The President Has Spoken
After reviewing complaints about Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications, President Harrison has concluded that the volume is fine as it is, and requires no changes. It has been put back into distribution.
President Harrison has spoken, and has done so in his capacity as president of synod. As disappointed as some of us are, we need to keep a few things in mind moving forward.
We need to be churchmen. We need to avoid name-calling and attacking President Harrison. We also need to avoid making further complaints to him about it. The matter of this book has been settled. We must accept the reality of it, and leave him alone.
We need to put this matter into perspective. Our synod is where we live and work and serve and worship. And so it is important to us - as it should be. But synod is not the Holy Christian Church. We have no promise of Scripture that the synod will endure forever. But we do have that promise concerning the Word of God and the Church. Church bodies and other temporal arrangements rise and fall. What happens to our synod in the future is not something that has been revealed to us. It may prosper, or it may fail. We should pray for our synod’s faithfulness and its survival as part of what is obviously becoming a remnant of Christendom. And whether He grants it or not, “God still sits on His holy throne,” and by virtue of that blessed reality, we will still serve at our altars, fonts, and pulpits in our congregations, regardless of what happens to the synod.
We need to remember the oft-quoted dictum that synod is advisory. We are bound to no doctrine or opinion of any essayist unless that writer is quoting Scripture or Confessions. Our consciences are not bound to any particular human opinion, whether that opinion has been vetted by an institution within synod or not. We do not have popes or councils or a magisterium to confect dogma, or to speak with claims of infallibility. We have the Bible and the Book of Concord. Thus we may disagree with, and opt out of using, the writings of any of the essayists as they make arguments concerning politics, economics, sociology, and other controverted topics. No office of synod has the right to dogmatize political or social matters of which Scripture does not bind our consciences.
Moreover, those of us who are parish pastors have the duty of final doctrinal review for any materials we use in our preaching and teaching and other pastoral practice. No pastor or lay person is compelled to accept, buy, or use these essays published with, and under the title of, the Large Catechism if he does not want to. No one is compelled to like them, endorse them, or recommend them. And as they are not the Word of God, we are free to criticize them.
And that we should - and I would say must - do.
While some of the ideas put forth are shocking to many of us, it is actually good that we know the truth of where things stand within our synod concerning certain ideologies and ideas, how acceptable and how normalized certain ways of speaking have become. It is better to be aware of unpleasant realities than to falsely believe in things that we would like to be true, but in fact, are not.
I think we have learned more about the state of our synod following this turn of events - the good and the bad.
We ought to take more responsibility over what materials we use, especially those of us in the Holy Office. We should not uncritically accept any writings unless they are the text of Scripture and the Confessions, just as faithful