness in the Sacrament. How does one prepare for the Sacrament? You learn the catechism. Remember your baptism. Go to confession. Receive the absolution. Believe. That is preparation.

The second factor that caused the Lutherans to give up weekly Communion is far worse. It is Rationalism. Pietists were Christians with a misplaced faith. Rationalists were not Christian at all. Leading rationalists were men whose names you vaguely remember from Western Civilization class in high school: Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Locke. Rationalists believed that their reason and understanding was the measure of all things. Their creed was that creeds were bad. The Rationalists spawned the Unitarian Church, the FreeMasons, Secular Humanism and the general age of unbelief in which we live. Rationalists rejected the belief that people are sinful. They denied the great events of God in Christ. Churches were turned into lecture halls. Preaching Christ was discarded in favor of flowery addresses intended to inspire. Sunday services became a time in which we could be impressed with each other and the Lord’s Supper is not conducive for that. In Germany the frequency of Sacramental celebration plummeted dramatically in the 1800s until the Liberal Lutheran practice approximated that the Roman Catholic Church prior to the Reformation.

The Lutheran Church that began migrating to America in the 1840s was not healthy. Its worship was impoverished and it practices lax. It had lost much of its doctrinal heritage and true doctrinally sound confessional pastors were rare. The pastors who did come to America, while dedicated, were often young and inexperienced. The New World was not flowing with milk and honey. Rather, it was teeming with forces that were foreign to Lutherans and to the gospel itself. Fred Precht has said, “The cumulative effects of the Thirty Years War, Pietism and Rationalism spanning almost two centuries, left the worship and the life of the churches at a low ebb at the opening of the 19th century…. It is to be noted that it was in this period of the church’s history that the large migrations of Confessional Lutherans to America took place.”[12]

The third factor, which led to a decrease in the frequency of the Sacrament especially in America, is the influence of Reformed and baptistic theology and preachers. Followers of John Calvin, early American revivalistic preachers, usually Baptistic in theology, denied that the Lord’s Supper is the true body and blood of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. To them it was fellowship meal of bread and grape juice, which was not needed more than a handful of times annually. Many early Lutherans came to America to escape the unbelief in the churches in Europe. These pioneers often found themselves with neither church nor pastor. They lived among the Mennonites, Moravians, and Methodists of America. The faithful Lutheran pastors who did serve the Lutherans often had to attend the needs of literally dozens of parishes. These “Circuit Riders” could visit their parishes only periodically and the people never could find a rhythm of regular Divine Services. Further, the abundant Baptistic and Methodistic itinerant preachers often enticed faithful New World Lutherans from their doctrinal roots. These revivalists did not believe in the saving benefits of the Lord’s Supper. Revivalism continues to influence Lutherans to this very day.

So Pietism, Rationalism and the Reformed Churches all worked their influence on Lutherans until we lost something very precious. Reed Summarizes,

Luther and his associates never would have approved of the “half-mass” commonly found among us today as the normal Sunday worship of our congregations. For two hundred years, or nearly half the time from the Reformation to the present, the normal Sunday service in Lutheran lands was the purified Mass, or Hauptgottesdienst, (High Divine Service) with its twin peaks of Sermon and Sacrament. There were weekly celebrations and the people in general received the Sacrament much more frequently than before. The ravages of war, the example of Calvinism, the later subjective practices of Pietistic groups in a domestic type of worship, and the unbelief of rationalism, however, finally broke the genuine Lutheran Tradition.[13]

COMMUNION FREQUENCY TODAY

Realizing our ragged history, honoring our heritage and treasuring the grace found in it, Lutherans of late have begun to teach the importance of communion every Sunday. The practice of equally stressing both the sermon and the Sacrament is not only consistent with the bible and practice of the first Christians it is uniquely Lutheran. The Roman Catholic Church has historically stressed the Sacrament, often to the exclusion of preaching. Protestants have historically stressed preaching often to the exclusion of the Sacrament. Lutherans have always tried to maintain a balance between the two. This balance has been called “The Twin Peaks,” “The primitive synthesis,” “The High Divine Service” or simply, “the Service of Word and Sacrament.”

Within Lutheranism in America and specifically in the Missouri Synod the frequency of communion has gradually increased over the last half century. Many life-long Lutherans born in the 20s or 30s can remember when communion was offered quarterly. By the sixties and seventies most Lutheran Churches celebrated the Supper at least monthly. Today almost all churches offer the Sacrament twice monthly. Certainly there has been an increase in the frequency of communion. In 1995 the Convention of the Lutheran church Missouri Synod passed the following Resolution:

Whereas, the opportunity to receive the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s Day was a reality cherished by Luther and set forth clearly with high esteem by our Luther confessions (Article XXIV of the Augsburg Confession and of the Apology); and
Whereas, Our Synod’s 1983 CTCR [Commission on Theology and Church Relations] document on the Lord’s Supper (p. 28) and our Synod’s 1986 translation of Luther’s Catechism both remind us that the Scriptures place the Lord’s Supper at the center of worship (Acts 2:42; 20:7; I Cor. 11:20, 33), and not as an appendage or an occasional extra; therefore be it
Resolved That the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in convention encourage its pastors and congregation to study the scriptural, confessional, and historical witness to every Sunday Communion with a view to recovering the opportunity for receiving the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s day.

The result of such study has lead many Lutheran congregations to establish every Sunday Communion. I am convinced that more and more congregations and pastors, as they study the issue, will make the change to communion every service if they have not already done so.

LEX ORANDI LEX CREDENDI

In the fifth century a theologian named Prosper of Aquitaine spoke these words. They mean: “The law of worship is the law of faith.” As we worship so we shall be believe and as we believe so we shall worship. The greatest teacher in the church has always been the Divine Service itself. Every child of seven who goes consistently to church knows the words of the Liturgy. We know what to expect. If something is missing we know. If something is added we know. If something is changed we especially know. Our children know the creed, the Lord’s prayer, the words of institution, John 1:29, I John 1:8-9, Hebrews 1:1-2 and a host of other passages because they say them each week. We learn how to confess our sins in the confession. We learn how God absolves. Our children know that God calls the pastor because they see him dressed in robes each week. We all know that the sermon is God’s word because we place it into a pulpit spoken by God’s pastor. We learn about Baptism when the babies are baptized. The Liturgy teaches. The Liturgy teaches us about the Lord’s Supper too.

The best way to teach our children and ourselves is to make them see the same blessings from God each week. Certain parts in the Sunday Services need to be observed and received each week. That way we immediately notice if they are gone. Each week we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we confess the Creed, we hear the Scriptures and we reflect upon the sermon. If these parts were missing we would feel like something was taken away. By using Worship Services which contain the same things week after week we are teaching ourselves and our children that these are blessings from God which are part and parcel of His service to us. I have talked to people who have gone to churches where one or more of these ingredients were missing, whether the creed or the Lord’s Prayer or even the sermon. They have shared with me that they felt like they had not fully been to church. The same thing should be said of the Lord’s supper.

We all teach our children and ourselves the importance and surpassing value of the Sacrament of the Altar. And that is good. We must make the Sacrament so much part of the Sunday morning expectation that all would immediately know that something was missing if it were not there. If we want to impress on our children the importance of vegetables we must serve vegetables every day. If we teach our children to love the Sacrament then we must serve it at every Divine Service. When our children grow up and attend some Reformed church with their friends let them say, “It was nice but they didn’t have the Lord’s Supper.” We need to change our expectations of the every Sunday service.

COMMUNION EVERY SUNDAY:
PRACTICAL CONCERNS ABOUT IMPLEMENTATION

But before such a practice is implemented, no matter how praiseworthy people need a chance to think about it. I studied the issue for over a year before I began to teach it. You should have the same chance for reflection. That is why I offer you this paper. It is to give you a chance to consider the Bible teaching and the history of the Church. But consider also your feelings. Below are many questions I have heard. Answers are given.

Q. Some have said, “Were we doing wrong not to have communion every Sunday?”

A. Of course not. Many early Christian communities did not have any kind of services every Sunday. They were not doing wrong. It is not a question of right and wrong. But once those communities were able to have services every Sunday they did so. So should we.

Q. Isn’t Communion every Sunday Roman Catholic?

A. Communion every Sunday is biblical. It was practiced long before there was a
Roman Catholic Church. In fact Lutherans have a stronger history of frequent communion the Catholics do. Besides, things are not bad just because they are Catholic. Silent Night was written by a Roman Catholic but we do not on that account stop singing it. The first Lutherans did not change things unless they were wrong. Presbyterians, Methodist and Baptists changed their worship style simply because it was Roman Catholic. The habit of changing worship or practice just because it is Roman Catholic is un-Lutheran.

Q. Isn’t this practice a bit extreme?

A. This was my initial reaction. I discovered that weekly communion is the common practice of most Christians throughout history and certainly of the first Christians and the first Lutherans. It may seem extreme to us because it is new to us. And, in fact, it is extreme. It is extremely comforting for sinners to be forgiven by Christ’s body and blood every week. It is extremely important to have the strength and assurance, which only the Sacrament can give.

Q. We practice closed communion. If I bring my friend or relatives to church I don’t want to have to make them uncomfortable about not communing. If we don’t have communion on a given Sunday I can bring my friends. Now what can I do?

A. This is real and valid concern. Of course we don’t want to make guests feel unwelcome. In the early church Christians would bring family and friends to the service of the Word. Then those who wished to commune would move to a different room altogether to have the Lord’s Supper. The doors would be closed before the service of the Sacrament began and no guests were allowed. That is how those Christians handled the issue.

I think that we need to consider why this is such a problem today. There is little doubt that the questioning of closed communion among us is a reflection of the influence of those churches around us who do not believe in the Lord’s Supper. In most churches today everyone is asked to commune. This is the common historic practice of all Reformed churches (Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Non-Denominational, etc.). It has become the practice of the ELCA because of the profound influences of Reformed theology upon that church. Many pastors in the LC-MS refuse to practice closed communion even though they have promised to do so upon entering the Synod. They often feel pressured by churches around us that simply have a different practice. But we must remember that these churches do not believe in the bodily presence of Jesus in the Sacrament.

When we refuse communion to someone we appear judgmental about a person’s faith. Such is not the case. We simply need to communicate that Holy Communion is an extremely intimate sharing between members who have a common confession based on the bible. Those who share this intimate meal should be known by us and confess with us. This is not a casual thing. Again, it’s like kissing your spouse. There has to be a certain commitment before that kiss can happen.

Practicing closed communion especially toward members of the ELCA is particularly difficult. Most of us have family and friends in the ELCA who are fine Christian people. Sometimes it is difficult for us to admit that our family members or friends belong to false churches. But it is necessary if we are to give an effective witness. Closed Communion forces this upon us. It is uncomfortable. We don’t like it. But it is necessary. These family and friends need to hear in a loving way that they are in a church which could seriously harm their faith or destroy it altogether.

I recently heard an inspiring essay from a pastor who is a professor and former bishop of the ELCA. In his essay he asked the rhetorical question, “We must ask whether this ELCA…any longer qualifies as bona fide Lutheranism. Indeed, is it a Christian Church?” We must love the Christian people in the ELCA enough to pray for them and follow of the example of this courageous Bishop who concludes his essay: “I have dedicated the remainder of my life to attempting to open the eyes of my brothers and sisters in the ELCA to the liberating, glorious truth of the infallible inerrant Word of God.”[14]

If you are inviting a friend or relative to church you probably would like them to join our church. Sooner or later they will have to be told about closed communion. Tell them right away. Don’t be embarrassed or ashamed. Simply speak the truth in love. I am convinced that any fair-minded person will accept our position and practice if it is explained patiently.

Q. Won’t Communion every Sunday be a lot of work?

A. Yes. And it is pretty obvious who the new work will fall upon – The altar guild. They must set up and take down the Sacrament twice as often. This requires either twice as many workers or the same people doing twice the work. So no new practice should be implemented until the guild has had an ample opportunity to recruit and train new workers. If elders help in the distribution of the Sacrament they would also have to help twice as much. This might require the congregation to approve and appoint more elders to help distribute the Sacrament.

Q. Won’t the services last longer? We are so rushed on Sunday as it is.

A. The Divine Service lasts longer than Matins or Morning Prayer. This is so because these other services were not originally intended to be Sunday morning services. They were morning services prayed and sung by the church in the middle of the week. Communion every Sunday might require us to examine again the best way in which to use our time on Sunday mornings. Congregations might have to tweak their schedules a bit. Most churches can devise ways in which to commune more quickly. That should be examined at any rate. At the same time it should be remembered that the 60-minute Divine Service is a recent American invention which has no mention in the bible and no historical precedent. Perhaps we need to reconsider our expectations that the Service of God be limited to only one hour a week.

Q. But kids are tough enough in church for 60 minutes and we are a church with lots of kids.

A. Again the practice of the early church solved this problem by not even allowing the uninstructed children to come into the Sacrament room. We probably don’t want to do this today. But there are solutions for the problem of antsy children which don’t require their parents to be deprived of the Blessed Sacrament. Work on it.

Q. I like Matins and Morning Prayer. I will miss them. Can’t we still do them?

A. A congregation could schedule mid-week Matins or Morning Prayer for those who really wanted to attend. But the time press of people’s midweek lives might render such prayer opportunities meager indeed. Many of the great songs in these liturgies, The Venite, The Magnificat, The Te Deum, even the Gospel Canticle can easily be employed occasionally in the Divine Service. These treasures of the church need not fall into disuse.

Q. I need time to think about these things.

A. Changes in the church, even salutary changes should be made slowly and with great deliberation. Take your time. Talk to your pastor. Study the issue. Talk to others in the church. Talk to the elders.

THE LUTHERAN ATTITUDE TOWARD
CHANGING THE SUNDAY SERVICES

Change should always be initiated with painstaking care, especially change in the liturgy. Too often pastors have promoted their own personal hobbyhorses without considering the feelings of the church. Consequently God’s people are sometimes harmed by the very men to whom God has entrusted their souls. This should never happen.

The early Lutherans were especially sensitive to this. Luther himself never initiated changes without first explaining to the people exactly why such a change was needed. And he was quite patient especially for a man with such strong convictions. One true anecdote will help to illustrate this. Luther believed very strongly that those who communed should receive both the body and blood in the sacrament. They called it “communion in two kinds.” But Luther also believed that the people needed to be taught the practice so that they could understand when it was implemented. When he was absent from Wittenberg for a few months his colleague, Andrew Karlstadt, began to give to the laypeople both the bread and the wine in Holy Communion. Luther believed that the people had not been given adequate time to get used to the idea. He returned to Wittenberg and promptly stopped the practice. At the same time he preached a series of eight sermons intended to explain the way the Gospel works. In his fifth sermon he said:

Now let us speak of the two kinds. Although I hold that it is necessary that the Sacrament should be received in both kinds, according to the institution of the Lord, nevertheless it must not be made compulsory nor a general law. We must rather promote and practice and preach the Word, and then afterwards leave the result and execution of it entirely to the Word, giving everyone his freedom in this matter. Where this is not done, the Sacrament becomes for me an outward work and a hypocrisy, which is just what the devil wants. But when the Word is given free course and is not bound to any external observance, it takes hold of one today and sinks into his heart, tomorrow it touches another, and so on. Thus quietly and soberly it does its work and no on will know how it all came about.[15]

It seems to me that Luther’s wise counsel would apply to us in a couple of ways. First, even a necessary change should never be imposed upon people against their will. Rather the Word changes people’s hearts. Then the change is made. Second, people accept change at different rates. It is wrong to force people to accept change before they are ready. People should not feel forced to do anything they do not want. Even taking the Lord’s supper, saving as it is, should never be forced upon people. Third, people should be allowed to receive the Lord’s Supper each Sunday just as people at Luther’s time were allowed to receive both kinds in the Sacrament. Eventually all the Lutherans began to receive the Sacrament in both kinds. But it took time. I am convinced that eventually the Lutheran churches will all offer the Sacrament at all their Sunday services. But it will take time. No one should feel forced. No one should treat a gift like a duty. Everyone should be free to change at the rate at which they feel comfortable.

One of the occupational hazards of being a minister of the Gospel is to expect things of people that you yourself never did. I took me a year to really be convinced that the Sacrament belongs in every Sunday service. Yet I often feel impatient when others don’t make the adjustment in a couple of weeks. Luther constantly reminds me that I need to give others the same chance that I was able to have.

God’s people are justifiably very cautious about any change. Pastors are justifiable jealous to give to the people as much of God’s blessings as they possibly can. Often people stubbornly refuse to be taught by their pastors. And often pastors have been insensitive if well intended. Pastors are called to teach and the people are called by God to learn from their divinely appointed pastors. But, unfortunately many in our churches have been hurt by change and have often felt as if change were imposed upon them. All should feel comfortable with even the best changes. Pastors are given the freedom and challenge to balance the responsibility of ministry with the needs of the people. That is why no pastor should ever promote programs where he is the beneficiary. Weekly communion is a practice it which all of God’s people benefit eternally. When God’s grace is promoted and served and people receive it in faith then the church is blessed.

CONCLUSION

Should the churches of Christ celebrate the Sacrament every Sunday? Yes they should. The Bible teaches it. The confessions of our church require it. The Gospel expects it. The history of the church shows it. The liturgy demands it. Our children need it. Our faith thrives on it. Our heritage gives it. Our God provides it.

When should this happen? Tragically we live in a time when the question actually needs to be asked. It should happen when the people of God have learned and are ready and eager to receive all the blessings of Christ on every Sunday service.

Klemet Preus
Epiphany 2001

[1] Augsburg Confession, Apology, Article XXIV paragraph 1
[2] I Corinthians 11:17-23
[3] Lutheran Service Book Concordia Publishing House, 2006
[4] Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1948, p. 23
[5] In the Stead of Christ, Kent Heimbigner, Repristination Press, 1997, p. 69-70
[6] A Study of Liturgy, Ed. Cheslyn Jones, SPCK, 1978 p. 213
[7] This is My Body, Herman Sasse, Augsburg Publishing house 1959, p. 52
[8] The Lutheran Liturgy, Luther Reed, Muhlenberg Press, 1948, p. 244
[9] Reed, p. 243-244
[10] Augsburg Confession, Apology, Article XXIV paragraph 1
[11] Reed, p. 244
[12] Lutheran Worship: History and Practice, Fred Precht, Concordia Publishing House, 1993, p. 83
[13] Reed, p. 244

[14] “ELCA Journeys: Personal Reflections on the Last Forty Years,” Michael McDaniel, paper given at the 2001 Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions, p. 7.
[15] Luther’s Works, Muhlenberg press, 1959 Vol. 51, p. 90

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies: Christmas and Saturnalia

Did Christianity Steal the Date of Pagan Winter Solstice Celebrations? The Roman celebration discussed in this article is the multi-day festival of Saturnalia.

The Mis-Use of Roman Sources: Saturnalia

In these articles we have seen the texts from the early Christians that show their reasons why they calculated particular dates for the Incarnation and Birth of Christ. These dates were based on the Passover texts. Even their calculation for the dates of the Creation of the universe centered on the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ at the Passover.

Saturnalia

Saturnalia is often talked about as if it were the same as Brumalia. And especially with reference to Christmas, these two occasions are also blended together with other hypothetical and real unrelated pagan festivals from various cultures.

Here we are going to separate Saturnalia from Brumalia. The reason for this is simple, they are not the same thing. Though there are some ancient documents that speak about these two occasions as happening at the same general time of the year, there is considerable variation in the ancient texts as to when Saturnalia could actually be celebrated.

Often the claims are that Saturnalia is the origin for Christmas caroling, gift giving, Christmas lights, and even the notion of celebrating the birth of a particular child.

What was Saturnalia?

One of the problems in describing Saturnalia is that there is no single ancient Roman document that describes the festival fully. The closest and fullest description comes from the 5th century A.D. by the hand of Macrobius in his work titled Saturnalia.

Of course, by the 5th century the dates for the Christmas celebration had long been established. So, while the modern claim that Christmas had been moved to December 25th in order to suppress or “baptize” the Saturnalia celebration is without any merit, there are these other aspects of the Saturnalia celebration that modern Christmas revisionists claim the Church stole from the pagan festival.

Saturnalia was a festival dedicated to honoring the pagan god Saturn. In Greece the name of Saturn was Kronos. Very often there are claims that the festival involved the celebration of a special birth. T.C. Schmidt has posted extensive quotations from Macrobius’ (5th Century AD) book titled Saturnalia. The quotations concern the nature and origin and history of the festival of Saturnalia.

From the quotations of Macrobius it becomes apparent that the Romans did not have consistent stories about the origin or the dating of the festival. Macrobius outlined four different traditions for the origin:

  1. The first tradition claims that the festival was instituted by Janus so that humans would honor their ruler Saturn (who had disappeared) for the gifts Saturn gave to humans: arboriculture, fertilizer, using symbols of Saturn’s effigy holding the sickle (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.24-26)

    “[24] It was during their reign that Saturn suddenly disappeared, and Janus then devised means to add to his honors. First he gave the name Saturnia to all the land which acknowledged his rule; and then he built an altar, instituting rites as to a god and calling these rites the Saturnalia—a fact which goes to show how very much older the festival is than the city of Rome. And it was because Saturn had improved the conditions of life that, by order of Janus, religious honors were paid to him, as his effigy indicates, which received the additional attribute of a sickle, the symbol of harvest.
    [25] Saturn is credited with the invention of the art of grafting, with the cultivation of fruit trees, and with instructing men in everything that belongs to the fertilizing of the fields. Furthermore, at Cyrene his worshipers, when they offer sacrifice to him, crown themselves with fresh figs and present each other with cakes, for they hold that he discovered honey and fruits. Moreover, at Rome men call him “Sterculius,” as having been the first to fertilize the fields with dung (stercus). [26] His reign is said to have been a time of great happiness, both on account of the universal plenty that then prevailed and because as yet there was no division into bond and free—as one may gather from the complete license enjoyed by slaves at the Saturnalia.”

  2. Another tradition says the festival was instituted by men Hercules left behind on Saturn hill. In this version the festival was created to help men be respectful of gods. (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.27)

    [27] Another tradition accounts for the Saturnalia as follows. Hercules is said to have left men behind him in Italy, either (as certain authorities hold) because he was angry with them for neglecting to watch over his herds or (as some suppose), deliberately, to protect his altar and temple from attacks. Harassed by brigands, these men occupied a high hill and called themselves Saturnians, from the name which the hill too used previously to bear, and, conscious of the protection afforded to them by the name of Saturn and by the awe which the god inspired, they are said to have instituted the Saturnalia, to the end that the very observance of the festival thus proclaimed might bring the uncouth minds of their neighbors to show a greater respect for the worship of the god.

  3. A third tradition claims a different geographic origin, that the festival was instituted by the Pelasgians who had migrated into Sicily at the oracle. In this tradition the festival was made to honor and thank Saturn, Dis, and Apollo. This tradition claims that at the festival people originally offered human sacrifices, but Hercules came and convinced them to make masks and burn candles in stead of the human sacrifices. In this particular tradition it is claimed that people of position and power demanded gifts, for a while, from the poor during the festival. (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.28-33)

    [28] I am aware too of the account given by Varro of the origin of the Saturnalia. The Pelasgians, he says, when they were driven from their homes, made for various lands, but most of them flocked to Dodona and, doubtful where to settle, consulted the oracle. They received this reply: “Go ye in search of the land of the Sicels and the Aborigines, a land, sacred to Saturn, even Cotyle, where floateth an island. Mingle with these people and then send a tenth to Phoebus and offer heads to Hades and a man to the Father.”8 Such was the response which they received, and after many wanderings they came to Latium, where in the lake of Cutilia they found a floating9 island, [29] for there was a large expanse of turf—perhaps solidified mud or perhaps an accumulation of marsh land with brushwood and trees forming a luxuriant wood—and it was drifting through the water by the movement of the waves in such a way as to win credence even for the tale of Delos, the island which, for all its lofty hills and wide plains, used to journey through the seas from place to place. [30] The discovery of this marvel showed the Pelasgians that here was the home foretold for them. And, after having driven out the Sicilian inhabitants, they took possession of the land, dedicating a tenth of the spoil to Apollo, in accordance with the response given by the oracle, and raising a little shrine to Dis and an altar to Saturn, whose festival they named the Saturnalia.
    [31] For many years they thought to propitiate Dis with human heads and Saturn with the sacrifice of men, since the oracle had bidden them: “Offer heads to Hades and a man (xa) to the Father.” But later, the story goes, Hercules, returning through Italy with the herds of Geryon, persuaded their descendants to replace these unholy sacrifices with others of good omen, by offering to Dis little masks cleverly fashioned to represent the human face, instead of human heads, and by honoring the altars of Saturn with lighted candles instead of with the blood of a man; for the word (porta means “lights” as well as “a man.” [32] This is the origin of the custom of sending round wax tapers during the Saturnalia, although others think that the practice is derived simply from the fact that it was in the reign of Saturn that we made our way, as though to the light, from a rude and gloomy existence to a knowledge of the liberal arts. [33] I should add, however, that I have found it written that, since many through greed made the Saturnalia an excuse to solicit and demand gifts from their clients, a practice which bore heavily on those of more slender means, one Publicius, a tribune, proposed to the people that no one should send anything but wax tapers to one richer than himself.

  4. The last listed tradition says the festival was instituted in Greece further back and adopted by Rome. “The day is kept a holiday, and in country and in town all usually hold joyful feasts, at which each man waits on his own slaves.” (Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.7.36-37)

    [36] You have referred, said Praetextatus, to a parallel instance of a change for the better in the ritual of a sacrifice. The point is well taken and well timed. But from the reasons adduced touching the origin of the Saturnalia it appears that the festival is of greater antiquity than the city of Rome, for in fact Lucius Accius” in his Annals says that its regular observance began in Greece before the foundation of Rome. [37] Here are the lines:
    In most of Greece, and above all at Athens, men celebrate in honor of Saturn a festival which they always call the festival of Cronos. The day is kept a holiday, and in country and in town all usually hold joyful feasts, at which each man waits on his own slaves. And so it is with us. Thus from Greece that custom has been handed down, and slaves dine with their masters at that time.

[These Macrobius quotations are Tom Schmidt’s transcriptions of Percival Vaughn Davies Edition, 1969 by Columbia University Press]

Macrobius recorded these four variants on the origin of the festival, but none of them had to do with the birth of a child or the celebration of an infant.

Notice that #3 lists the tradition of using candles and gift giving. #4 brings in feasts and master/slave role reversal.

The implication in the modern revisionists is that Christianity is so un-original:

  1. that it could have no other real reason than stealing from Saturnalia as justification for using light to celebrate “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” Certainly nothing more ancient than Roman Saturnalia, like, for example: Isaiah 60; or a separate tradition at that same time of the year such as the Feast of Dedication/Chanukah (John 10:22) from the period of the Maccabees;
  2. that without Saturnalia Christians could not possibly conceive of  giving gifts in honor of the Christ Child, like those gifts the Wise Men gave to celebrate the Birth of Christ (Matthew 2); or
  3. that the poverty of the incarnation of the Son of God, the King of Creation to serve poor sinners could not be the example for having a 19th century Anglican carol about a 10th century Bohemian king serve the poor.

No, they say, Christians must have imitated these things from the Saturnalia festival.

When Was Saturnalia?

Macrobius wrote in Book 1 chapter 10 [23-24] of his Saturnalia:

Saturnalia used to be celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January [=19th Dec.], but that it was afterward prolonged to last three days: first, in consequence of the days which Caesar added to the month of December, and then in pursuance of an edict of Augustus which prescribed a series of three rest days for the Saturnalia. The festival therefore begins on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of January [=17th Dec.] and ends on the fourteenth [=19th Dec.], which used to be the only day of its celebration. However, the addition of the feast of the Sigillaria has extended the time of general excitement and religious rejoicing to seven days. …

In the paragraphs preceding this quotation Macrobius lists sources, quotations, and dates for the various claims about when the Saturnalia was celebrated and for how long. T.C. Schmidt posted the entire chapter and put the date information in bold print so that the reader can see uncertainty of dates associated with this celebration. The text follows:

Saturnalia 1.10.1-23 [again, T.C. Schmid’s transcription of the Davies translation (1969)]

[ 1 ] But to return to our account of the Saturnalia. It was held to an offense against religion to begin a war at the time of the Saturnalia, and to punish a criminal during the days of the festival called for an act of atonement. [2] Our ancestors restricted the Saturnalia to a single day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January, but, after Gaius Caesar had added two days to December, the day on which the festival was held became the sixteenth before the Kalends of January, with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage —the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one.
And yet in fact among the men of old time there were some who supposed that the Saturnalia lasted for seven days
(if one may use the word “suppose” of something which has the support of competent authorities); [3] for Novius, that excellent writer of Atellan plays, says: “Long awaited they come, the seven days of the Saturnalia” [Ribbeck, II, 328]; and Mummius too, who, after Novius and Pomponius, restored the long-neglected Atellan to favor, says: “Of the many excellent institutions of our ancestors this is the best—that they made the seven days of the Saturnalia begin when the weather is coldest” [Ribbeck, II, 332].
[4] Mallius, however, says that the men who, as I have already related, had found protection in the name of Saturn and in the awe which he inspired, ordained a three-day festival in honor of the god, calling it the Saturnalia, and that it was on the authority of this belief that Augustus, in his laws for the administration of justice, ordered the three days to be kept as rest days.
[5] Masurius and others believed that the Saturnalia were held on one day, the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January, and their opinion is corroborated by Fenestella when he says that the virgin Aemilia was condemned on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of January; for, had that day been a day on which the festival of the Saturnalia was being celebrated, she could not by any means have been called on to plead, [6] and he adds that “the day was the day which preceded the Saturnalia,” and then goes on to say that “on the day after that, namely, the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, the virgin Licinia was to plead,” thereby making it clear that the thirteenth day too was not a festival.
[ 7 ] On the twelfth day before the Kalends of January there is a rest day in honor of the goddess Angeronia, to whom the pontiffs offer sacrifice in the chapel of Volupia. According to Verrius Flac-cus, this goddess is called Angeronia because, duly propitiated, she banishes anxiety (angores) and mental distress. [8] Masurius adds that an image of this goddess, with the mouth bound up and sealed,1 is placed on the altar of Volupia, because all who conceal their pain and care find, thanks to their endurance, great joy (voluptas) at last. [9] According to Julius Modestus, however, sacrifices are offered to Angeronia because, pursuant to the fulfillment of a vow, she delivered the Roman people from the disease known as the quinsy (angina).
[10] The eleventh day before the Kalends of January is a rest day in honor of the Lares, for whom the praetor Aemilius Regillus in the war against Antiochus solemnly promised to provide a temple in the Campus Martius.
[11] The tenth day before the Kalends is a rest day in honor of Jupiter, called the Larentinalia. I should like to say something of this day, and here are the beliefs generally held about it.
[12] In the reign of Ancus, they say, a sacristan of the temple of Hercules, having nothing to do during the rest day challenged the god to a game of dice, throwing for both players himself, and the stake for which they played was a dinner and the company of a courtesan. [13] Hercules won, and so the sacristan shut up Acca Larentia in the temple (she was the most notable courtesan of the time) and the dinner with her. Next day the woman let it be known that the god as a reward for her favors had bidden her take advantage of the first opportunity that came to her on her way home. [ 14] It so happened that, after she had left the temple, one Carutius, captivated by her beauty, accosted her, and in compliance with his wishes she married him. On her husband’s death all his estate came into her hands, and, when she died, she named the Roman people her heir. [15] Ancus therefore had her buried in the Velabrum, the most frequented part of the city, and a yearly rite was instituted in her honor, at which sacrifice was offered by a priest to her departed spirit—the rest day being dedicated to Jupiter because it was believed of old that souls are given by him and are given back to him again after death. [16] Cato, however, says that Larentia, enriched by the profits of her profession, left lands known as the Turacian, Semurian, Lintirian, and Solinian lands to the Roman people after her death and was therefore deemed worthy of a splendid tomb and the honor of an annual service of remembrance. [17] But Macer, in the first Book of his Histories, maintains that Acca Larentia was the wife of Faustulus and the nurse of Romulus and Remus and that in the reign of Romulus she married a weajthy Etruscan named Carutius, succeeded to her husband’s wealth as his heir, and afterward left it to her foster child Romulus, who dutifully appointed a memorial service and a festival in her honor.
[18] One can infer, then, from all that has been said, that the Saturnalia lasted but one day and was held only on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January; it was on this day alone that the shout of “Io Saturnalia” would be raised, in the temple of Saturn, at a riotous feast. Now, however, during the celebration of the Saturnalia, this day is allotted to the festival of the Opalia, although the day was first assigned to Saturn and Ops in common.
[19] Men believed that the goddess Ops was the wife of Saturn and that both the Saturnalia and the jOpalia are held in this month of December because the produce of the fields and orchards are thought to be the discovery of these two deities, who, when men have gathered in the fruits of the earth, are worshiped therefore as the givers of a more civilized life. [20] Some too are of the opinion that Saturn and Ops represent heaven and earth, the name Saturn being derived from the word for growth from seed (satus), since such growth is the gift of heaven, and the name Ops being identified with earth, either because it is by her bounty (ops) that life is nourished or because the name comes from the toil (opus) which is needed to bring forth the fruits of trees and fields. [21] When men make prayer to Ops they sit and are careful to touch the earth, signifying thereby that the earth is the very mother of mortals and is to be approached as such.
[22] Philochorus says that Cecrops was the first to build, in Attica, an altar to Saturn and Ops, worshiping these deities as Jupiter and Earth, and to ordain that, when crops and fruits had been garnered, the head of a household everywhere should eat thereof in company with the slaves with whom he had borne the toil of cultivating the land, for it was well pleasing to the god that honor should be paid to the slaves in consideration of their labor. And that is why we follow the practice of a foreign land and offer sacrifice to Saturn with the head uncovered.
[23] I think that we have now given abundant proof that the festival of the Saturnalia used to be celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January, but that it was afterward prolonged to last three days: first, in consequence of the days which Caesar added to the month of December, and then in pursuance of an edict of Augustus which prescribed a series of three rest days for the Saturnalia. The festival therefore begins on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of January and ends on the fourteenth, which used to be the only day of its celebration.5 [24] However, the addition of the feast of the Sigillaria has extended the time of general excitement and religious rejoicing to seven days.

Schmidt comments:

Macrobius does an excellent job summarizing authorities that were available to him, most of which I think have been lost. His conclusion is quite clear, Saturnalia originally was one day and occurred on the 14th day before the Kalends January, but when Caesar altered the calendar it was extended to three days and started on the 16th, later a new Festival of Sigillaria extended the celebrations to complete seven days, meaning that the Festival ended on either the 10th or ninth day before the Kalends of January depending on how we count. Of course neither of these days fall on the eighth day before the Kalends of January, that is December 25.

The information from Macrobius is the most thorough. None of the more ancient sources contradict him. In fact, what we have of the ancient sources that speak of dates merely confirm what Macrobius wrote.

Based on Macrobius as well as other ancient Roman sources, the date of Christmas has nothing to do with the dating of Saturnalia.

Annotated Bibliography

[This is an updated and expanded version of my original article on Saturnalia]

Unionism: What Is It?

In the comments section of Friday’s post by Pastor Rossow titled “Per DP’s Advice LCMS Pastor Cancels Participation in Joint Service but Still Supports Unionism,” arguments were made that having a joint worship service with congregations of other fellowships, such as Methodists, or Baptists, or Presbyterians, is not unionism.  Holy Scripture, our Confession, Lutheran theologians, and our own synodical statements disagree with that position.  Here are a few quotations from across the centuries to illustrate the point.

From the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod Constitution:

“Article VI Conditions of Membership

“Conditions for acquiring and holding membership in the Synod are the following:
1. Acceptance of the confessional basis of Article II.
2. Renunciation of unionism and syncretism of every description, such as:
a. Serving congregations of mixed confession, as such, by ministers of the church;
b. Taking part in the services and sacramental rites of heterodox congregations or of congregations of mixed confession;
c. Participating in heterodox tract and missionary activities.” [emphasis added]

The official position of the Synod from “Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod”:

“28. On Church-Fellowship. – Since God ordained that His Word only, without the admixture of human doctrine, be taught and believed in the Christian Church, 1 Pet. 4, 11; John 8, 31. 32; 1 Tim. 6, 3. 4, all Christians are required by God to discriminate between orthodox and heterodox church-bodies, Matt. 7,15, to have church-    fellowship only with orthodox church-bodies, and, in case they have strayed into heterodox church-bodies, to leave them, Rom. 16,17. We repudiate unionism, that is, church-fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine, as disobedience to God’s command, as the real cause of the origin and continuance of divisions in the Church, Rom. 16,17; 2 John 9.10, and as involving the constant danger of losing the Word of God entirely, 2 Tim. 2,17 ff.”

From the Christian Cyclopedia on the LCMS website:

“Religious unionism consists in joint worship and work of those not united in doctrine. Its essence is an agreement to disagree. In effect, it denies the doctrine of the clearness of Scripture.” (Quoted from The Concordia Cyclopedia, St. Louis, 1927)

From the 1974 CTCR document “A Lutheran Stance Toward Ecumenism”:

“C. On the Congregational Level

“When congregations become members of the Synod they voluntarily accept certain limitations of their autonomy. For the sake of good order and the benefit of all, congregations consent to regulate the exercise of their rights according to a compact freely entered into and mutually accepted. Congregations, for instance, agree to be served only by such pastors as have been certified for placement by the Synod’s seminary faculties and who are members of the Synod. Similarly, congregations agree that they will practice fellowship only with those congregations which belong to a church body with which the Synod is in fellowship. Once such an agreement has been made, confusion and disorder result when congregations act
independently by practicing selective fellowship. The Synod has, therefore, on several occasions stated its position on selective fellowship. Key sentences from a resolution adopted in 1969 give the Synod’s position:

“WHEREAS, The members of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod have voluntarily united in a fraternal agreement to determine fellowship relations with other church bodies or congregations, not individually but through convention action (Handbook 1.21) . . .
   ” Resolved, That the Synod urge all its members to honor their fraternal agreement with all members of the Synod by refraining from practicing altar and pulpit fellowship with congregations of church bodies with whom the Synod has not yet declared fellowship.

“D. On the Individual Level

“1. In the exercise of their office pastors will follow synodical policy. Except in emergency situations and in such cases where their action cannot rightfully be construed as disregard for pure doctrine, for the responsibilities of their office, or for the concerns of their brethren in the ministry, pastors will ordinarily commune only those individuals who are members of the Synod or of a Lutheran church body with which the Synod is in fellowship. Pastors will not participate in joint worship services with pastors of denominations with which the Synod has not established fellowship relations. When pastors affiliate with ministerial alliances or associations, they will participate in such activities and service opportunities as do
not imply ecclesiastical fellowship where it does not yet exist.”

From the 2001 CTCR document “The Lutheran Understanding of Church Fellowship”:

“The promise not to participate in worship services with those not in church fellowship with the LCMS applies particularly to pastors, who are the official representatives of both their congregations and the LCMS. Their solemn commitment to the scriptural and confessional position of the LCMS must be their guide and will supersede personal feelings or preferences. Trust among LCMS pastors, congregations, and leaders allows everyone to carry out their commitment to fellowship practices to which they have mutually agreed. This trust is undermined when these commitments, as they are set forth in the official documents of the LCMS, are openly violated. Public knowledge of such violations strains relationships and makes reasoned discourse of real issues difficult. This in turn hinders pastors from exercising discretion in unclear situations.”

The following quote is taken from the September 18, 1917 edition of The Lutheran Witness. It points out that the LCMS would have no joint worship services with other Lutheran synods on the Reformation Jubilee, because there was no unity in doctrine. Obviously, this refusal to hold joint worship services with other Lutheran synods would also apply to other non-Lutheran denominations:

“Joint Reformation Celebrations. — Many of our congregations will take part in joint celebrations of the Jubilee. The churches of the Synodical Conference in many centers of population will gather in imposing union services. But there will be no participation of our churches in general Lutheran or Protestant gatherings.
“The reason for this position of our Synod has been stated before, but in view of the approaching celebration demands restatement.
“We hold it to be self-evident truth that, where there is no unity of faith, there ought to be no unity of worship. If the texts of Scripture which forbid unionism (for example, Rom. 16, 17; 1 Tim. 6, 3 ff.) do not apply here, they are devoid of meaning.
“We hold it to be a truth that may be readily verified by investigation that there are real differences in doctrine between the synods composing the Synodical Conference on the one hand and, for instance, the Ohio Synod, the Iowa Synod, the General Synod, the General Council, and the United Synod of the South, on the other. [The predestinarian controversy is mentioned.]
“…There are other differences, as, for instance, on the Sabbath question and other adiaphora (liquor question, etc.). The evolution doctrine is taught in some church-papers. For a full discussion of these differences and others read Prof. Bente’s book: Was steht der Vereinigung der lutherischen Synoden Amerikas im Wege? which contains a sufficient array of facts to convince the Christian reader that there are very real and effectual bars to Lutheran union. But where there is no unity, there can be no joining worship nor joint celebrations of the Jubilee.
“The question is not: What do individual Christians in these bodies believe? but this: What is the public and official stand of these synods in matters of Christian doctrine? We believe that there are true Christians in all these Churches, because the essentials of the Gospel are still preached. Even so there are, no doubt, children of God in the Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, even in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Churches. But all these Christians are permitting men who have departed in some point from the Gospel of Christ to determine the public and official doctrine of their bodies. These Christians are misled. They follow blind leaders. We may make every allowance for human weakness, and thus, in a measure, condone their fault. We recognize the stress of circumstances. But we cannot do one thing: we cannot enter into relations of fellowship with them so long a they do not obey the word of Jesus and proclaim their undivided adherence to His teachings.
“These words are not written for the purpose of instructing our own people, to whom all these statements are commonplaces, but for the benefit of the outsider. No Missouri Synod Lutheran rejoices in the fact of division. But he recognizes the fact. And by dispassionately exhibiting this fact, we appeal to the conscience of all good Christians who are now separated from us because of affiliation with men who teach falsely, and would have them remove the offense from their midst in order that there may be Lutheran unity throughout the length and breadth of the land.
“There is no other possibility of the removal of division except by speaking plainly to Christians concerning the error which they support by their membership. In the performance of this duty we must not grow negligent, not even in this year of Jubilee.”

Hermann Sasse, “Concerning the Unity of the Lutheran Church,” Letters to Pastors, No. 25, translated by Matthew C. Harrison:

“True ecumeny, which sees the one church of Christ wherever the means of grace are yet preserved—through which the Lord calls to His church—even beyond the boundaries of one’s own ecclesiology, stands opposed to false ecumeny, which treats Christians of all denominations as brothers in faith. This false ecumeny tries to make visible and tangible that which we humans cannot see and touch, the church as the people of God, as the Body of Christ, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. This false ecumeny changes the ‘article of faith’ about the church into an ‘article of sight.’ It understands the unity of the church, which only the Holy Spirit can create and maintain, as something which we humans can produce. And it tries to produce this unity, in that it works to realize the one faith, the one baptism, the one sacrament of the altar as a compromise of various forms of faith, various interpretations of baptism, and various understandings of holy communion. In so far as it does that, this false ecumeny overlooks [the fact] that the various understandings of the means of grace are not only different possibilities of understanding the truth, but rather that soul-murdering errors and church-destroying heresy also hide among them. True ecumeny sees this. Therefore, it is able to recognize the true unity of the church only there, where it recognizes the one correct faith, the one correct baptism, the one communion of the Lord Christ. True ecumeny asks, therefore, not first about unity, but rather about truth. It knows that where the true church is, there, and there alone, is also the one church. In this sense it understands the high priestly prayer of the Lord, too, in which the ‘that they may all be one’ is linked inseparably with ‘sanctify them in Your truth; Your Word is the truth’ (John 17:17, 21).”

Wilhelm Loehe in Three Books About the Church:

“Let the great ‘It is sufficient’ with which the Augsburg Confession insists upon unity in doctrine and sacrament be our war cry, our watchword, our banner.”

Dr. Franz Pieper, from “Unity of Faith”, an essay delivered at the 1888 Convention of the Synodical Conference, translated by E.J. Otto:

“We dare not allow any other concept of unity to arise among us than the unity of faith which is in harmony with Scripture, the agreement in all articles of Christian doctrine.”

Charles Porterfield Krauth, from “The Right Relation to Denominations in America,” in Lutheran Confessional Theology in America:

“When the Lutheran Church acts in the spirit of the current denominationalism it abandons its own spirit. It is a house divided against itself. Some even then will stand firm, and with the choosing of new gods on the part of others there will be war in the gates. No seeming success could compensate our church for the forsaking of principles which gave her her being, for the loss of internal peace, for the destruction of her proper dignity, for the lack of self-respect which would follow it. The Lutheran Church can never have real moral dignity, real self-respect, a real claim on the reverence and loyalty of its children while it allows the fear of the denominations around it, or the desire of their approval, in any respect to shape its principles or control its actions. It is a fatal thing to ask not, What is right? What is consistent? but, What will be thought of us? How will the sectarian and secular papers talk about us? How will our neighbors of the different communions regard this or that course? Better to die than to prolong a miserable life by such compromise of all that gives life its value.”

Johann Gerhard, quoted from Cyberbrethren, trans. by Rev. Dr. Benjamin Mayes:

“Not just any unity of faith and doctrine is a mark of the Church, but only the unity of true faith and doctrine, that is, of prophetic and apostolic doctrine, for that alone is of immovable and perpetual truth. Therefore the unity of faith that is a mark of the Church must be based on one foundation of doctrine: the apostolic doctrine. Accordingly, the Church is said to be ‘built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles’ (Eph. 2:20). It is said about the heavenly Jerusalem that “its wall has twelve foundations and on them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb”( Rev. 21:14). Accordingly, in Zech. 8:19 ‘truth and peace’ are joined. In fact, truth is set ahead of peace so that we may understand that God approves of only that peace, concord, and unity which enjoys the foundation and bond of truth. John 8:31: ‘If you remain in My Word, you are truly My disciples.’ John 17:21: ‘That they may be one in Us.'”

Johann Michael Reu, from the pamphlet “In the Interest of Lutheran Unity'”:

“We find this attitude of tolerance quite frequently among unionists. It is often used to assuage a troubled conscience, one’s own as well as that of others; for the unionist declares that every one may continue to hold his own private convictions and merely needs to respect and tolerate those of another. This attitude is totally wrong, for it disregards two important factors: (a) in tolerating divergent doctrines one either denies the perspicuity and clarity of the Scriptures, or one grants to error the right to exist alongside of truth, or one evidences indifference over against Biblical truth by surrendering its absolute validity; and (b) in allowing two opposite views concerning one doctrine to exist side by side, one has entered upon an inclined plane which of necessity leads ever further into complete doctrinal indifference, as may plainly be seen from the most calamitous case on record, viz., the Prussian Union.”

Dr. Theodore Graebner, from his essay “The Leprosy of Unionism”:

“No one believes that any Missouri Synod man would dare to propose at this time (1918) official synodical collaboration with the Reformed sects in church-work. That is a late development at which one does not arrive at a jump. On the other hand, the danger is ever present that on the specious plea of advancing the cause of “Lutheranism,” we be tempted to enter into fellowship with members of synods Lutheran in name, but only partly Lutheran in doctrine and practice. There is danger that we get a taste of applause and flattery; that we become eager for “recognition” as a great church-body; that we compromise our doctrinal stand for the purpose of meeting emergencies. And the time to become aware of that danger is NOW.

“It is a bad sign when hearers become angry at their pastor for “preaching against other churches.” It is a worse sign when pastors, bowing to such disapproval, begin to withhold instructions concerning the errors of the sects. It is a most alarming symptom when pastors and parishioners fraternize. . . with those who represent a different conception of Lutheranism. It becomes denial of the Truth when they associate with such for the purpose of “making church-work more effective” or “keeping the Lutheran Church on the map.”

“As we love our church, let us so teach our people so that they will fear the contagion of error as they would fear to breathe the air of a small-pox hospital. Let us exhibit to them the damnableness of false doctrine. Let us preach Luther on this point, who saw only the work of Satan in every deviation from the truth of Scripture. If our people learn to recognize every false doctrine as a snare of the devil, spread to catch victims for hell, they will not need to be held with a rein lest they stampede into unionism. .. .

“Let it be understood that any undertaking or activity which is, in effect, the doing of religious work jointly with those from whom we ought, according to Scripture to separate, is unionism. Here, if ever, the old sayings must apply: “Nip the evil in the bud.” Our first duty is that of watchfulness. There is no higher duty now because there is no greater danger.”

Dr. Martin Luther, quoted in F. Bente’s Historical Introductions to the Lutheran Confessions:

“Whoever really regards his doctrine, faith, and confession as true, right, and certain cannot remain in the same stall with such as teach or adhere to false doctrine.”

Doctrine means nothing when Practice can mean anything.

Recently I was discussing some things with a fellow pastor and I uttered the phrase above.  Many comments recently on this blog have been directed to the belief that solid Lutheran beliefs (expressed in the Book of Concord) can find their expression in a wide diversity of practices.

These things remind me of the Coexist bumper stickers you see on cars.  The use a number of religious symbols to spell out the word.  Would an LCMS bumper sticker say the same thing, using symbols of organs, praise bands, vested pastors, polo and khaki pastors, pastors in pulpit, pastors wandering around during sermons,  women readers, communion rails under pastoral care, and drive-by open communion groups?  How much of the discussion around needing such diversity and “broad consensus” stems not from theology but the general attitude that also produces the “coexist” bumper stickers?

While affirming that absolute uniformity in all ceremonies is not necessary in the Church, our fathers in the faith (including LCMS fathers) made uniformity something to be sought after.  The knew the benefit in having practices that lined up with each other from parish to parish.  They knew the comfort that would bring to people of all generations.  They knew the catholic principle behind the church, that it is not trapped in a certain time or place.  They also knew that doctrine informs practice and that practice informs doctrine.

Do we think we know better than our fathers?  Do we really think that diversity of practices can still be upheld and still claim to have doctrinal unity?  And this is now something in the LCMS over a generation old, which means in the flow of Lex Credendi, Lex Orandi, the practices that we have now tolerated have begun to affect our beliefs.

Diverse practices will come home to roost – and I wonder if the great disunity and disharmony today in the LCMS is only the fruit of a generation or better of allowing so many diverse practices to coexist under the banner of confessional Lutheranism.  Too often now, we can find “lifelong Lutherans” with completely different ideas on what it means to be Lutheran, and this is the result of having so many different practices.

But that is another thing that diversity of practices does – it is no longer about beliefs or doctrine, but about practices.  The focus has shifted.  When practice can mean almost anything, doctrine means almost nothing.

Those who now seek after uniformity are accused of being legalistic and loveless, sinning against those whom they try to “impose” ceremonies upon.  But behind the superficial accusation of sin (and the pious rebellion of the Old Adam), is the truth that uniformity serves Christ’s Church and that means Christians, real people who struggle in this life.  Uniformity serves the next generation of Christians by not creating a destructive feedback loop of diverse practices lessening or changing doctrine.  Those who strive for uniformity are trying to show love to those who are not just in front of them, but to those who come later, perhaps generations later.

The practical question is this:  what does uniformity look like in the LCMS of 2012?  I would suggest services of Lutheran Service Book, its Agenda and so forth (including vestments for clergy).  The rites of LSB still resemble those that are common across the whole Evangelical Lutheran Church.  But as of lately, even discussions here on BJS haven’t allowed such “broad consensus” – Is there really a unity of belief underlying this stubborn diversity?

Why Christians Make the Sign of the Holy Cross (and a word on genuflection)

In The Small Catechism, Martin Luther encouraged Christians to retain the practice of making the sign of the cross. The Missouri Synod, following Luther’s advice, has encouraged Christians to continue making the sign 0310151243of the cross, notably at a number of places during the Divine Service. Several of these are indicated in Lutheran Service Book by the LSB cross symbolsymbol, though there are a number of places in the liturgy where Christians have crossed themselves that are not indicated in LSB (see #3, 5, 6, and 7, below). Before we look at why the cross may be made at these places, first a word on how to make the sign of the cross.

ChristusThe practice of crossing one’s self is an ancient practice and is derived from such passages as Deuteronomy 6:8, Ezekiel 9:4, Revelation 7:3, 9:4, and 14:1. The practice of tracing the cross on objects and one’s body is discussed by such church fathers as Tertullian (v. 6), Jerome (“Epitaph Paulae”), and Cyril (par. 36). There are differences in tradition on how to make the gesture, both with respect to the shape of the hand and also what direction to trace the cross from shoulder to shoulder.

The three main variations of finger position are 1) to use two fingers (either index & middle or thumb and index) to indicate the two natures of Christ; 2) to bring the tip of the thumb, index, and middle finger together to signify the three persons of the Trinity; or 3) to extend the thumb, index, and middle finger while folding the ring and little finger back against the palm, thus indicating both the Holy Trinity and two natures of Christ (as seen in the mosaic to the right).

The other consideration when making the sign of the cross is the question of which direction to make the motion. There is (almost) agreement regarding the first two steps, beginning at the forehead and then going down to the sternum (or navel, in the East). Then the question is whether to go from right to left, or from left to right. The right to left pattern appears to be the more ancient practice and is the method most commonly found in the Lutheran rubrics (it is also used by the Orthodox). Theologically, this follows from the biblical preference of right over left (sheep on the right, goats on the left [Matthew 25:33] and Jesus’ ascension to the right hand of the Father [Acts 5:31]). The left to right pattern is the dominant method in the Roman church and is a reminder that Jesus first descended into hell (as indicated by beginning with the left) before ascending to sit at the right hand of the Father.

Enough about procedure. There are various points in the liturgy where the sign of the cross may be made. The placement of the cross at these locations is not haphazard, but rather has theological significance. Much more could be said about this than what follows, but here are some thoughts to get you going.

  1. The sign of the cross may be made at the Invocation (“In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit). That, of course, is the Name into which Christians are baptized, and St. Paul teaches that it is into the death (cross) of Christ that we are baptized (Romans 6:3-5). To be “baptized into Jesus’ death” means all the benefits of the cross (forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, and eternal salvation) are applied to you personally in Holy Baptism. The first time the sign of the cross is placed on Christians is in Holy Baptism (“receive the sign of the holy cross both upon your + forehead and upon your + heart to make you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified”). Thus, it is especially appropriate to make the sign of the cross over yourself when the pastor speaks the baptismal Invocation, since to trace the cross on your body is to confess that the cross and all of its benefits are yours by virtue of Holy Baptism.
  2. Christians may also cross themselves during the Absolution when the pastor says, “I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Note again the use of the baptismal formula, so everything that was said above about the Invocation also applies to making the sign of the cross during the Absolution. Jesus has not commanded us to re-baptize the repentant Christian after they sin. He has, however, given His Church the ability to forgive sins on earth (Matthew 16:19), which is the means by which we continually experience the cleansing benefits of Holy Baptism (see “fourthly” in Luther’s Small Catechism).
  3. The celebrant may also make the sign of the cross (with his right thumb) on his forehead, lips, and heart just prior to the reading of the Holy Gospel as a sort of prayer that he would know, say, and believe nothing except Christ crucified. This is reflected in the traditional prayer that is said by the celebrant just prior to the reading: “May the Lord be in my heart and on my lips, that I may worthily and rightly proclaim His Gospel, in the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
  4. It is also appropriate to make the sign of the cross at the words “and the life + of the world to come” in the creed, for it is the cross which gives us the hope of everlasting life in the restored creation.
  5. Sometimes pastors will cross themselves as they begin their sermons while speaking the Invocation, since the Christian sermon is a proclamation of God’s saving Name (congregations may follow suit by crossing themselves and responding by saying, “Amen”). The comments in #1 and #2 above also apply here, since the sermon is, in many ways, an extended Absolution.
  6. Christians have also made the sign of the cross at the words “Blessed is He” during the Sanctus. Those words were spoken by the crowds on Palm Sunday as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on His way to the cross, thus the practice of crossing yourself at this time (Matthew 21:9). In addition to crossing themselves, Christians have also bowed during the Sanctus (more on that shortly).
  7. The sign of the cross may also be made at the words “deliver us from evil” (or: “from the evil one)” in the Lord’s Prayer (see the seventh petition). The rationale here is similar as it was for the Creed (see #4, above). The cross is that which fulfills this petition, delivering us from evil and giving us the hope of a blessed end.
    The Mond Crucifixion (Raphael) Notes especially the two angels catching the blood of our Lord in chalices, highlighting the connection between the cross and the Sacrament of the Altar
    The Mond Crucifixion (Raphael)
    Note especially the two angels catching the blood of our Lord in chalices, highlighting the connection between the cross and the Sacrament of the Altar
  8. Christians may also cross themselves during the Verba (“this is My + body,”; “this cup is the new testament in My + blood”) and the dismissal (“Depart + in peace”). At the altar, you receive the body and blood which Jesus gave and shed for you on the cross (see the Raphael painting at the left).
  9. Finally, the cross may be made during the Benediction (“and + give you peace”), for the peace and communion we have with God is possible only through the cross. Recall the song of the angels at the birth of Jesus (which we sing in the Gloria in Excelsis): “Glory be to God on high, on earth, peace,” (Luke 2:14).

Making the sign of the cross, while certainly not required, can be a very helpful practice and carries with it a great deal of theological significance. It is a reminder that in all things, “we preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23) and that the Christian life is one of bearing the cross (Matthew 16:24).

A Word on Bowing/Genuflecting:

In Ceremony and Celebration, Paul H.D. Lang offers the following comments on bowing and genuflecting:

Bowing and genuflecting are very closely related. A genuflection is merely a more profound bow. When genuflecting, one touches the ground with the right knee at the place where the foot was and then stands upright again at once in a continuous action. Bowing and genuflecting are reverences or, when directed to people, signs of respect. Giving form and expression to inner devotions, reverences help to make our worship meaningful and impressive. Books on ceremonies distinguish between head bows and body bows. In head bows, only the head is inclined. An example of this kind of bow is the one an officiant makes to the people at the response, “And with thy spirit.” In the body bow, the head and shoulders are bent forward. It is always made in expressing reverence to God, (61).

Christians have also sometimes bowed their heads whenever the name of Jesus is spoken and also when we speak of worship during the liturgy (“we worship Thee” in the Gloria in Excelsis and “is worshiped and glorified” in the Nicene Creed).

Christians may also genuflect during the Gloria Patri (“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”, which appears both at the end of the Introit and Nunc Dimittis), and also while singing the words of the seraphim from Isaiah’s vision of God in the Temple in the Sanctus (Isaiah 6:1-3). As an expression of reverence, it is appropriate to bow when the Divine Name is spoken (which reminds us of the importance of keeping God’s Name holy and using it rightly; cf. the 1st Petition & 2nd Commandment). The Sanctus (see also #6, above), with its related ceremonies of genuflecting and crossing, is particularly appropriate at this point in the Service of the Sacrament, for like the seraphim and the crowds on Palm Sunday, we are also in the presence of God (cf. Isaiah 6 & Matthew 21).

Christians have also bowed at the words “and became man” during the Nicene Creed. It is appropriate for us to bow as we confess the Incarnation, even as the magi fell down and worshiped the Incarnate Lord (Matthew 3:11).

Luther, in his typically colorful fashion, relates the following story about genuflecting during the Creed:

Colbert genuflectingThe following tale is told about a coarse and brutal lout. While the words “And was made man” were being sung in church, he remained standing, neither genuflecting nor removing his hat. He showed no reverence, but just stood there like a clod. All the others dropped to their knees when the Nicene Creed was prayed and chanted devoutly. Then the devil stepped up to him and hit him so hard it made his head spin. He cursed him gruesomely and said: “May hell consume you! If God had become an angel like me and the congregation sang: ‘God was made an angel,’ I would bend not only to my knees but my whole body to the ground! And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel but a man like you, and you just stand there like a stick of wood!

Whether this story is true or not, it is nevertheless in accordance with the faith. With this instructive story the holy fathers wished to admonish the youth the revere the indescribably great miracle of the incarnation; they wanted us to open our eyes wide and ponder these words well,” (AE 22:105-106).

The most profound genuflection occurs during consecration and distribution as an act of worship to the bodily presence of Christ with us in, with, and under the bread and the wine. Communicants typically bend both knees (double genuflect) when receiving the Sacrament. A helpful discussion of the relationship between genuflecting and theology of the Sacrament can be found over at Gottesdienst.

Why Do Many Evangelicals Find It Difficult To Accept Infant Baptism?

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During my past 9 years of pastoral ministry the discussion with Evangelicals that has resulted in the most confusion, tension, and conflict is most definitely the dialog over infant baptism. Otherwise stated, in my humble opinion there is nothing more offensive to our Evangelical brothers and sisters (those who believe that it is only proper to baptize those who are able to make a profession of faith) than the Lutheran view of infant baptism.

Now, for you lifelong Lutherans you may find this hard to believe, how a precious gift from God can cause such strain, but it is true that it does. My wife and I have unfortunately lost friendships over ‘the infant baptism’ talk. Furthermore, at one point in time I too was very indifferent towards the sacraments and rather antagonistic towards those that boldly cherished them. But you may ask, “Why the offense? What could possibly be so threatening about sprinkling water on a cute and helpless baby?”

In a previous article on Steadfast Lutherans titled, There Are Two Perspectives On Delayed And Legalistic Baptisms, I covered the basic confusion over the sacraments between many Lutherans and what I will call ‘Credobaptist’ Evangelicals.  I stated,

Which way is the arrow aimed when it comes to the sacraments? What? In other words, are the sacraments something that we do toward God as a way of showing our obedience OR are the sacraments the way that God shows His commitment to us and gives grace to us? Are the sacraments things that we observe in response to hearing the Gospel (i.e. fruits of faith) OR are the sacraments ways that God responds to our sinfulness with the Gospel; are they a result of His compassion and pursuit of sinners? Do the sacraments belong in our discussions on man’s obedience OR do the sacraments belong in the discussion of God’s justifying grace? Who does the verb in the sacraments?”

While these confusions are very prevalent in conversations with Credobaptist Evangelicals and may cause conversational tension, there is something that is not mentioned in the previous paragraph, something that is much more offensive and something that repeatedly upsets the theology of Credobaptist Evangelicals. That something is infant baptism itself; it is the ‘infant’ part that causes tension. I believe that the reason for strain is due to infant baptism being the quintessential picture of divine monergism. Monergism, as you know, is completely contrary to any and all free will theologies, thus the reason why infant baptism is so difficult for many Credobaptist Evangelicals to accept.

The most common criticism that I have heard against infant baptism is that it doesn’t allow for the baby to make a ‘decision’ for Christ or a ‘profession of faith.’ (At this point we could devote our time to show how the tenets of the Enlightenment have tainted this view of faith, but that can be saved for another time.) Many will protest that it is unjust to baptize a baby before the child can profess faith in Jesus and/or make a decision, therefore, one must wait until the baby reaches an older age.

So, why would it be unjust to baptize a baby before they are able to make their decision? Generally speaking, it is unjust in credobaptist theology because infant baptism infringes upon, violates, and overthrows the doctrine of free will; it takes the child’s ‘choice’ in salvation away. To say that an baby is saved in infant baptism when no choice/decision/profession has been made comes across as extremely scandalous for theologies that embrace the doctrine of free will and it is very offensive towards the old Adam.  The old Adam in all of us can’t stand monergism and he especially can’t stand the sacrament of infant baptism. The reason why, in infant baptism the old Adam has no room to play and exercise his supposed free will, but can only drown.

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Advertently or inadvertently to guard the doctrine of free will, many Evangelical denominations and many Evangelical movements will postpone baptism until the child is able to make a choice. However, this rationale creates additional problems. How should one handle original sin and consider children when they sin between conception and their decision of faith? To counteract children’s sinful nature from conception until the time they make a decision of faith, an age of accountability status is developed, thus granting the child a period of grace. The age of accountability status embraces that children below a specific age who perish are not held responsible for their sins because they were incapable of understanding wrong from right and were unable to comprehend Jesus’ death on the cross. Furthermore, some Revivalistic and Pietistic traditions can also fall prey to this ideology. They will rightly baptize the child in the name of our Triune God, gifting the child faith and grace, but the baptism is only viewed as a grace that extends until the child can make a decision for Christ at a later point. At that point of decision, the decision then takes the place of the child’s baptism as the location of assurance. Both the Pietist’s view and the Evangelical’s view are ways that attempt to: protect free will theology and avoid the divine monergistic qualities of baptismal regeneration.

So is infant baptism really that radical? One needs to keep in mind that infant baptism is not some rogue theology that is inconsistent with the rest of the scriptures. Take for example the miracles of Jesus. Individuals were not ‘mostly’ blind, but powerlessly blind from birth (e.g., Matthew 9). Individuals were not ‘kind of’ paralytic, but hopelessly and entirely paralyzed (e.g., Matthew 9). Individuals were not ‘partly’ leprous, but helplessly full of leprosy (e.g., Matthew 8). Individuals were not ‘almost’ dead, but dead-dead (e.g., John 11). These individuals are just like an infant, helpless. Yet in these miracles we see the power of the Word, a performative speech from Jesus, that speaks these miracles into existence. Jesus proclaims, “Let it be done to you! Stand up and walk! Be Cleansed! Come out!” The individuals, like an infant, contributed nothing to their healing. Just as the world was spoke into existence in Genesis, Christ spoke these healing miracles into existence. Furthermore, God’s word still speaks faith into existence today (e.g., Romans 10:17).  The Word is performative; the Word works faith and this is even true with infants.

As Lutherans we believe, teach, and confess that infant baptism does not work regeneration apart from faith (e.g., Mark 16:15-16, Romans 4:20-25).  With that said, we also believe, teach, and confess that faith is not a product of the man’s intellect, or a result of mankind’s will, or conjured up by a person’s arousing feelings. Faith is a gift, a gift worked by the Holy Spirit through the Word (e.g., Romans 10:17, Ephesians 2:8). Thus, Luther rightly taught that the Word is in and with the water making baptism’s efficacy entirely dependent on the Gospel promises, promises that are connected with the water (e.g. 1 Peter 3:21, Acts 2:38). Otherwise stated, because the Gospel is attached to baptism, baptism is an effective means through which the Holy Spirit works faith and gives grace to infants, apart from any works of righteousness that they do or may do (e.g., Titus 3:5).

As we converse with our dear Evangelical brothers and sisters on this subject, may we not forget that there is a silver lining.  As we discuss infant baptism and its ramifications on free will theology may we boldly confess,

I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want ‘free-will’ to be given to me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavor after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my ‘free-will’; because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I should still be forced to labor with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether He required something more. The experience of all who seek righteousness by works proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him.” (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will)

So why do many Evangelicals find it difficult to accept infant baptism?  It is difficult for many to accept because it is bad news for the old Adam and presents a difficulty for decision/free will theology.  In infant baptism faith cannot be misconstrued into an act of the free will—faith does not make baptism but receives its. With infant baptism salvation is most clearly seen as a gift of God descending to a helpless baby, rather than the old Adam using baptism as a token of his obedience.  Alas, it is now very understandable why conversations on this subject will result in confusion, tension, and unfortunate conflict.

Regardless of the possible blowback due to our Lutheran baptismal theology, may we graciously esteem our most excellent Baptism as our daily attire in which we walk constantly, that we may always be found in the faith, for infant baptism is not only the quintessential picture of divine monergism, but is divine monergism—rich life-giving water with the Word that works faith, delivers forgiveness of sins, rescues us from the jaws of death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation making us God’s own apart from any and all man-made contributions. In a very literally sense, via infant baptism, we do not wash ourselves but are washed by God.  Praise be to God!  May we and our Evangelical friends grow ever more appreciative of this great gift.

PAX

 

Steadfast in Education: Why Lutheran Schools and Why Lutheran Teachers?

roseWhy do we need Lutheran schools? Why do Lutheran schools need Lutheran teachers? Though these are simple questions, their answers get at the whole reason that the extensive system of Lutheran schools exists in the first place. Lutherans in North America have been school-builders from the beginning. In fact, the opportunity to establish schools apart from the purview of the State was at least as enticing to these first Lutheran immigrants from Europe as freedom from a state religion.

But why? After all, schools are a lot of work. All the planning, budgeting, instruction, assessment, recordkeeping — operating a school requires immense sacrifice of time and money on the part of the congregation. Yet in spite of all that, Lutherans (especially those most interested in a confessional identity) have insisted upon operating schools all across the country. So what drove them to establish all these and work tirelessly to keep them open?

Put simply, it’s all about the gospel. Lots of other sorts of schools can teach lots of different things. Any school can teach children to behave and to be good boys and girls. Any school can dig deep into the wisdom of the ancient Greeks — in fact, there is much we all could learn from the founders of Western civilization. Any school can teach citizenship and character and morality. But all of that is of the Law, and we Lutherans know better than anyone that while the Law is good and wise, it lacks the power to save.

It is wise for us to ask the question “What problem is the school designed to solve?” Naturalists like John Dewey would say that the primary problem that a school is designed to solve is that of ignorance of the world. We Christians, in contrast, might concede that a child ought to know something of the world, but that knowledge is of secondary importance when compared to the gospel, which alone can save us from death. In fact, ignorance is not the greatest problem facing man — death is. All worldly knowledge cannot fix death. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ saves sinful man from sin and death. Lutheran schools do teach math, grammar, and history — and many of them do so quite well. But above all, Lutheran schools proclaim this gospel — that Jesus Christ has taken away death and sin and hell by His atoning death. Many students in Lutheran schools don’t get to hear that on Sunday morning. Many of the children in Lutheran schools are members of the congregation who attend the Divine Service faithfully — but they still need to hear what God has done for them in Christ.

Lutheran schools are in the business of preparing young people for the Last Day when the dead are raised and the saints in Christ stand with Him in eternal peace and bliss. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews asks, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” Christians must contend with fallen flesh, the world, and the devil — all of whom would snatch the precious gift of eternal life from us were it not for the Spirit’s work through this gospel to keep us firm in the faith until that Day.

But why Lutheran? After all, there are lots of other Christian schools and Christian teachers. Why does Lutheran identity matter? Simply put, it is when Lutheran schools are staffed with Lutheran teachers that the gospel has the best chance of being proclaimed in its purity. (For the record, the word “Lutheran” here refers more to one’s actual confession than simply on which roster one’s name appears.) To be sure, there are lots of Christian schools and Christian teachers and they are dedicated and sincere. But any adulteration of the gospel runs the risk of the Christian doubting — or worse, in causing him to trust someone or something other than Christ for his eternal salvation. The world thinks this is unloving, but it’s why Lutheran schools ought to be for Lutheran teachers. No one else confesses justification the same as the Fourth Article of the Augsburg Confession. No one else’s theology is designed to reflect salvation by grace alone through faith alone in all its articles. No other theology ought to be taught in our schools, and the way to ensure this is twofold: First, the pastor ought to oversee the theological curriculum and instruction of the school (if not outright do all the instruction himself). Second, teachers ought to hold to the confession of the Evangelical Lutheran churches (and remain diligent in the study of that confession) so that any time theological matters are discussed in class, students can be directed to the saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

They seem like simple questions, and they are. But like so many simple questions, they matter a lot. Lutheran schools, at their best, deliver the gospel to students and strengthen them for the Last Day when the dead are raised and the saints stand with the Lord. And it’s precisely for that reason that Lutheran schools ought to care about an unapologetically Lutheran identity.

Beautiful Baptismal Certificates from Wolfson Creative, by Pastor Thomas Messer

Pastor Messer wrote this on his blog and submitted it to us for posting here:


 

A few weeks back, I contacted Pr. Bryan Wolfmueller for information regarding the beautiful baptismal certificates I saw him advertising here. He responded quickly, and carefully laid out the details of the ordering process. A few days later, electronic versions of customized baptismal certificates for our congregation arrived in my inbox. Along with the certificates, I received a helpful FAQ document explaining the purpose of these certificates and providing helpful hints and instructions on how to make the most of them.

I couldn’t be more pleased with these certificates. First, they are absolutely beautiful! The artwork and Scripture passages which appear on them serve to teach the marvelous treasure which belongs to all who have received the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Second, these customized certificates now belong to our congregation. Having paid the one-time fee of $35, we own the rights to these certificates and can print as many as we like and use them however we see fit – forever. No more periodic ordering of baptismal certificates for us! Third, the ease of using these certificates is a treasure in itself. You simply fill in the appropriate info on your master pdfs and you’re ready to go. They are designed to print on 11×17 paper, but if your printer does not have that capability, you can save the master pdfs to a flash drive, CD, etc., take them to a local copy shop, fill in the appropriate info, and make your copies. Lastly, the beauty and high quality of these certificates make for wonderful and treasured keepsakes. They look absolutely gorgeous framed and hanging on a wall. And because we own the rights to our certificates, we do not have to limit our use to future Baptisms, but can offer to print certificates for those who have received the Sacrament of Holy Baptism in the past, which they can hang as a beautiful reminder of the eternal blessings they have as beloved children of God.

I highly recommend these certificates and encourage everyone to follow the link above to give them a look and consider ordering. I am very thankful to Pr. Wolfmueller and his partner in this endeavor, Jason Hanson (the clever combination of their names results in “Wolfson Creative”), for providing the beloved gift of these wonderful certificates to the Church.

Go now and check them out. You won’t be disappointed. They are awesome!

Sincerely,
In Christ,
Rev. Thomas C. Messer
Peace Lutheran Church
Alma, MI

Objective Justification and Rome

About a year ago one of my professors gave me the lecture notes of my grandfather, Robert Preus, from when he taught a course on Justification at St. Catharines back in the 80’s. According to Dr. Jackson, Preus was an adherent of Objective Justification at that time, but Jackson claims that he demonstrates in his essay “Justification and Rome” that he had a breakthrough and realized that this is not a Lutheran teaching. The lecture notes consist of twenty pages of quotes from the Lutheran Church Fathers on Justification, and most of these quotes are found in his “Justification and Rome.” One of the quotes comes from Abraham Calov’s Apodixis articulorum fidei (Lüneberg, 1684, p. 249), and Jackson cites this quote in Preus’ book as proof that he denied Objective Justification by the end of his life. Here is the quote (quoted in “Justification and Rome, 131, n74):

Although Christ has acquired for us the remission of sins, justification, and sonship, God just the same does not justify us prior to our faith. Nor do we become God’s children in Christ in such a way that justification in the mind of God takes place before we believe.

Now, Jackson also likes to point out what Preus wrote on page 72:

When does the imputation of Christ’s righteousness take place? It did not take place when Christ, by doing and suffering, finished the work of atonement and reconciled the world to God. Then and there, when the sins of the world were imputed to Him and He took them, Christ became our righteousness and procured for us remission of sin, justification, and eternal life. “By thus making satisfaction He procured and merited (acquisivit et promeruit) for each and every man remission of all sins, exemption from all punishments of sin, grace and peace with God, eternal righteousness and salvation.” [quoting Quenstedt] But the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the sinner takes place when the Holy Spirit brings him to faith through Baptism and the Word of the Gospel. Our sins were imputed to Christ at His suffering and death, imputed objectively after He, by His active and passive obedience, fulfilled and procured all righteousness for us. But the imputation of His righteousness to us takes place when we are brought to faith. (72)

So Preus discusses here the distinction between procured and imputed righteousness. Jackson evidently does not see the procuring of Christ’s righteousness for all as part of Objective Justification. I suppose he is right that Quenstedt does not specifically say that God justified the world in Christ. Calov never used the term justification apart from faith. But this does not mean that they did not understand and teach the concept of Objective Justification. Preus gives a good explanation for the lack of outright Objective Justification language in the Lutheran Church Fathers. In his lecture notes, he writes (pg. 11):

Although the orthodox Lutherans do not make a great point out of a concept of universal justification, as they do against the Calvinists in the case of universal grace, universal atonement, redemption and reconciliation, they nevertheless do assert the doctrine when they believe the Scriptures demand it. Or they do so in passing when speaking in all sorts of contexts about the consequences of the work of Christ.

Preus then goes on to show that Sebastian Schmidt confesses the concept of Objective Justification in his Romans commentary (Hamburg, 1704, pg. 350). Schmidt, in discussing Romans 5:18, finds a distinction between dikaioma and dikaiosis. The former is a justifying righteousness which came to all men; the latter, set in opposition to katakrima (act of condemnation), is “the very act of justification whereby God justifies us.” Preus also quotes Schmidt in Latin earlier in his notes (pg. 8): “Christ was given up for the sake of the sins of the whole world. In like manner he was risen for the sake of our justification, hic est of the whole world.” (Schmidt 328) Christ became the righteousness of all; His resurrection proves it.

Jackson acts as if Preus had a huge breakthrough in his “Justification and Rome,” failing to realize that the Calov quote was in his lecture notes long before he wrote his essay; in these lecture notes he clearly confessed Objective Justification. If one believes Jackson that Robert Preus used this Calov quote in support of an apparent denial of Objective Justification, one would expect Preus to follow up this quote with such a denial. However, he instead shows the significance of what Calov is saying (“Justification and Rome” n74, pg. 131; c.f. Quenstedt Systema), showing that the Roman Catholics could not speak of forgiveness and righteousness as “objective realities which are offered in the Gospel.” For the Catholics, as opposed to the Lutherans, righteousness and forgiveness are only possibilities which become realities when one begins the process of justification/sanctification. The Gospel therefore is efficacious because it delivers that reality of righteousness and forgiveness already procured to all. Preus, then, demonstrates the reality of justification before faith, only that it is not imputed to me personally prior to faith. The only way one can conclude from “Justification and Rome” that Preus denied Objective Justification is if one reads it not in the context of his theological and scholarly life, but rather in light of one’s own presuppositions and reasoning.

Best Practices for “Ministry”? Report from Rev. Brian Flamme

photo (5)The “Best Practices for Ministry” description is brief on the convention website. “A FREE conference encouraging pastors, church workers and lay people as we reach out with the Gospel of Christ.  For those who love: the local church, the unchurched, the LCMS.” They also say that they’re “Bible-Based, Gospel-Centered, Mission-Driven, & Future-Oriented.”

That sums up the official information. It’s no secret, however, that this has become a popular destination for members of the Missouri Synod who are “missionally” minded. Why not? The well-organized conference is teeming with professional speakers at every turn, helpful volunteers, and delicious cookies.

But this place isn’t about the externals. Spiritual things are happening. Here a deeper understanding of “ministry” is cultivated and reinforced. It quickly becomes apparent that there is not one ministry. Ministries are everywhere and they potentially belong to anyone who has a heart for it. These ministries are the fundamental activity of the church. It’s an externally oriented movement that continually adapts to the world’s circumstances so it can draw outsiders into a visible assembly of people who experience God. This is the church. Ministries are what it does. Why? Because the world is in crisis, and church’s ministries are its last hope. How does this work? Outsiders are brought in through relationships which are initiated through these ministries. Whatever the method of outreach, it’s about making a personal connections with people in a dying world. Once they’re in the door, they have an opportunity to deepen and grow into a new, experience laden, relationship with God.

Out in the Synod that they so love, there’s opposition from the “confessionals” who challenge the very biblical basis for such a model. But here at “Best Practices” they’ll find reprieve from the nagging attacks that ceaselessly spring from the lips of the doctrine lovers and orthodoxy hounds. Sure, doctrine is important, but not all that necessary to talk about, especially when it comes to practical things, like outreach and ministries. Here they’re empowered and equipped to return to their congregations with renewed zeal and vision. There’s advice form one worker to the next on how to implement the latest changes of governance to facilitate the pastor’s role as a leader. They’ll learn how to disciple their followers and cultivate them into leaders so they too can establish and operate various ministries. The laying on of hands is common. Prayers are offered. Applause often reverberates through the gymnasium after a powerfully moving message and prayer. If I recall, there were nearly 1500 attendees. The sheer number of like-minded church workers offered the consolation that they’re not alone. Far from it. They are vast. They might even be growing.

The language and themes that permeated from one room to the next revolved around empowerment, equipping, affirmation, and discipleship. In Bill Woolsey’s plenary session on “Giving Away Authority and How that Blesses Leadership,” they learned that authority cannot be appealed to, it must instead be given away to equip others, like the younger millennials, for ministry. “Start new, reach new.” Right? What that might say about those who appeal to the authority of God’s Word and the confessions, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t sound good.

I’m a typical Fort Wayne grad. I’ve drunk from the streams of our confessional theology and delight in orthodoxy which is Jesus’ doctrine. Thus, much of the conference’s language and argumentation eluded me. This is a problem because I’m often in conversation with fellow pastors who use this wildly different ecclesial vocabulary. Church and ministry simply do not mean the same things between us. But these languages are not two equally valid options for articulating the same thing. One rests on the foundation of Scripture and the confessions. The other you can find in business seminars and the self-help section of the bookstore. The laity need to know this. They have to know that leadership principles and tips on interpersonal relationships are not to be equated with the Gospel, the holy ministry, or faithful pastoral practice.  I came and heckled with Twitter, if you can call tweeting heckling. I thought it would be good if both the pastors and laity saw that the permeating themes of the conference are not approved by everyone in the Synod. Far from it.

The tweets didn’t last long. One of the organizers explained that my use of their hashtag was harmful. It necessarily tied the reputation of the conference to many and various opinions of the speakers. The thought is that the conference was free to just about anybody, anyone could come and present, so it’s not fair to tag the conference in direct connection with the teaching of its presenters. Thinking back on it, I could have stood my ground and argued that nobody owns hashtags. They’re a way to identify your comments in relation to a place or idea. Nevertheless, the damage had already been done. Feelings were hurt and the good vibes of solidarity and peace were shaken.

Someone explained to me that the reason so many attendees were upset with my comments was because they were there to be “rejuvenated and renewed.” By calling attention to problems with the conference and its presenters, it made it hard for these church workers to relax. After thinking about this comment, I became incredibly sad. I realized that many of these church workers, pastors, and laity had been fed program after program to implement by these folks in the past, but with limited to no results. Who do you blame when you come up short? They beat themselves up and head back out to Phoenix. Then they hear about the new, statistically proven program that grows congregations, and the next popular movement that’s bringing the most people into the church. When they hear this, they’re invited to jump on to the cusp of the wave of relevance. They’re equipped with more tools, more visions, and PowerPoint after PowerPoint of diagrams that show them how everything they’ve been doing wrong and the new plan to fix it.

This is bondage to the Law. Pastors especially, who have suffered under their congregations’ criticism and feel the pain of losing member after member to secular society, come here to reload the magic bullets that are supposed the solve the numbers and money problem. This inevitably leads to a desire to change their behaviors and attitudes, reworking their own personality to become a better leader. It will also mean reorganizing whoever they have left in the pews to do the work of ministry for them, probably because they’ve proven themselves insufficient in making enough personal relationships to grow the church. Either way, by coming back to this conference, their consciences are being soothed with a false hope, a hope found in the ingenuity and strength of men.

These pastors and church workers need to hear that Satan is raging against them. That he’s snatching one member after another from their congregations. The church is going to be assaulted by new winds of false doctrine and the cleverly devised myths of culture. Yes, the Lord has promised that his Church shall endure (Matt. 16:18), but that doesn’t mean that she’ll not suffer.

When our churches suffer from loss of any type, this is the time for examination and repentance. Under the glare of God’s Law we’ll see all our good intentions and efforts at outreach have been laced with pride and vanity from the start. Terror and sorrow are soon to follow for the person who does not harden himself against the truth. But now what? Where do we find help? Do we wander the path of the Law, by seeking out new programs and visions to implement?

No. This is the time for the Gospel. These pastors need to hear that they have come up short, but that Jesus’ promise of mercy has not abandoned them. True rejuvenation begins with absolution found at an orthodox altar. Repentance, not restructuring, the Lord’s promises, not new programs are what’s needed. It’s only from this starting point that both pastors and laity can relearn both the identity and the purpose of the Christian church. Upon this rock of atonement, forgiveness, and grace, they’ll learn that the church is not a fluid movement that defined by leaders and followers. The church is a rock, a holy institution of Christ where there the ministry of Law and Gospel preaching never changes. Yes the circumstances in the world change, but the Jesus’ own instituting words are never abandoned for the sake of relevance. There’s more than ample opportunity to talk about edifying practices, but this is pure poison if Jesus’ doctrine and institutions are not retained. The pastor must find his consolation in the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, not the newest path to success that he can implement through his own works.

While many of these sectionals would be fine as a secular seminar on interpersonal communication and business advice, I’m afraid that their place in the church corrupts and changes the very language that should be used to describe and think about the body of Christ. Orthodoxy, after all, is a conformity of language, a familiar pattern of expressing the faith that would be recognizable to both Christ’s apostles who first preached the Scriptures and our Lutheran fathers who confessed them.

The best practices were established by Jesus, his preaching and sacraments which impart forgiveness and life, and these never change.

 

A Statement on Justification from the ACLC

A while back, the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America adopted a statement on the doctrine of justification that decisively rejected the teaching of objective/subjective justification – which had been an earmark of the “Synodical Conference” tradition of Lutheranism. The pastors of the Association of Confessional Lutheran Congregations, which up until now has been in fellowship with the ELDoNA, have now prepared a formal theological response to the ELDoNA document, which is available on the ACLC website. I am not a member of, or a spokesperson for, the ACLC, so I would not expect to be discussing their document very much in this forum. But since their document does address a subject that I have discussed on this blog in the past (here and here), and since those previous posting garnered quite a bit of discussion among the readers of this blog, I thought that it would be of interest to those readers also to made aware of these developments, and of the ACLC document.

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies-Easter 1

This is a reposting of a pair of articles published last year on the origins of Easter and some Easter traditions. The sources are given so that the reader can better be able to debunk the popular “historical” nonsense about the origins of Easter.

The whole series is available at Diatheke Christianity and Paganism.

Easter is the English/Germanic name for the Festival of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This particular Feast Day is the heart and center of the whole liturgical practice of the Christian Church Year.

Because it is at the center it is under great attack by those seeking to discredit this liturgical festival. If these people can maintain that Easter is really originally pagan, then they undermine Christ, His Passion, death and Resurrection.

In this article we will look at:

  • Passover as the historical Biblical origin of the Christian liturgical Church Year;
  • The historical development of the date of Easter/Resurrection/Passover;
  • Claims of Pagan Origin or Influence, including:
  • The origins of the pagan goddess Eostre;
  • The historical Lenten Fast that lead to the use of Eggs in association with Easter;
  • And the particularly Christian use of the hare/rabbit as a symbol for the Trinity and the Resurrection.

Passover as The Origin of the Christian Church Year

The three High Festivals of the Christian Church Year are Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. All of these days are were established in the early Church on the basis of the biblical dating of Passover. Any festivals that are tied to the dates of these Holy Days are derived from their relationship to Passover.

This means that, contrary to claims from many different sources, the choice of dates for these Festivals and those tied to them have nothing to do with pagan origins.

Let us say that again and more clearly: The dates for Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, and all those church holy days that are directly tied to the dates of those holy days are all based originally on Passover. None of these days were chosen due to pagan influences. None! The actual choice for the date was based on what God declared to Moses in about 1,440 B.C. on Mt. Sinai.

There are Christian festivals that are not directly tied to these dates, those are dates such as the the commemoration of Saints. Those days were chosen for their own reasons: usually to commemorate the calender day on which a person was born or died.

But the relationship between the Passover, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas is an historically demonstrable fact through the writings of the Church Fathers.

And this relationship to Passover is essential to understanding the theology of the Promise and Fulfillment in Christ as well as the establishing of the First Covenant and its fulfillment in the New Covenant.

About 1,470 years before the Son of God instituted His Holy Supper, that same Son of God commanded Moses and the Congregation of Israel saying:

12 Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.

The ordinance for this festival and the Festival of Unleavened Bread is that the month of Abib become the first month of the religious calendar. The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are the basis in the Books of Moses for calculating the two other major festivals of the liturgical year:

  • the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) 7 weeks and one day, which marks remembering God’s revealing of the Covenant at Mt. Sinai at the end of those weeks (Exodus 19). The remembrance is tied together with the harvest of the Firstfruits and the requirement to offer the best of the firstfruits to God.
  • the Feast of Tabernacles is calculated being the full moon seventh month (a sabbath month) from the first month. All the congregation was required to gather before the tabernacle each year on these three festivals.

And just as the Passover Lamb was selected on the 10th of the First Month, the scapegoat and the sacrificial goat for the Lord were selected on the 10th of the Seventh Month–The Day of Atonement.

Everything in the liturgical year is keyed upon Passover in the Old Testament. This key event does not get put aside in the New Testament. Rather, the Passover takes on even greater significance as it is fulfilled in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.

While Clement of Alexandria attests to the fact that there were a handful of different days of the year that people thought the world was created, the view expressed by Clement (c.150 – c. 215), Hippolytus (170 – 235),  Julius Africanus (c.160 – c.240) and others at the close of the 2nd century A.D. were the most widely accepted. That view was that the world was created March 25th, Christ was conceived March 25th, and Christ was crucified March 25th. March 25th also was the equinox. Which made this date easy to calculate.

Thus we can see that the choice of this date was also a public confession of the Hypostatic Union of the Two Natures in Christ. Observing Creation, Incarnation, and Passion on the same day confessed that it is the Son of God, the Creator, who became human and so intimately united Himself with humanity by suffering as a man in humanity’s place.

We are not evaluating whether March 25th was the actual date that these events truly happened, we are demonstrating the early rationale for and the early widespread acceptance of this date in the teaching and practice of the Church.

This dating was the basis for later the work of Dionysius Exiguus (c. 470 – c. 544) , and widely enough established in the late 2nd century to be used as proof by Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 AD):

And the suffering of this “extermination” was perfected within the times of the lxx hebdomads, under Tiberius Caesar, in the consulate of Rubellius Geminus and Fufius Geminus, in the month of March, at the times of the passover, on the eighth day before the calends of April [March 25th], on the first day of unleavened bread, on which they slew the lamb at even, just as had been enjoined by Moses.(An Answer to the Jews, 8.18, emphasis added)

This view formed the basis for the Alexandrian Era and held in the ancient Church up to the 7th century A.D.

The Christmas Cycle separates from the Easter Cycle

While the early church equated March 25th (the equinox) with the Incarnation of Christ, all those dates related directly to that date became fixed on the calendar. However, the Passover changed each year because it was based on the lunar cycle.

How Did Easter Get Separated from Passover?

So the problem became, when should Christ’s Passion and Resurrection be celebrated? Should it be held relative to Passover regardless of which day of the week it occurred? Or should it be held on the days of the week named in the Gospel narratives regardless of which day of the week the Passover actually occurred?

The debate is called “The Easter Controversy.” It is actually several different controversies through the centuries about the same issue. Records about this debate and from this debate date back to the early and mid 2nd century. And the question of when Easter should be celebrated and how it should be calculated led to many writings of the early chronographers and calendarists.

There were two main parts to these controversies. First, whether Passover and Resurrection should be observed on the 14th of Abib or on the Sunday following. The  controversies following this had to deal with the best way to calculate the Passover accurately.

Why Sunday Weekly Worship

Sunday became the focus of Christian worship because it is the Day of the Resurrection of Christ (Mt. 28:1; Mk. 16:9; Lk. 24:1;  Jn. 20:1, 19).

The weekly Sunday worship focused on the Passover given and instituted as the New Covenant fulfilling the Promise (Gal. 4). Paul testifies that the Lord’s Supper was celebrated and tithes were gathered at worship on Sunday (Acts 20:7; I Cor. 16:2). Weekly Sunday worship with the Lord’s Supper is weekly observance of the Passover in Christ, but not the passover of the Old Covenant. It is the partial fulfilment of the Passover with the New Covenant. The complete fulfilment of the original Passover waits until the Return of Christ on Judgement day.

14 When the hour had come, He sat down, and the twelve apostles with Him. 15 Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; 16 for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”
(Luke 22:14-16)

Often moderns will make the same claim made by the Sabbath Keepers like Abram Herbert Lewis (1832-1908), that Christians cannot worship on Sunday because that is a pagan day devoted to a pagan God. The Sabbath keepers tried to argue that the early church did not worship on Sunday but that this gradually came about as Christianity gave into paganism and wordliness.
[the above paragraph is corrected. Thank you to those who pointed out my mistake.]

But worship on Sunday was considered a vital confessional practice even while the Apostles were still alive. Ignatius (30 AD – 107 AD) wrote in The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, Chapter 9 (ANF 1:62-63):

If, therefore, those who were brought up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death—whom some deny, by which mystery we have obtained faith, and therefore endure, that we may be found the disciples of Jesus Christ, our only Master—how shall we be able to live apart from Him, whose disciples the prophets themselves in the Spirit did wait for Him as their Teacher? And therefore He whom they rightly waited for, being come, raised them from the dead. (emphasis added)

And later in the same chapter:

But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them. And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord’s Day as a festival, the resurrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week]. Looking forward to this, the prophet declared, “To the end, for the eighth day,” on which our life both sprang up again, and the victory over death was obtained in Christ,(emphasis added)

It was on a Sunday that the Apostle John received the Revelation of Jesus Christ.(Rev. 1:9-10)

Justin Martyr (AD 100–ca.165) bears witness to this unity of dates and practices (also pointing out that the Mithraists copied Christian practice in his time with regard to the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church) [Apology 1:66 –ANF 1:p. 185]. Justin highlighted the significance of the day and the liturgical practice in the following passage:

And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration. [ibid. 67, ANF 1:186]

The First Easter Date Controversy ( up to 190AD)

So by the time the first main controversy about Easter became and issue, most congregations outside of Asia-Minor already celebrated Resurrection on the Sunday following the Passover.

But in Asia-Minor there were several congregations that maintained the practice of celebrating the Crucifixion on the 14th of Abib. These people became called “Fourteenthers” [Quartodeciman].

Eusebeus (Hist. 5:24) records the words of Irenaeus at the time:

12. “For the controversy is not only concerning the day, but also concerning the very manner of the fast. For some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more; some, moreover, count their day as consisting of forty hours day and night.

13. And this variety in its observance has not originated in our time; but long before in that of our ancestors. It is likely that they did not hold to strict accuracy, and thus formed a custom for their posterity according to their own simplicity and peculiar mode. Yet all of these lived none the less in peace, and we also live in peace with one another; and the disagreement in regard to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.” (NPNF2-01: 243 emphasis added)

Irenaeus stated that the difference in calendar observance was not divisive of fellowship.

There are two important things to note about this controversy:

First: The question of whether 14th Abib or the Sunday following pre-dates this controversy. The practice of a Sunday Easter service is shown by Irenaeus’ and Justin’s letters. The practice of Sunday observance of Easter probably dates back to the Apostolic times.

Second: The issue at hand was when to break the fast for the Resurrection. We have already seen that the 40 day Lenten fast pre-dates Constantine. We see here in Irenaeus that fasting traditions varied from place to place but were considered old traditions.

The choice of the Church to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on Sundays is very ancient, probably from the Apostolic period. The choice had nothing to do with Roman pagan holidays or any other pagan holiday. It had to do with making a clear Christological confession about the Christ-the suffering Servant, the God-Man incarnate who redeemed us from sin, Satan, and death itself.

The Second Easter Date Controversy (323 A.D)

This debate took place as part of the Council of Nicea where Athanasius worked against Arius. This is the council that the Easter-haters point to claiming that Constantine usurped the church and brought in pagan customs and dates.

Sunday Easter service was already the norm throughout Christianity by this time. The issue at the Council was which is the best way to calculate when Easter would occur.

The desire was to have all the congregations celebrating on the same date. But that could not happen by depending upon the rabbis fixing the month by physical observation. One of the complaints recorded is that dependency on such physical calculations might allow Passover to be celebrated twice in one solar year.

The practice was to wait until the rabbis had “set the month by observation” (קדוש החדש על פי ראיה) or by means of reckoning  (קדוש החדש על פי חשבון).

[ From “Mishna Torah, Book of Times, Regulations for the Sanctifying of the Month” משנה תורה – ספר זמנים – הלכות קידוש החודש – הכול פרק ב]

The Council sought to keep the Passover in Christ from being arbitrarily decided and to have the date uniformly kept throughout the church at large.  They set the equinox as the earliest possible date of Passover–already established by early tradition as the day of Creation, Incarnation, and the original Crucifixion.

Nothing in their discussions or in any of the surviving evidence suggests that these dates were chosen or influenced by any pagan practice or teaching. All the actual contemporary evidence points to a great concern that the Passover be marked accurately for the sake of confessing the Hypostatic Union of Christ and His saving work in His Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection.

The Third Easter Date Controversy (c. 600 A.D)

Churches in the British Isles which had been established early were using a different method of calculation than were the churches in the Mediterranean area. The calculations used in the British Isles were using the formula from the time of the Roman occupation, the formula that the church at Rome had made improvements to.

The Easter date in the British Isles had nothing to do with pagan worship, but was based on the older method originating with the churches in the Mediterranean area. When this older method was replaced it had nothing to do with pagan practices. The churches in the British Isles were just conforming to what had been established by the Church at large in the Mediterranean world.

[Thurston, H. (1909). Easter Controversy. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved March 26, 2013 from New Advent: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05228a.htm]

Summary

The date of Easter and the rest of the High Holy Days of the Church are rooted in the observance of the Passover and have no roots in any pagan practice. The Passover was established by God nearly 1500 years before the fulfilment of the Promise in Christ’s death and resurrection. The Church sought to clarify how this date chosen in the calendar and help make the practice consistent throughout the Church.

None of the controversies surrounding the dating of Easter had anything to do with pagan practices. Essentially these controversies were either disagreements on whether to observe the 14th of Abib rather than the Sunday following, or disagreements on the best way to calculate when the Biblical 14th of Abib (the Passover) would take place.

Anyone who contends that the dates were chosen on the basis of pagan sources is making a claim contrary to all actual evidence from the actual periods.

What About Other Pagan Influences?

Part 2 coming soon…..

Some Quotes for Discussion of AC XIV

BOCcoverHere are some quotes when considering AC XIV:

XIV Of Ecclesiastical Order they teach that no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he be regularly called.

 

 

“…it is with those who are legitimately chosen and called by God through the church, therefore with the ministers to whom the use or administration of the ministry of the Word and the sacraments has been committed.”
Martin Chemnitz, Examination of the Council of Trent: Volume II, p.97

 

…[I]t is the response of the Lutheran theologians to the charge that John Eck made in his 404 Propositions that the Lutherans denied the existence of the sacrament of orders, called it a figment of human invention, and asserted that any layman at all can consecrate churches, confirm children, and so on (Wilhelm Gussmann, D. Johann Ecks Vierhundertvier Artikel zum Reichstag von Augsburg 1530 [Kassel:Edmund Pillardy, 1930], nos.267 to 268, pp.134 and 177-78). The Lutheran response is that laymen are not admitted to the really crucial tasks of publicly and responsibly proclaiming the Gospel and of administering the sacraments.
Arthur Carl Piepkorn. “The Sacred Ministry and Holy Ordination in the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church.” in Michael P. Plekon and William S. Wiecher. The Church: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn. (Delhi, NY: American Lutheran Publicity Bureau Books, 1993); p.62
…the word rite in rite vocatus implies in the normal terminology of the 16th century a formal ordination as something over and above a mere calling. Both vocatio (“calling”) and ordinatio (“ordination”) are extensively used in this period to describe the whole process of election and ordination. […] [T]he Confutatio pontifica accepted Article 14 in principle. It would not have done so if it had understood the article as suggesting that ordination was not necessary. The particular point on which the Confutatio insisted was that a bishop perform the ordination. This is clear from the Apology on Article 14. […] The Apology makes it clear that it has no quarrel with ordination or even with episcopacy, but that Episcopal ordination is not available to the proponents of the Augsburg Confession. The implication is that they may have no alternative but to avail themselves of ordination by clergymen in presbyter’s orders.
Arthur Carl Piepkorn. “The Sacred Ministry and Holy Ordination in the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church.” in Michael P. Plekon and William S. Wiecher. The Church: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn. (Delhi, NY: American Lutheran Publicity Bureau Books, 1993); pp.62,63
Since the meaning of the public office is lost, ministry is limited to the private sphere. Willy-nilly Christianity becomes simply a private cult and the rationale for ordained ministry in Lutheranism threatens to disappear altogether. Here I expect is a major reason for the erosion of the understanding of ordained ministry among us. When the church becomes merely a private cult it is difficult to say why just any Christian cannot perform most if not all the functions ordinarily assigned to the ordained. It appears presumptuous in a democratic society to suppose that some are raised to a different level by ecclesiastical monkey business. And since it is, after all, only a “private” matter, what difference does ordination make? Furthermore when members of the clergy themselves capitulate and no longer do what can be called public preaching, teaching, or absolving but rather just make a public display of private emotions and experiences or invest most of their effort in private counseling, what does one need ordained clergy for? What matters is not the public exercise of the office but what “personal skills” or what kind of a (private) person the leader is. There is no way that ordination automatically imparts any skills or makes a person nice. So what is it for? Cannot properly sensitized or trained lay persons do just as well, or better?
Gerhard O. Forde. “The Ordained Ministry” in Todd Nichol & Marc Kolden (ed.) Called and Ordained: Lutheran Perspectives on the Office of the Ministry. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990); p.126
The great majority of our theologians, Luther in the forefront, believe that the holy Supper should never be administered privately by one who is not in the public preaching office, by a layman. That is partly because no such necessity can occur with the holy Supper, as with Baptism and Absolution, that would justify a departure from God’s ordinance ( I Cor 4:1; Romans 10:15; Heb 5:4); partly because the holy Supper “is a public confession and so should have a public minister”; partly because schisms can easily be brought about by such private Communion…
C.F.W. Walther. Pastoral Theology. Trans. John M. Drickamer. (New Haven: Lutheran News Inc, 1995); p.134
And what must the Christians do who are held captive in Turkey? They cannot receive the sacrament and have to be content with their faith and desire which they have for the sacrament and the ordinance of Christ, just as those who die before baptism are nevertheless saved by their faith and desire for baptism. What did the children of Israel do in Babylon when they were unable to have public worship at Jerusalem except in faith and in sincere desire and longing? Therefore, even if the church would have been robbed completely of the sacrament by the pope, still, because the ordinance of Christ remained in their hearts with faith and desire, it would nevertheless have been preserved thereby, as indeed now in our time there are many who outwardly do without the sacrament for they are not willing to honor and strengthen the pope’s abomination under one kind. For Christ’s ordinance and faith are two works of God which are capable of doing anything.
Martin Luther.  “The Private Mass and the Consecration of Priests” (Luther’s Works, AE:38; p.207)
In the Formula of Concord’s denial that, “No man’s word or work, be it the merit or speaking of the minister,” brings about the real presence is not to deny that the body and blood are, “distributed through our ministry and office”
FC-SD, VII.74-77.

 

How the congregation organizes itself, for this no prescriptions are given, just as there are none for how the church’s ministry is to be organized. The apostles came to recognize that it would be helpful for their ministry if they were relieved of the work of caring for the poor and attending to money matters. So the office of the deacons was created as an auxiliary office. But the church was the church already before this office was created. So the church can at any time create auxiliary offices to meet the needs of the time. Examples of this in the history of the church are the office of an episcopate, or superintendency, or any other offices, whatever they may be called. But all these offices have their right of existence only insofar as they serve the one great office of the preaching of the Gospel and the administering of the sacraments. A bishop may be entrusted with the task of seeing to the running of a great diocese. But the meaning of such an assignment can only consist in this, that he thereby gives room and support to the church’s ministry. His actual office is the office of pastor, also when he is a pastor for pastors. By human arrangement he may have the work of superintendency. By divine mandate he has solely the office of preaching the forgiveness and justification of sinners for Christ’s sake.
Hermann Sasse. “Ministry and Congregation” (1949) in We Confess the Church. Trans. Norman E. Nagel. (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986); pp 71,72

 

Being a Man in the Church

church-clip-art-28958I presented on this topic for the 3rd annual Wyoming District Men’s Retreat this past weekend.  What follows are my thoughts which I expanded for the presentation.  Sadly, the recording of this was lost due to technical errors.

Being a Man in the Church

2015 Wyoming District Men’s Retreat

 

Be at Church – The Divine Service as Priority in the Man of God’s Life

There are two reasons Christians go to church, Command and Promise.  First the Command – Remember the Sabbath Day by Keeping it Holy.  What does this mean?  The Small Catechism links this to hearing preaching and learning the word of God.  This has to do with attending Church, and really as the history of preaching unfolds, attending Bible Study as well.  The average sermon used to be much longer, rivaling the length of modern Bible Study time (and in such times there wasn’t Bible Study), but in the past two centuries we have shortened sermons and added Bible Study as the time when more in depth teaching has occurred.  This experiment has probably been for the worse as less people attend Bible Study than Divine Service.  Preaching is God’s Word, and the Christian man loves to hear and learn the Word of God.  It is God’s Will for you to be in Church and learning the Word of God.

The second reason for Christians to go to church is the Promise.  This is language of the Gospel, for it is at church where you hear that word of Gospel (lookup Romans 10:5-17).  You hear the absolution (lookup John 20:19-23).  You are taught the very word of God (lookup Isaiah 55:6-11).  That Word of the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation (lookup Romans 1:16-17).  Besides this, the Divine Service is a reminder of your baptism (see every sign of the cross in the service, where was that sign first made over you?).  This then can remind us of the promises of God concerning our baptism (Matthew 28; Mark 16; Romans 6; Titus 3; Ephesians 5 [how to be a good husband? More on that later]).  The Divine Service is also the place for the reception of the Lord’s Supper (lookup Matthew 26; Mark 14; Luke 22; 1 Cor 14).  Given and Shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.  (How often?  How often do you come to church with sins?)  In fact, that is what everything in the Church ought to be ordered around – the forgiveness of sins (remember that as leaders).  These promises of God should make the Christian man eager to come to church.

 

Based upon these two, the commandment and the promises of God, when is it acceptable to miss the Divine Service?  How can we as men of God teach this to ourselves, our households, and our congregations?

 

Being an Example to Others

Phil. 3:12-21   Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

 

SOME STATS ON MEN AND CHURCH…  (Caveat about stats… and church growth/3rd Article of the Creed)

  • The typical U.S. Congregation draws an adult crowd that’s 61% female, 39% male. This gender gap shows up in all age categories.
  • On any given Sunday there are 13 million more adult women than men in America’s churches.
  • This Sunday almost 25 percent of married, churchgoing women will worship without their husbands.
  • Midweek activities often draw 70 to 80 percent female participants.
  • The majority of church employees are women (except for ordained clergy, who are overwhelmingly male).
  • Over 70 percent of the boys who are being raised in church will abandon it during their teens and twenties. Many of these boys will never return.
  • More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and five out of six call themselves Christians. But only one out of six attend church on a given Sunday. The average man accepts the reality of Jesus Christ, but fails to see any value in going to church.
  • Churches overseas report gender gaps of up to 9 women for every adult man in attendance.
  • Christian universities are becoming convents. The typical Christian college in the U.S. enrolls almost 2 women for every 1 man.
  • Fewer than 10% of U.S. churches are able to establish or maintain a vibrant men’s ministry.

Church is good for men:

  • Churchgoers are more likely to be married and express a higher level of satisfaction with life. Church involvement is the most important predictor of marital stability and happiness. (NOTE ON BOTH SPOUSES IN THE SAME PEW EVERY SUNDAY AND DIVORCE)
  • Church involvement moves people out of poverty. Its also correlated with less depression, more self-esteem and greater family and marital happiness.
  • Religious participation leads men to become more engaged husbands and fathers.
  • Teens with religious fathers are more likely to say they enjoy spending time with dad and that they admire him.

And men are good for the church:

  • A study from Hartford Seminary found that the presence of involved men was statistically correlated with church growth, health, and harmony. Meanwhile, a lack of male participation is strongly associated with congregational decline.

– See more at: https://churchformen.com/men-and-church/where-are-the-men/

 

American Churches are in numerical decline.  The youth are gone, and honestly so are many of the people 50 and under (the ones older are there but the Lord is working on taking them home).  A man’s presence in church is a blessing to his own household, but also to the household of God.  The most influential Sunday School teacher I ever had was a man.  Men are examples, “heads” and that is just a created ordering of the world and also is a fact in the Church (whereas the rest of the body is present, the head receives attention).  And the absence of men is also an example – a bad one for all those who are there at church (or not if you and your household are not at church).  There is a great “traditioning” joy in being an example for imitation of good and godly virtues and practices (NOTE on being a man and confessing sin to others).  Some of these virtues and practices include:

Being a man of prayer.  Exemplify prayer before, during, and after the Divine Service.  Take the time to pray for yourself, your household, and everyone whom God has gathered together for this service.  Pray for your pastor, that he might serve faithfully in his conducting the liturgy, preaching, teaching, and administration of the Sacraments.

Singing the hymns.  There is nothing that can beat the sound of men singing.  Many pastors could regale many stories of hearing the seminary chapel filled with the sounds of men’s voices.  There is something robust and courage inspiring in hearing men bolster out our excellent Lutheran hymns.  Hymns are your confession of faith, they are a sacrifice of praise as well (in response to what God has done).  Hymns teach.  Not singing teaches also.  Here, yes, people want to talk about not being able to sing – but singing is learned by doing it.

Exemplifying reverence.  At Divine Service, you are in the very presence of God (NOTE: not the same way as in outdoors).  This gracious God has promised through His Word that day (spoken through the man who hold His Divine Office) and His Sacraments (based upon His Words of Institution) to grant you the forgiveness of your sins, life, and everlasting salvation.  This is the God who created the heavens and the earth.  This is the God who controls all of history, directing it for the good of His Church (of which you are a part).  This is the God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – a God whom we should fear, love, and trust in above all things.  Reverence is expected in such a situation.  What we wear at Divine Service, how we act, the motions and gestures we do all say something about what is going on there.  These things are important in being an example.

 

The Example of the Catechism Man

The Catechism provides a good example of manhood. A baptized man of God knows the commandments, what they are, what they mean, what sins they show, what things they institute, what actions they command in relation to God and the neighbor.  Obviously in relation to men in Church this includes the Third Commandment.  It also means the Fourth Commandment (pastors are included in those “other authorities”).  In the age of persecution and so forth, this may also include the Fifth Commandment and others (Seventh).  It includes a knowledge of reputation (which men understand reputation well, but get confused as to the content of a Christian reputation).  The Catechism Man fears God more than man.  The Catechism Man knows the earthly gifts of God included in the First Article of the Creed and also in daily bread.  He knows that because of all of this it is his duty to thank and praise, serve and obey God.  The Catechism Man knows it is Christ Jesus who has saved him, and is concerned about the proper teaching of who Jesus is and what He has done, because that message is the one which saves.  The Catechism Man realizes that the Church is the work of God, the Holy Spirit calling, gathering, etc. and that our entire congregational life (holy Christian Church, the communion of saints) ought to be ordered around the forgiveness of sins leading to the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting [This is the how the Holy Spirit works].  The Catechism Man prays.  In private and in public (especially including at Church).   He still regards himself as a child of God, even in old age.  He listens and learns so that he can know how God’s name is kept holy among us, being taught in its truth and purity.  He guards his conduct and fatherly/brotherly helps his brothers and sister in Christ to lead holy lives according to the Word.  He knows that one day he will die and so prepares himself for it.  He knows the pattern of the Baptized life, daily dying to sin and rising again to newness of life.  He knows how to confess his sins (against those he has wronged and also privately to his pastor) and does not refrain from doing so in order to preserve his reputation in front of others (we must fear God more than other men).  He knows the treasure of the Lord’s Supper and gladly prepares himself to receive it often.

Can you imagine if this was the example of Christian manhood put before our congregations?

 

Hearers (disciples [and Catechists])

Luther’s Small Catechism says there are two vocations in the Church, that of preachers and hearers.  Preachers are easy to figure out, they are the ones in the pulpit.  Hearers similarly are easy, they are the ones in the pews (or chairs if you must).  The tasks of the hearer involve more than just hearing (although that is a good start).  Actively engaging with the service in listening to hymns, lessons, prayers, and sermons is indeed a good start and goes a long way in letting God work on you as a man in His Church.  This involves discipline in putting away the cares and concerns of this world and also possibly still having to deal the family vocations that God has given to you (dads still have to help with kids…).  Such listening takes time to develop and grow, but it is the kind of listening that God would have you mature into.  This “inward digestion” of the Word of God is important for every single vocation you have.  Moving from the milk of the Word (simple doctrines and plain truths) to the meat (more in depth theology and the application of law and gospel in our day to day lives) is a hard thing, but one wrought by God through His Holy Spirit using the Word (where do we hear the Word?).  It is God’s Will for you to grow into spiritual maturity (it is very possible to be old in age but immature in the faith).  Let’s take a look at the verses that Luther assigned to the task of hearers in the Table of Duties in the Small Catechism (from www.cph.org/catechism):

 

What the Hearers Owe Their Pastors

The Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. 1 Cor. 9:14

Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Gal. 6:6–7

The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.” 1 Tim. 5:17–18

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 1 Thess. 5:12–13

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. Heb. 13:17

Servants

Luther once said that a Christian is a free lord, subject to none and yet a Christian is also a servant of all, subject to all.  Our Christian freedom is meant for service.  Being a man is not about domination, but serving.  In this we look to the pinnacle of Manhood – Christ Jesus Himself.  He who would be greatest among you is not the one with the most stuff or the greatest “machismo” – but the one who serves.  This is against the message of the world and what it says for men.  In the Christian Congregation this means serving the neighbor (other parishioners and pastors) by serving in any way we have gifts and talents to serve.  If you are gifted at fixing things or organizing volunteers, serve as a trustee.  If you know the faith well, and are an example of Christian manhood, serve as an elder.  If you understand Stewardship, serve on that board.  If you know the Gospel well and want others to know it join the Evangelism board and lead that way.  If you want little ones to learn the Scriptures, offer to teach Sunday School.  We as the Church need more men in these positions, as the example of faithful men doing good work is a great one.  Our role as “heads” also means taking positions of authority in our congregations, for it is not good for women to exercise authority over men (according to St. Paul).  Step up, volunteer.  Say yes to the nomination and encourage each other on in honorable manhood and service in your congregations.

This means that we as men in the church need to be in the know.  Take interest in what is going on in your congregation, in the circuit, in the district, in the synod.  As you use your American Citizenship to keep informed about the goings on in our country, use your citizenship of the kingdom of God to take interest in how things are going on in that Kingdom on earth.  There is nothing more helpful in congregational, district, and synodical matters than a steadfast layman who knows what is happening and is willing to help in the ways required.

 

Givers

Yes, men in the church should be givers.  Men are the head of the household, directing the household’s priorities in how resources are spent.  This means first and foremost the support of the congregation to which the Holy Spirit has place you into.  So set aside a portion of the firstfruits.  Give cheerfully knowing full well what this offering supports – where would you be without the preached Word?  Where would your household be?  Where would the other members be?  Where would the new members be?  How valuable is true teaching of the Scriptures?  How about Holy Baptism?  Just how great is it to have the resource of a man of God who will pronounce absolution to you after every confession?  How precious is the body and blood of Jesus given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins?  God’s treasures, from Christ to you in the Church – what dollar amount can be placed on making sure that the needs of the pastor and the congregation are met?  Firstfruits, not last fruits.  The first item in our budget (even just the one in your mind) should not be mortgage, insurance, light bills, car payments, or even the grocery bill.  It should be our firstfruit, proportionate offering to our congregation.  God is more generous than you are, and He will never let you out give Him.  Repent of thinking that what you have is what you have earned for yourself.  It is all a gift of God, your jobs have been given to you by Him to serve your neighbors.  The paycheck is meant to support this body and life, but it is also meant to be given to the Church.

 

Leaders

Defenders of the Faith (Confessors) and Protectors of the Faithful

Men are used to hearing about themselves as defenders and protectors, and it is no different in the church, except the defense and protection is against false teachers and false teachings.  In the Scriptures, it is very clear that God is concerned about His people being led astray.  Women in particular are mentioned as being susceptible to this delusion (2 Tim 3:6; Gen 3?).  It is the Christian man’s vocation to protect against this.  This of course implies knowing the truth (get your Catechism out, study the Scriptures, ask your pastor to teach the Lutheran Confessions).  So men defend and protect and in this join in a category of Christians called “confessors”.  Confessors are Christians who confess the faith boldly and courageously for the sake of others.  Even in the face of pressure to give up the faith (or even small parts of it), confessors stand firm (see Ephesians 6).  This is what God has called you to do as a man in His Church.

There is another side to leadership in the Church, and we hinted at it already in the “example” section.  A Christian man leads in weakness and service.  We do not approach from above, but instead from below.  When someone is caught in actual sin, we humbly approach them, knowing that the same Original Sin and corruption resides in us.  We honor those older than us and treat everyone as someone more deserving of the higher place or better seat.  We rejoice in weakness, so that the strength of Christ may be even more present.  We do not rule like the Gentiles, lording our authority over one another, but we use whatever authority God has given us to serve the others.  As Paul admonishes – let this mind dwell in you… Philippians 2:1-11

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

 Being a Man with a clean conscience

All of the various callings we have will no doubt produce guilt over not doing things well or enough.  Original Sin is still alive and well (the Old Adam is a good swimmer).  This means that actual sins will manifest in our lives as Christian Men in the Church.  We will fail to study, listen, and confess as we should.  We will seek to dominate through power than serve with authority.  We will fail to serve on boards in Christian love.  We will not guard and protect our women and children as we should.  These failures are more than that – they are sins.  Examine your lives in your congregations according to the Ten Commandments?  You will find much sin.  This sin, if left to fester will spoil the conscience.  Behind each revealed is the temptation to self-justify, either in works to make up for it, or in denying the sin altogether, or in many other ways.  No effort to justify our sin will suffice before God in heaven.  The only justification that avails before God in heaven is that which is worked by Jesus Christ.  And what He has done is given freely by grace and is received by faith (itself a gift of God).  A clean conscience is very important to being a man in the congregation, as in leading and serving a clean conscience allows for a good confession of the faith.  A clean conscience will allow us to be better men, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, hearers, citizens, bosses and workers.

 

Love flowing from Love and how a man does good for his family, friends, coworkers, and community.

As a Christian man attending Divine Service (get there) you are being taken care of in so many ways in order to serve others.  The forgiveness of sins which grants the clean conscience is invaluable in the service of others.  Besides that, the motivation of having love for the neighbor is also fueled by having God’s love shown to you.  First He loves us, then we are able to love others (not in a self-serving way as we did prior to Christ).  How can you love your wife better?  Receive God’s love in the Divine Service.  How can you love your kids better?  Receive God’s love in the Divine Service.  How can you love anyone better?  Receive God’s love in the Divine Service.

 

 

 

Appendix 1

THE MOTIVES AND QUALIFICATIONS OF A GENUINE CHURCH MEMBER

Walther’s Words of Welcome to New Members (who in his day would have been only men)

by C.F.W. Walther

By signing the constitution of our congregation, you have shown that you approve of it and have solemnly promised to abide in it. In the name of the congregation I welcome you as voting members. Permit me to add a few remarks.

Only that is a good deed which is promoted by proper motives and performed in a proper spirit. Alms, for example, are good deeds only when given out of love, not under pressure or merely to make people believe that you are a Christian. Diligence in our earthly calling is a good deed only when it issues from the desire to please God, who wills that we eat our daily bread in the sweat of the brow, and not because you wish to gain riches.

The same holds true with respect to joining a Christian congregation. That, too, is a good deed only if we do so because it is Christ’s will that believers unite in proclaiming His Word, conducting public worship, and building and spreading His kingdom. The same step would be sinful if taken for the sake of earthly gain, as we read of Simon, the sorcerer, who joined the Christian congregation in Samaria to enrich himself in a material way. (Acts 8)

What has been said holds true also in the case of those who unite with a truly Evangelical Lutheran congregation. And this step is a good deed only if they wish to join such a congregation in preference to a congregation of another denomination because they are convinced that only the Evangelical Lutheran Church teaches the pure, unadulterated doctrine of God’s Word. Were someone, however, to seek voting membership in a Lutheran congregation simply because he was born and reared in its midst, or to please his parents, or because his friends are members of that congregation, or because the location of its church makes it convenient to attend its services, he would not perform a good deed, even though God may have led him into that church for the purpose of making him a true Lutheran, in other words, an orthodox Christian.

What has been said emphasizes three factors that are essential in the make-up of a genuine member of a Lutheran congregation.

  1. A genuine member of a Lutheran congregation must have a thorough understanding of pure Lutheran doctrine or at least must desire to grow in the knowledge of it. Such a one will imitate the Bereans in searching the Scriptures daily, he will not lay aside his Catechism when he has completed his elementary school training, but throughout his life continue to review it in order that he may understand it better and become more thoroughly grounded in it. He will read other good orthodox books and periodicals to become ever more firmly established in the pure doctrine. In Hebrews 5 those Christians who are neglectful in this point are censured. We read: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
  2. A member of a Lutheran congregation must be able to defend his faith and to prove its correctness from God’s Word. St. Peter writes, I Peter 3:15: “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” A sad state of affairs is revealed when members of a Lutheran congregation, asked about their faith, say, “You will have to ask my pastor about that.
  3. A member of a Lutheran congregation should be able to distinguish pure doctrine from false doctrines. Only spineless Lutherans can say: “What do I care about doctrinal controversies! They do not concern me in the least. I’ll let those who are more learned than I am bother their heads about such matters.” They may even be offended when they observe that religious leaders engage in doctrinal disputes. A genuine Lutheran will not forget that in the Epistle of Jude also lay Christians are admonished “earnestly to contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.” What is more, Christ warns all Christians: “Beware of false prophets.” And St. John writes in his first epistle: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

It is a settled fact that whoever is indifferent to false doctrine is indifferent also to pure doctrine and his soul’s salvation, and has no right to bear the name Lutheran and the name of Christ.

From: Church Membership: Addresses and Prayers at the meeting of the Evangelical Lutheran Joint Congregation of St. Louis, MO., and Its Board of Elders, by Dr. C.F.W. Walther, CPH, St. Louis, MO. 1931.
Hebrews 5:12 has been amended by the pagemaster from the original translation to the NASB for clarity.

What is Objective Justification?

What is justification?

For Lutherans, the central teaching of the Bible is justification by faith apart from the works of the law. The classic expression of this doctrine is found in Article IV of the Augsburg Confession, “Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for  Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins.  This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4.” Lutheran theologians often speak of justification as having two aspects, objective and subjective. Objective justification is “God’s verdict of ‘not guilty’ upon the world for the sake of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.” Subjective justification means that the benefits of God’s verdict of ‘not guilty’ become yours through faith.

 

What is the basis of Objective Justification?

Jesus has redeemed all people. John the Baptist declared, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29) This statement, which we sing in the “Agnus Dei,” declares Jesus to be “objective justification personified.” 1  Paul also wrote to Timothy, that Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all men” (1 Timothy 2:6).

Where is Objective Justification taught in the Bible?

  • 2 Corinthians 5:19: God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. “The only possible antecedent of ‘their’ in that sentence is ‘the world,’ and the world certainly includes all men.”2
  • Romans 4:25: He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. “To refer to the words: Who was raised again for our justification,” to the so-called subjective justification, which takes place by faith, not only weakens the force of the words, but also violates the context.”3
  • Romans 3:22-24: There is no difference, for, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. The key word here is “all.” All have sinned and all those sinners are justified- there is no difference. “All have sinned. The verb ‘justified’ has the same subject, ‘all.”4
  • Romans 5:18: Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. “By raising [Christ] from the dead, [God] absolved Him from our sins which had been imputed to Him, and therefore He also absolved us in Him, that Christ’s resurrection might thus be the case and the proof and the completion of our justification.”5  “Because in Christ’s resurrection we are acquitted of our sins, so that they can no longer condemn us before the judgment of God.” 6

Do the Lutheran Confessions teach Objective Justification?

While the term “objective justification” does not appear in the Lutheran Confessions, the teaching of objective justification may be found there. The Apology of the Augsburg Confession teaches that a refusal to believe that our sins are forgiven by God is to call God a liar. “And what else is the refusal to assent to absolution but charging God with falsehood? If the heart doubts, it regards those things which God promises as uncertain and of no account. Accordingly, in 1 John 5, 10 it is written: He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son.” (Apology XII:62) “Therefore, if any one be not confident that he is forgiven, he denies that God has sworn what is true, than which a more horrible blasphemy cannot be imagined.” (Apology XII: 94) The Large Catechism teaches us that our sins are forgiven prior to our acceptance of such forgiveness. “Therefore there is here again great need to call upon God and to pray: Dear Father, forgive us our trespasses. Not as though He did not forgive sin without and even before our prayer (for He has given us the Gospel, in which is pure forgiveness before we prayed or ever thought about it). But this is to the intent that we may recognize and accept such forgiveness.” (LC III:88) The Formula of Concord declares, “That the human race is truly redeemed and reconciled with God through Christ, who, by His faultless obedience, suffering, and death, has merited for us the righteousness which avails before God, and eternal life.” (FC SD XI: 15).

How are Objective and Subjective Justification connected?

Objective justification is the basis for subjective justification. “An essential prerequisite of justification by faith, or of subjective justification, is the objective justification (the reconciliation) of all mankind.” 7  “If God had not in His heart justified the whole world because of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction, and if this justification were not offered , there could not be a justification by faith.” 8 “The relationship of objective justification to the other so-called justification can expressed in this way, that in the latter the appropriation of the former occurs.” 9 “Only those who believe the gospel are justified subjectively. But faith always has an object and that object is Christ Jesus and the objective justification He achieved.” 10

ELS Pastor Ron Pederson warns, “Both objective and subjective justification need to be taught together. If you leave one or the other out no one will be saved.” 11  His warning echoes that of former WELS President Carl Mischke, “A word of caution may, however, be in place. It may be well to remind ourselves not to divide ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ justification as if they were two totally different things which can be treated in isolation from one another. They are rather two sides of the same coin, and there can be no ‘saints’ or salvation without faith. To teach otherwise would indeed be universalism.” 12

What are the dangers of denying Objective Justification?

Denying objective justification may lead to falling into the error of limited atonement, that Jesus paid only for the sins of believers. “Not all men, indeed believe this glorious fact, wherefore, they do not become partakers of the righteousness which Christ earned for them and which God gives them in the gospel. But it is nothing else than Calvinism to deny, as so many still do, that God has in Christ ‘reconciled the world unto himself’ (2 Cor 5:19), atoned ‘for the sins of the whole world’ (1 John 2:2) and thus justified all men.” 13

Denying objective justification can turn faith into a human work. “All those who deny the objective justification (the objective reconciliation) will, if they be consistent, also deny that subjective justification is brought about by faith; they will have to regard faith as a complement of Christ’s merit- a human achievement.” 14

Denying objective justification makes faith a cause of justification. “It is not strange that those who emphasize man’s faith at the expense of the objective validity of Christ’s Gospel and His work of justification should go astray in the doctrines of Conversion and Election, so as to give man’s faith there also an entirely unscriptural importance.” 15

Denying objective justification diminishes the glory of the Gospel: “the ‘objective justification’ of all men is denied by many within the Lutheran churches and neglected by still more, so that the full light of the Gospel does not shine forth in their teaching and preaching.”16

1 Ronald Pederson, “Objective Justification,” Lutheran Synod Quarterly, Vol. 52, Nos. 2-3 (June-September 2012), p. 163.
2 Siegbert Becker, “Objective Justification,” Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly, Winter 1986:4.
3 Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, II:321
4 Richard D. Balge, “Justification- a Brief Study.” Essay delivered at the Wisconsin Association of Lutheran Educators, Wisconsin Lutheran college, Oct. 26, 1984, 1.
5 Johann Gerhard, Annotations in epist. Ad romanos, Jena ed. 1666, p. 156
6 Johann Gerhard, Disputationes theologicae, Jena, 1655, XX, p. 1450
7 Pieper II: 508.
8 Ibid.
9 Ph. D. Burk, Rechtfertigung und Versicherung, p. 41
10 Pederson 166
11 Ibid.
12 C.H. Mischke, The President’s Newsletter WELS, June 1982.
13 George Lillegard, “Doctrinal Controversies of the Norwegian Synod,” Grace for Grace, Lutheran Synod Book Company, 1943, p. 149.
14 Pieper II: 508
15 Lillegard, Grace for Grace, p. 151.
16 Ibid.

LCMS prof calls maleness of Jesus/pastors “inconsequential” (by Pr. Charles Henrickson)

I came across an interesting blog article written by Dr. Matthew Becker, an LCMS clergyperson serving as a professor at Valparaiso University. The article is called “The Being of Adam, the New Adam, and the Ontology of Pastors.” In it, Becker is reacting to an article he read in the July 2011 issue of CTSFW’s magazine For the Life of the World, the article “What Is Mercy?” by Dr. Cynthia Lumley. Becker contends that Lumley’s article “contains assertions that are contrary to evangelical-Lutheran doctrine,” since Lumley says, “The very maleness of pastors is essential to the Holy Office in which they serve.”

Becker writes: “Contrary to Lumley’s Roman ontological-sacerdotalist view about the ontology of the pastor, the symbolical books of the Ev. Luth. church present the holy ministry chiefly (but not exclusively) in functional, dynamic terms, for the sake of obtaining and strengthening trust in the promise that God forgives people by grace for Christ’s sake through faith. Moreover, the symbolical books stress that ALL baptized Christians, both male and female, have the power and authority of preaching the gospel and administering the means of grace, although not all are well-suited or qualified for this ministry; for example, they might not be able to teach very well. Especially important is the confessional position that a called and ordained minister of Christ, whether male or female, acts in the place of God and in the stead of Christ. . . .”

Becker concludes: “Thankfully, the physical particularities of Jesus, including his gender, age, race, etc., are accidental, non-essential to his salvific work of reconciling Adam (‘human beings’) to God. The same principle is true for those who serve ‘in the stead and by the command’ of Christ today. Accidental attributes of the pastor’s being are inconsequential for the fulfillment of the holy office.”

And in one of the comments at his blog, Becker adds: “While the presbyteroi and episcopoi referred to in the pastorals were men, there are other NT texts that open the way for female pastors, as I have argued in several essays.”

What do you think of Becker’s arguments? Do you think that the maleness of Jesus and of pastors is “accidental,” “non-essential,” “inconsequential”? Do you think that the New Testament has passages that “open the way for female pastors”? When describing “the confessional position” on “a called and ordained minister of Christ,” does it make sense to add the words “whether male or female”?

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies: All Hallows’ Eve in the Mediaeval Church and the Reformation

On All Hallows’ Eve 1517 a monk named Martin Luther posted a list of points for discussion and debate at the University of Wittenberg campus church. The campus church is named All Saints’ Church. The regular bulletin board for such announcements was the front church door. All Saints’ Church was the largest repository of relics of the saints outside of Rome. Many of those relics would be put on display on All Saints’ Day. Indulgences would be granted to those who came to the Church to view the relics of the saints on that day.

The location, the date, the practices: all of these helped focus the issue on and ensure a wide audience to the topic of Luther’s posted points.

The topic of the points for discussion: The Saints of the Church, and whether paying for a Papal Indulgence benefits the Saints, whether dead or living.

These points are called the Ninety-Five Theses. You can read them all at this link. As a sample we give points 27-37:

  1. In They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory].
  2. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone.
  3. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal.
  4. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission.
  5. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare.
  6. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon.
  7. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope’s pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him;
  8. For these “graces of pardon” concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man.
  9. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia.
  10. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon.
  11. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon.

So, on the Eve of All Saints [Halloween], at All Saints’ Church, among the relics of the saints, during the veneration of the saints, and probably the reciting of the Litany of the Saints.

From late antiquity the cult of the saints grew within the ChristianChurch. It was lucrative–kind of like a circus side-show where the prize for the price of admission was not just to see the relic of a saint, but also to get some time out of purgatory or some grace to do good works to keep from going into purgatory.

In short, the Christian Church was a mess: plugged chock full of prayers to dead people that were declared by officials of the Church to be saints; overflowing with relics of dead people which were to be venerated, adored, and even prayed to in some cases; teaming with pilgrimages to these relics, artifacts of a nominally Christian Church that had abandoned God’s grace through faith in Christ and turned to salvation by other means.

The Church had adopted innumerable pagan practices. And no particular festival day showed the fact more clearly than All Saints’ Day. No particular church building could have been a clearer example than All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, the largest focal point for pilgrimage to venerate the relics of the saints outside of Rome.

So it is instructive to see what was done by Luther and the Lutheran Reformation.

All Saints’ Church was not torn down. Some of its statuary were removed, but not all. Some of its art was changed, not just to get rid of particular saints, but to add some as well. One in particular was buried inside the church with a visible sepulcher and an image of the deceased.

The Litany of the Saints was not abandoned, but cleaned of its false worship. In fact, the Litany of the Saints is the basis for the Lutheran Litany found in most Lutheran hymnals today.

The observation of All Saints’ Day was not prohibited. Rather, it was expanded to include the teaching of God’s Word on what a saint truly is through faith in Christ alone. The abuses imported by the Church for the worship of the saints through the ages were rejected. But the value of remembering them, how God preserved them, and what God worked through them is retained, celebrated, and taught.

The attitude of Luther and the Lutheran Reformers was not to throw away everything that the Roman Church had done. Rather the purpose was to retain as much of the historic Christian practice as could be without violating the central teaching of Scripture: that we are Justified by God by His grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone as taught only in His Scriptures.

We retain All Saints’ Day, All Hallows Eve’, the honoring and remembering of the Saints who have gone before us–who pointed to Christ alone as their and our salvation. We confess in the Augsburg Confession of 1530:

Article XXI: Of the Worship of the Saints.
1]
Of the Worship of Saints they teach that the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works, according to our calling, as the Emperor may follow the example of David in making war to drive away the Turk from his country. 2] For both are kings. But the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor. 3] He is to be prayed to, and has promised that He will hear our prayer; and this worship He approves above all, to wit, that in all afflictions He be called upon, 1 John 2:1: 4] If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, etc.
5] This is about the Sum of our Doctrine, in which, as can be seen, there is nothing that varies from the Scriptures, or from the Church Catholic, or from the Church of Rome as known from its writers. This being the case, they judge harshly who insist that our teachers be regarded as heretics. 6] There is, however, disagreement on certain abuses, which have crept into the Church without rightful authority. And even in these, if there were some difference, there should be proper lenity on the part of bishops to bear with us by reason of the Confession which we have now reviewed; because even the Canons are not so severe as to demand the same rites everywhere, neither, at any time, have the rites of all churches been the same; 7] although, among us, in large part, the ancient rites are diligently observed. 8] For it is a false and malicious charge that all the ceremonies, all the things instituted of old, are abolished in our churches. 9] But it has been a common complaint that some abuses were connected with the ordinary rites. These, inasmuch as they could not be approved with a good conscience, have been to some extent corrected.

We thank God not by trashing all the heritage of Christian liturgical practice, but by learning it, appreciating the lessons of those who have gone before to shape this practice into a reflection of the bare truth of God’s Word.

The Apology XXI states in part:

4] Our Confession approves honors to the saints. For here a threefold honor is to be approved. The first is thanksgiving. For we ought to give thanks to God because He has shown examples of mercy; because He has shown that He wishes to save men; because He has given teachers or other gifts to the Church. And these gifts, as they are the greatest, should be amplified, and the saints themselves should be praised, who have faithfully used these gifts, just as Christ praises faithful business-men, 5] Matt. 25:21, 23. The second service is the strengthening of our faith; when we see the denial forgiven Peter, we also are encouraged to believe the more that grace 6] truly superabounds over sin, Rom. 5:20. The third honor is the imitation, first, of faith, then of the other virtues, which every one should imitate according to his calling. 7] These true honors the adversaries do not require. They dispute only concerning invocation, which, even though it would have no danger, nevertheless is not necessary.

There are many today who, like the church of late antiquity and the middle-ages are tired of the testimony of the Saints who have gone before us. They also reject historical liturgical practice and with it the historical confession of the faith. All in favor of newness and a self-satisfied feeling of genuineness in their own expression of worship. So they add, they tweak, they abandon not for the sake of clear biblical teaching, but for the sake of the audience. Whatever gets them in the door. Whatever can attract them to keep them coming.

That is, in part, how the cult of the saints started and twisted the observation of All Saints’ Day off its course before the Reformation.

Blessed Halloween to you all.

Justification is always the issue… Preaching

I know we have kind of beaten the horse a bit with this issue, but I don’t ever get bored with this.  Justification is always the issue.  So in this article, I would like to talk about how Objective Justification is expressed simply in the proclamation of the Gospel.

What we know about the Bible is that it all centers around Christ, who He is, and what He did.  So practically, all teachings of Scripture tumble down if the Bible’s message about Christ’s reconciliation of the world to God and His justification for all people is not true.

For one, how can a pastor forgive sins in Christ’s stead and pronounce with certainty the grace of God upon a sinner if he cannot see the sinner’s faith?  If the pastor says to a sinner who inwardly does not have faith “I forgive you your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” does the pastor as a result lie or say something untrue?  Of course not!  If that were the case, then God would be a liar.  Sure, the sinner does not personally receive by faith the forgiveness and will be ripe for destruction if he continues in his unbelief, but that does not make God a liar.  Rather, it makes the unbeliever the liar. (Rom 3:3ff)  If the pastor says to someone, “This promise is for you,” but he doesn’t believe, will the pastor then say, “Well, I guess it wasn’t for you!”?  Of course not!  This article of faith is not merely theological handy work; it is not merely unneeded elaboration.  It is the very heart of the Gospel that Jesus mandated to be preached to all nations.

 

 

Here is what the Old Norwegian Lutheran Synod president Herman Amberg Preus (1874) had to say on this topic when a seminary professor was denying this teaching of Objective Justification:

 

 

According to his new gospel the professor must preach that through his suffering and death Christ has only accomplished so much that God has now become willing to let his wrath cease and to be reconciled and to loose, confer grace, forgive, justify and open access to salvation, but that in actuality he can only do and does all this if man on his part fulfills the condition placed on him by God, namely that he is supposed to believe. And the thing which is thus supposed to be believed does not become this that God already has done this and is reconciled but that God will do it and will be reconciled when he sees the obedience and the good quality in man, that he believes.

This whole issue comes down to the preaching of the Gospel, that is, the preaching of the vicarious atonement for us, the objective redemption for us.  This objective reality is proclaimed to us personally.  Objective justification fills the Word with the assuring proclamation: “This redemption, this reconciliation, this justification, this forgiveness is for you; Christ is your righteousness.”

At the end  of his Pentecost sermon from Acts 2, Peter says, “Repent, and let everyone of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)  Then Peter proclaims to them that this promise is “for you and your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.” (Acts 2:39)  Notice how Peter first calls them to repentance; he then immediately presents them with the gift of baptism and the Holy Spirit; then he says who this promise is for.  The promise is for everyone, but Peter does not start with that.  Rather, he first says, “This promise is for you and your children.”  This is the implication of Objective Justification, namely a personal proclamation: “for you.”  Preaching Objective Justification is not merely preaching the fact that Jesus died for the sins of all and rose again for the justification of all, then letting the people connect the dots.  It is more direct than that.

 

God justified me.  He justified me by faith on account of the justification already won for me by Christ (this is what propter Christum per fidem means), offered to me, given to me, and, inseparable from His Word, delivered to me personally by the Gospel for faith and through faith. (Rom 1:16-17)  Adolf Koeberle makes this point that Paul saw no separation of God’s act of redemption and his mission to proclaim it.  This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 :

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, ‘This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’

Paul received it to deliver it and proclaim it “for you.”  Again, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and has given to us the Word of reconciliation.”  God’s act of reconciling the world to Himself in Christ and His giving of the Word are perfectly united.  Paul continues by uniting the office of the ministry to this Word of reconciliation.  The office of the ministry cannot possibly be separated from the universal reconciliation that God accomplished for us in Christ.  The primary task of the office of the ministry is to personally proclaim to people Objective Justification.  And how is this done?  It is done by preaching Christ for us.

Objective Justification teaches not only who justifies but whom He justifies.  For the sake of Christ’s obedient suffering and death, God justifies the ungodly (Rom 4:5).  Objective Justification teaches to whom God gives this promise.  As His Word proclaims, it is for all.  Those who have faith receive it and are saved.  Those who do not believe are condemned, and the wrath of God remains on them.

Justification is always the issue in preaching, because that is what Christ has commanded His pastors to preach.  When the pastor preaches that “Christ died for your sins, and He rose again for your justification,” he is preaching Objective Justification; he is preaching the Gospel.  May we always remember the power of God’s Word, and from where this message gets its efficacy, namely the Vicarious Atonement.  May we always take comfort in the certainty of the promise.  We can have certainty in it; the Resurrection proves it!

 

Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies-Easter 2

This is a reposting of a pair of articles published last year on the origins of Easter and some Easter traditions. The sources are given so that the reader can better be able to debunk the popular “historical” nonsense about the origins of Easter.

The whole series is available at Diatheke Christianity and Paganism.

Second Part: Attacks On The Name and Traditions

There are three main things people attack about this Holy Day:

  1. They claim that it is pagan because the name Easter is from a pagan goddess.
  2. They claim that Easter eggs are a symbol of pagan worship, particularly of that false goddess in number 1.
  3. They claim that the Easter bunny is a pagan symbol, the consort of the pagan goddess in number 1.

All of these claims are false.

That’s not to say that the materialism of modern culture hasn’t obscured the meaning of Easter through focusing on treats and bunnies. But even though factual information about the tradition of eggs at Easter is plentiful, and even though the use of the hare/rabbit has long history in Christian iconography the propaganda efforts of the anti-Easter crowd and the Neopagans through all kinds of media has overcome the truth. And the lies have found a firm footing in the social awareness of contemporary society. Through venues like the History Channel, college courses, and popular news media the lies have become accepted as historical fact.

The Name of the Holy Day: Easter

As we have demonstrated in the previous article, the choosing of the date for Easter had nothing to do with pagan practices. The original dates chosen and the reasons for adjusting the methods of determining those dates always had to do with determining when the Biblical Passover should be observed so that the festival of the Resurrection could be observed without discord.

While most languages adapt the word פסח Pesach “Passover” as the term for Easter/Passover, German and English adopted the local month name. The local month name was adopted very early, by the records it was adopted while Rome was still active.

Alexander Hislop claimed:

What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar. The worship of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain, along with the Druids, “the priests of the groves.” (The Two Babylons, Ch. 3, sec. 2)

Notice how clever the argument is? Sir Austen Henry Layard just published his first works on Nineveh in 1848, 1849, and 1853. And in 1853, Hislop, who knew nothing about cuneiform or ancient Babylonian languages concludes that since the Babylonian name “Ishtar” sounds like the English word “Easter” they must be the same!

Just so that the argument can not be disproved, Hislop claims that the Druids brought Ishtar to England. This is handy, because the Druids didn’t write anything down. And those records about Druids by others don’t record any such migrations or Ishtar worship.

  • Note for later: Ishtar’s symbolic animals were the lion, and the horse. The symbols of Astarte (a goddess of war) were the lion, the horse, the dove, and the sphynx. And though the are considered “fertility” gods today (instead of just pornography) there were no bunnies or eggs among the symbols for these false gods.

But there is a possibility: Perhaps the word Easter does come from some pagan goddess.

Was There Actually a Pagan Goddess Easter, Eostre, Ostara?

A search of all the ancient literature left by the Germanic, Celtic, English peoples and their ancestors combined with a search of all ancient literature about those peoples by their contemporaries up to the 8th century A.D. turns up nothing.

There is nothing in any Edda, nothing in any history, nothing. And it is not for lack of written records about the religious practices and beliefs of those peoples through those years.

Note this date, the 8th century A.D. This is when the first mention of a possible “goddess” is made. The date of the Easter festival had already been long established. The use of the term Easter or Ostern (German) had already been long established.

The first mention of such a goddess comes from the Venerable Bede in his 725 A.D. De Temporum Ratione. Bede wrote:

Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes.

The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Bd. VI, London 1843 [https://oll.libertyfund.org/files/1917/0990.06_Bk_SM.pdf Seite 139 ff.}  pp. 178-179  Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CXXIII B, Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Bd. VI,2, Turnhout 1977

English

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

[ Bede: The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians) by Faith Wallis (Apr 1, 1999) p. 54]

It would seem that Bede, who is listing out the English names of the months in this chapter, confirms that there was a goddess named Eostre. But neither Eostre nor a goddess he mentions in the previous sentence, “Hrethra,” are found in any other literature from either earlier nor later.

It is not unlikely that Bede was conjecturing about the origin of the names given that month names have been named after false gods in other cultures; e.g., July, and August, named after Julius and Augustus upon deification.

We will see a little later that there is another possibility, especially considering that all of the other English month names were seasonal descriptions or events during those times.

January=Giuli; Sun gets stronger

February=Sol-monath, Cake baking

March=Rhed-monath, Otherwise unknown goddess Hretha

April=Eostur-monath, Otherwise unknown goddess Eostra

May=Thrimylchi, Milk the cows three times a day Month

June=Lida, Gentle

July also=Lida, Gentle

August=Vueod-monath, Month the tares/grasses

September=Haleg-monath, Holy Month

October=Vuinter-fylleth; Winter starting with the full moon Month.

November=Blod-monath, Cattle slaughter month.

December=Giul; Sun gets stronger

Claims are often made by using fake quotations preportedly from Einhard (c. 775 – March 14, 840) in his work Vita Karola Magni 817 to 833 AD.

Examples of fake quotations:

“Easter – *Ôstara) was a goddess in Germanic
paganism whose Germanic month has given its
name to the festival of Easter. Ôstarmânoth
is attested as the month-name equivalent to
‘April’ that was decreed by Charlemagne,
but as a goddess Eostre is attested only
by Bede in his 8th century work De temporum
ratione. Bede states that Ēosturmōnaþ
was the equivalent to the month of April,
and that feasts held in Eostre’s honor…
replaced the “Paschal” observance of
Passover.”
— Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.

“Some scholars have debated whether or not
Eostre is an invention of Bede’s, and
theories Einhard, connecting Eostre with records of
Germanic Easter customs (including hares
rabbits and eggs).”
— Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.

Both of these fake quotes are from the website easter-origins and are found repeated in dozens of websites.

Here is Einhard’s actual full section 29 on Charlemagne:

29. Reforms
It was after he had received the imperial name that, finding the laws of his people very defective (the Franks have two sets of laws, very different in many particulars), he determined to add what was wanting, to reconcile the discrepancies, and to correct what was vicious and wrongly cited in them. However, he went no further in this matter than to supplement the laws by a few capitularies, and those imperfect ones; but he caused the unwritten laws of all the tribes that came under his rule to be compiled and reduced to writing . He also had the old rude songs that celeate the deeds and wars of the ancient kings written out for transmission to posterity. He began a grammar of his native language. He gave the months names in his own tongue, in place of the Latin and barbarous names by which they were formerly known among the Franks. He likewise designated the winds by twelve appropriate names; there were hardly more than four distinctive ones in use before. He called January, Wintarmanoth; February, Hornung; March, Lentzinmanoth; April, Ostarmanoth; May, Winnemanoth; June, Brachmanoth; July, Heuvimanoth; August, Aranmanoth; September, Witumanoth; October, Windumemanoth; Novemher, Herbistmanoth; December, Heilagmanoth. He styled the winds as follows; Subsolanus, Ostroniwint; Eurus, Ostsundroni-, Euroauster, Sundostroni; Auster, Sundroni; Austro-Africus, Sundwestroni; Africus, Westsundroni; Zephyrus, Westroni; Caurus, Westnordroni; Circius, Nordwestroni; Septentrio, Nordroni; Aquilo, Nordostroni; Vulturnus, Ostnordroni.
[Life of Charlemagne — Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, 19th century English translation by Samuel Epes Turner]

All Einhard says is that Charles the Great chose to keep the Germanic month names. There is nothing here that speaks about a pagan goddess named Ostara or Eostra.

There is one more name with the term Eostra in it from this general period. Eosterwine. (650 – 7 March 686) was the second Anglo-Saxon Abbot of Wearmouth in Northumbria (England).

Note that in none of these documents is there anything about who Eostra might have been, what purpose she might have served, who her consorts might have been. All the evidence shows us is that the old English had a month with the name Eostra. It shows us that a well respected writer of the church thought that the month name had pagan roots. But that name, even if used for the feast of the Resurrection, was not chosen because the Passover meal was pagan or polluted by paganism. It would be just like non Pagans today using the word Thursday for the name of a weekday.

No one heard any more about Eostra/Ostara for a thousand years.

That should be repeated: NO ONE heard any more about Eostra/Ostara for a THOUSAND YEARS!

It wasn’t until 1835 when Jacob Grimm began publishing his work on Teutonic Mythology that the name Eostra as a goddess was noticed again.

Everything that we think we know about Eostra comes from Grimm. But notice how what Grimm says is conjecture:

We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmanoth is found as early as Eginhart (temp. Car. Mag.). The great Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of OHG. remains the name ostara gen. –un ;1 it is mostly found in the plural, because two days (ostartagil, aostortaga, Diut. 1, 266a) were kept at Easter. This Ostara, like the AS. Eastre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.(Volume 1, p. 290 bold added)

After making what now would be rightly considered an illegitimate venture into etymology of the name Eostre, Grimm continues:

Ostara, Eostre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted to the resurrection-day of the Christian’s God. Bonfires were lighted at Easter, and according to a popular belief of long standing, the moment the sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he dances for joy (Superst. 813). Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that at Christmas, holy and healing (Superst. 775. 804) ; here also heathen notions seems to have grafted themselves on great Christian festivals. Maidens clothed in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the ancient goddess (see Suppl.). (ibid. 291 bold added)

Remember what Grimm is working with. He has only Bede and Einhard. Just like you and I have.

According to the second volume of his Teutonic Mythology, Grimm even associates the Easter egg with Eostra. Though, we shall see, that particularly Christian tradition predates any mention of Eostra by 500 years. Grimm wrote:

But if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has the strongest claim to consideration. To what we said on p. 290 I can add some significant facts. The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires. Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate : I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people’s amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences.(Volume 2, p. 780 bold added)

Again, notice the conjectural language, but also the confidence he seems to have about his notions.

Everything else about this so called “ancient” goddess Eostra/Ostara has been made up since the late 1800s. And it has been made up out of nothing.

Recently an historian has offered another suggestion. In his article Ostern. Geschichte eines Wortes  [D. H. Green The Modern Language Review Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 247-249] Jürgen Udolph suggested that by exampled usages and historical linguistics believes that the goddess names Ostara and Eostre are false conclusions. Rather Udolph traces “Ostern / Easter” from a Nordic root ausa “to pour water,” which was proposed by Siegfried Gutenbrunner in 1966. In this way both the linguistic form of the word in Bede and Einhard along with the name Eostrewine can be maintained, the listing of seasons and seasonal tasks is maintained in Bede, there is no need to create a potential mythology. The implication is that the word Easter would actually etymologically derived from the main baptism service during Easter night.

Before all Sacramental Christians get excited about this article, we need to remember that it too is an historical conjecture. But this conjecture seems to address the evidence as evidence and requires not fanciful and imaginative mythology to be created in support of it.

On the use of Ostern as “Baptize” see also “Ostern”, in: Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, Volume 22, 2000.

The Neopagans and Wiccans have made up all kinds of claims that the Easter holiday had to do with fertility and reproduction. They claim that Ashtorah was a reproductive goddess. There is no evidence in the Bible that the asherah poles and other references to Ashera or Ashtorah had anything to do with fertility. And there is nothing that links the Ashtorah of the Bible with the old Babylonian goddess Ishtar.

Some modern archaeologists who try to show the evolution of religions in the middle-east have conjectured that ancient Ugaritic goddess named Athirat might be linked to the Bible’s Ashtorah even though many Ugaritic documents say otherwise. A few of these scholars also conjectured that this Ugaritic goddess might be the equivalent of Babylon’s Ishtar, but this is only conjecture.

So where are we with real history for “Easter”?

The word Easter comes either from the old Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to shine”-possibly to describe the months of the year when the sun began to get brighter and higher during the day. Or it may come from the word “to baptize” indicating the Baptisms which took place on Easter.  In 1525 William Tyndale  used the Middle-English word “ester” = “Easter” as a translation for Passover and the day of Christ’s Resurrection. The word had already been long used and understood as referring to the day of Christ’s Resurrection when Tyndale made his translation.

Despite what some modern Pagans and Wiccans wish the past might have been, there were no known pagan or wiccan celebrations of a pagan-easter in England or northern Europe in the period from the Middle Ages through the Reformation and up to the late 1800s.

So there are two modern myths that we have debunked: first, it is not true that the name of Easter came from the worship of a pagan spring goddess; second, it is not true that the Easter celebration was a celebration of fertility and reproduction.

Easter Eggs

Where did the Easter Egg come from?

There are several traditions which converge to bring us the Easter egg. And there is some modern nonsense that really has nothing to do with the use of eggs at Easter.

First, there is a sculpture on the Persepolis of ancient Iran of a line of people bearing gifts on the New Year day celebration on the Spring equinox. One of the many different gifts carried by the people in this sculpture appears to be an egg. This was carved by the old pagan Zoroastrians from ancient Persia (modern Iran).

From this sculpture modern Pagans have conjectured that Christians stole the idea of using eggs at Easter from the ancient Zoroastrians. The problem is that none of the writers in the ancient Christian church mention this tradition where they came into contact with Zoroastrians.

Still, the modern Neopagans and Wiccans assert that the egg is an ancient sign of fertility. That seems as bright a claim as saying that water is wet.

Of the traditions that actually do contribute to Christianity using eggs in the Easter celebration there are three to consider.

First: In the celebration of the Passover meal, which Christ celebrated the night before He was crucified, a roasted whole egg is placed as one of six food items on the Passover plate. The egg, called Beitzah symbolizes the Passover sacrifice that was offered in the Temple in Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. The egg was introduced to the Passover meal after the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.  The egg was the first dish served at Jewish funerals in the time of Christ’s ministry on earth. The egg was also used as a symbol of mourning the loss of the Temple where the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. It is usually eaten dipped in salt water which symbolizes the bitter tears of the people.

Early Christians in the first and second century continued to celebrate the Passover along with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Primarily the Passover was celebrated because of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.

Second: the season preceding Easter is called Lent. The season of Lent is a fast. In the article on Lent we saw how ancient this practice was and where it started. In both the eastern and western Church this meant fasting from meat and bird flesh–including eggs. Eggs were used to break the Lenten fast on Easter Morning. In preparation for this breaking of the fast the eggs were decorated to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ as the Paschal Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. The breaking of the shell became a symbol of Christ’s rending of the tomb.

Indeed, the use of decorated eggs to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning is so widespread across the world and so closely tied with the spread of Christianity that one cannot call it anything but a Christian tradition. But that doesn’t keep the Neopagans and modern commentators from trying to claim that Christian’s “stole” this so-called “pagan” tradition.

So we turn to the third tradition:

The Easter Hare

The typical image used to demonstrate that that the Easter Bunny was the consort of Ostara/Eostra is this:

As we have seen above, Ostara/Eostra didn’t really exist. And since she didn’t exist she couldn’t have had a bunny as a consort. But where do they get this ancient looking, archaeological type statue of Ostara and the Rabbit?

The problem with the image is that it is of a Mayan goddess (Guatemalen Ixchel). This false goddess can only be dated back to the 1600s A.D. Wrong continent. Wrong hemisphere. Wrong epoch.

All those websites, videos, and well meaning people who try to argue that Easter is pagan and use this picture to do so have a basic problem with honesty.

There is an interesting doubling up of the Easter bunny with the fictional goddess Ostara. The modern ‘histories” of Easter tend to claim 1) that Easter was originally a pagan fertility holiday 2) of devotion to the goddess Ostara (Eastre, however spelled), 3) she used eggs as a symbol of fertility, and 4) she always carried a pet bunny because it was so fertile. Now, all of these 4 claims are fiction.

So where did the bunny really come from?

According to Karl Joseph Simrok’s 1855 book called Handbuch Der Deutschen Mythologie Mit Einschluss Der Nordischen, “The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.” (page 551) The old 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia cites this as proof that Christians cannot use the rabbit in celebration of Easter. But I cannot find this sentence in my copy of Simrok’s book. Perhaps mine is a different edition.

What is interesting about the rabbit or hare is that it has been used by all kinds of religions around the world as a symbol. Each religion fitting its own teaching on the symbol of the rabbit. But in most cases the symbol refers to new life. In the ancient eastern Church the rabbit was used on tombstones and as a symbol of Christ. One author points out that some early Christians viewed the rabbit’s hole as a symbol of the tomb of Christ.

Probably the most complete and systematic study to date is actually Birgit Gehrisch’s Lepusculus Domini, Erotic Hare, Meister Lampe” Zur Rolle des Hasen in der Kulturgeschichte, Inaugural-Dissertaion zur Erlangun, VVB Laufersweiler Verlag, Wettenberg, Germany, 2005.

Christian art has several examples from the early times through the renaissance of rabbits as a symbol of Christ.

To name just a few The three hare window in Paderborn, Germany and also in the monastery Muottatal in Switzerland, where three rabbits are together in a triangle with only one ear each showing, symbolizing the Trinity,

 

There are actually dozens of examples like this one above scattered all across Europe and Asia.

Martin Schongauer’s 1470 engraving The Temptation of Jesus has three by three rabbits at the feet of Jesus Christ.

His student Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of 1497 The Holy Family with the Three Hares showing two hares next to each other and the other going down toward a hole with a stone rolled next to it;

Hans Baldung Grien 1512-1516 painted the altar for the Freiburg Cathedral with the second panel representing Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth where he painted the rabbits about the feet of Mary and Elizabeth;

Titan’s Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit which was painted in 1530.


I picked these works of art because they are all pretty much pre-Reformation. They demonstrate that the rabbit or hare was used a symbol of Christ and the Resurrection before the time of the Reformation.

America owes the use of the Easter Bunny to the Pennsylvania Deutch settlers who came from Alsace, a German and French area on the border between the two countries. Back in 1678 Georg Franck von Frankenau in 1682 wrote against the excessive eating of Easter eggs which parents would leave in the name of the Easter Hare–the Resurrected Christ. The people from this region settled in Pennsylvania and brought with them their symbolism and traditions surrounding the hare representing Christ, the egg representing the tomb, and Christ’s resurrection with the giving and breaking of eggs when the fast of Lent was ended on Easter Sunday.

Summary

Yes, Easter, the eggs, the bunny, all of them are still being perverted into something else by our own society. The devil, the world, and our own flesh don’t want to hear about Christ’s resurrection and will attack any symbols used to teach the resurrection.

But now you know enough of the real history of Easter and the symbols used by the Christian Church to celebrate this holiday.

Great Stuff Found on the Web — An Explanation of Closed Communion

There has been lots of discussion on Pastor Scheer’s recent post .. one commentator pointed out this article by Pastor Paul McCain, which I thought should be brought to the attention of our readers. This is always a difficult subject, especially when you bring friends and family to church, and people need to hear it again and again. I see from a google search for the original document that it is used on quite a few church websites, but as I say we can never hear it enough.

This article is extracted from Communion Fellowship by Paul T. McCain.

A PDF of this document can be found here.

 


 

AN EXPLANATION OF CLOSED COMMUNION
By Rev. Paul T. McCain
(taken from Communion Fellowship: A Resource for Understanding, Implementing, and Retaining the Practice of Closed Communion in the Lutheran Parish)

The Lutheran practice of “closed communion” is often a thorny issue in our church. It is bound to cause problems when a member asks the pastor if a friend or loved one of another denomination may take communion and the pastor says no. It seems down-right rude! The reaction may be, “Who do you Lutherans think you are anyway! Are Lutherans better Christians than other people?” Unfortunately, the practice of closed communion is not very well understood. This leads to upset and frustration when the doctrine is put into practice. The best way to overcome these difficulties is with knowledge and understanding of what the practice of closed communion is really all about. It is important to understand first what Lutherans believe about communion, and then we can begin to understand the practice of closed communion.

At one time nearly all of the Lutheran church bodies in America (and indeed, most other Christian churches) practiced closed communion. Among Lutherans today only The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and a few other smaller Lutheran bodies retain this practice. In our church and others, only those persons who have been properly instructed in the meaning, use, and benefit of the Sacrament may receive the Sacrament. Practically speaking, this means that Holy Communion is offered only to those persons who are confirmed members in good standing of LCMS congregations and those church bodies in full pulpit and altar fellowship with us. It should be noted also that communion is not to be given to the unrepentant nor unbelievers. With this in mind it is to be understood that participation in Holy Communion is never a “right” to be “demanded” but rather a privilege which we receive with thanks and great joy. The pastor of the local congregation is responsible for deciding who is to receive communion and who may not receive communion at the congregation’s altar, by virtue of his office as a called and ordained servant of the Word. Missouri Synod Lutherans will not wish to receive communion at non-Missouri Synod Lutheran churches for the same reasons that members of other church bodies should not want to receive communion at a Missouri Synod congregation.

Lutherans believe that Holy Communion is a sacrament-a very special gift from our Lord Jesus Christ. On the basis of Holy Scripture, we believe that Jesus Christ gives us his actual body and actual blood to eat and to drink, under the bread and wine, in this Sacrament. (See Mt 26:17ff; Mk 14:12ff; Lk 22:7ff; 1 Cor 11:23ff). We do not believe that the bread and wine are only symbols of Christ’s body and blood, or that they merely represent Christ’s body and blood. We take the Scriptures at face value and believe that the bread is the body of Christ and that the wine is the blood of Christ because Jesus said, “This is my body,” and “This is my blood.” We call this belief the doctrine of the Real Presence. We believe that when we receive the body and blood of Christ, under the bread and wine, God forgives our sins. This awareness causes us to be very careful in our celebration of the Sacrament. We know that those who do not discern the body of Christ in the Sacrament do so at their own risk. In other words, persons who are members of church bodies which do not confess the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper are better off not receiving it at our altar. In His Word, God says, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27).

The Sacrament of Holy Communion is not simply a personal, individual act. The celebration of Holy Communion is also a public act of confession. In other words, it testifies to our unity in the” teaching of the Apostles” (cf. Acts 2:42). When you receive the Sacrament at a church’s altar, you are giving public testimony that you agree with that church’s doctrinal position. This is why we believe, teach, and confess that Holy Communion is the highest expression of church fellowship. We believe that to agree about the Gospel is more than agreeing to some generalities concerning Jesus or the Bible. There is no such thing as a “generic” Christianity. When we commune together we testify to our agreement in the Gospel and all the articles of the Christian Faith. Holy Communion, in this sense, is a mark of confessing the Christian Faith.

When we decline to give Holy Communion to persons not of our church body, we are not doing so because we think they are “bad people” or because they are “not Christians.” We practice a “closeness” at our communion rail because we sincerely believe that this is what the Word of God teaches and what God would have us do with his Son’s precious body and blood. Closed communion is not meant to be a judgmental practice, in the sense that we are condemning people. It is a practice which preserves and upholds the truth and power of the Sacrament. It is a practice which we Lutherans feel protects those who do not believe the same things as we do. It is a practice which recognizes that a person’s church membership does mean something. To belong to a church means to confess what that church believes and confesses. To commune at a church’s altar is the highest expression of confessing oneness with what that church teaches. A person must determine for oneself if what one’s church teaches is what the Word of God teaches. We respect each individual’s decision in this matter, but we cannot in good conscience create the impression that differences between churches are of no significance. Because the differences between churches concern the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ, we know that the differences are important and do matter. This is why we choose to practice closed communion, a practice which is found in the historic, orthodox Lutheran Church since the time of the Reformation and a practice which can be traced back to the very early years of the Christian church. We hope that our beliefs will be respected by those who differ with us. We certainly do not intend to offend anyone or do we wish to create ill-will and hurt feelings. Hopefully, this brief explanation will help you or someone else understand that our love for the Sacrament, and our love for the individual, are the motivations for our practice of closed communion.

Steadfast Media Pick of the Week — A Pick in Exile

A Pick in Exile

I was too young to remember the struggles in the church during the 1970’s and I’ve never been too interested in diving into this part of LCMS history. But Pr. Scheer recommended a debate to me this past week on the conflict so I decided to take a look.

The panelists for the program were Rev. Samuel J. Roth, Gerald A. Miller , Rev. Thomas A. Baker, and Rev. Herman J. Otten.

I found the exchange at 43:45 most interesting. Pr. Otten asks if there is room for men in our church that say that Christ is not the only way to salvation and that maybe some of these people who die without are going to be save. Pr. Roth says that there is no other way to salvation except through Jesus Christ but he starts with the grace of God and God is free to save anyone in anyway He wants.

The other exchange I found interesting was at 1:03:50 on the historicity of Jonah.

What is the Liturgical Future of our Synod? By Pr. Klemet Preus

(This is the final post of a five part series on worship in the LCMS.)

 

What is the future of the LCMS in the aftermath of the last two decades of worship wars within our church? I’m going to explain why I think that the worship wars might be coming to an end in less than 700 words even though, justly, it should require 700 pages.

 

Despite the continued worship wars within our synod I am fairly optimistic that in another generation these conflicts will subside and we will enjoy peace around a relatively uniform Divine Service. Why do I think this?

 

First, I am convinced that the vast majority of pastors and congregations in the synod do love the liturgy and the theology behind it. We are Lutherans. When we say “grace alone” we mean that God graciously blesses his church through the means of grace alone, not through human efforts or the emotional experiences postulated by American Evangelicalism. For a discussion of the worship theories of American Evangelicalism see my last four blogs.

 

Second, I am convinced that those who love the historic liturgy while at the same time flirting with the worship style of Evangelicalism will slowly come to realize that you can’t have it both ways. I know that I did. These Lutheran pastors and churches will recognize that the worship is receiving the gifts of God offered in the gospel. They will reaffirm that the gospel does not need the embellishment of zippy attention getting pop tunes or well polished bands. We believe that the Gospel is God’s power unto salvation, not merely that it can be God’s power when it has popular music. Most importantly our church will rightly conclude that the historic liturgy is simply the best instrument we have in carrying the gospel to God’s assembled people.

 

Third, I am convinced that our synod is beginning to see American Evangelicalism as a threat to the church. In years past Lutherans, rightly, were suspicious of all things uniquely Roman Catholic because we saw the Roman church as a threat to Christ. We are entering a time in which we will increasingly conclude the same about American Evangelicalism. We will see the damage it has done to us as a synod by the encroaching influence of Reformed theology and without any force or any convention resolutions we will avoid any appearance of Evangelicalism. In short we will reclaim our rich Lutheran heritage.

 

Fourth, I am convinced that in the near future we will be blessed with leadership at the highest levels of the synod which actually attempts to unite our church rather than divide it. What is needed is not a compromise between two different styles but a candid discussion which is intended to bring about the type of worship uniformity which we used to have and desperately need to have. This will mean that some will have to sacrifice things they love while others will have to tolerate things they dislike. The result will be too broad for some and two narrow for others but both for the sake of love will agree. This can happen only if all sides in the worship wars have confidence in leadership which makes uniformity and unity happen. I am convinced that the synod is ready for that leadership.    

 

Fifth, I am convinced that the number of pastors and congregations which have discarded the liturgy entirely is really not that large. Surveys indicate that less than 5% of the synod uses no hymnal at all. Of course a huge percentage of the new missions in many district use no hymnal and that is a serious problem that profoundly affects our future peace and unity. But the makeup of the synod is still liturgical in the whole. This small number of congregations would not likely agree to a process which actually attempts to achieve peace through unity and worship uniformity and would most likely leave the church if such a process were to take place. That leaving would be tragic but probably necessary. Walking together is only possible for those willing to place limits on their own freedom.

 

Will all this happen? I actually believe it will. But it will require honest and trusted leadership. But that is the topic of another story.      

Concordia University Plan for the Future? A consolidated Concordia?

LCMS_corporate_sealWhat I mention in this article is my opinion and thinking out loud.  It was prompted by the Synod President’s comments after the same-sex marriage decision of the Supreme Court (see his interview with Issues Etc.).  He stated that student loans may become a problem which would greatly affect the Concordia University System.  Here is a way around it I offer as merely a starting idea (which would of course require all sorts of expertise to actually make happen).  I know many people are tied to their colleges and they have served a good purpose in the past, but if we are looking at losing the whole system, it may behoove us to be forward-thinking enough to prepare to sustain something for the good of the church.

Time to disconnect from the government’s provisions (that money comes with strings attached, and we will see them very clearly in the future).  This means likely that we could sustain only one University/Seminary on our own and keep it viable.  The solution then is to sell off/rearrange/reallocate the Concordias.

The trick would be to pick which one to keep.  An obvious suggestion would be Concordia Austin as it resides in a state that has shown itself more protective of religious freedom than others.  Another probable situation would be the Fort Wayne campus, which has room to expand, but also has some stipulations that it reverts back to the original donor if Synod tries to close it down or sell it.  (there would be financial gain from selling Austin).  There are probably other properties with similar arrangements, but I don’t know of them.

The sell off would be interesting.  We have a lot of premium property.  There is a lot of money that could be raised for the support of the new single Concordia University and Seminary.  This would still be in keeping with the purpose of the Concordias because the goal is to have one that is sustainable without government funding.

The rearrangement of staff could also be good.  There have been problems reported from the Concordias in regards to teaching and the need for more Lutheran teachers.  A consolidation of universities into one allows for the “cream of the crop” to become the new faculty.  Imagine a theology faculty built from the best of the two seminaries and Concordias?  Other departments would benefit as well from such a centralization.  The result would be a quality Lutheran education taught by outstanding Lutheran teachers no matter what major.

The reallocation is the biggest question mark for me.  No doubt, many gifts and endowments have been given to the various Concordias.  How they all get moved to the new one is a legal matter I have no expertise over, but someone out there has it, and honestly the point of this article is to get people thinking about how to get “lean and mean” as a Church, starting with one of the areas that will likely be hit first.

Think of other possibilities.  The headquarters for the LCMS could also be housed in this new campus, and the current corporate headquarters could be sold and its proceeds could help support the church’s work in the new place.

The changing landscape of American culture should stir us to forward thinking about how to prepare.  If we wait to react on many of these kind of things, it will be too late.
This is all just ideas.  The Synod Convention is an opportunity for some of these ideas (or others) to be brought forward to be acted on (even if study is necessary as a first step).  Please feel free to comment with ideas about the Concordia Universities below.

 

 

 

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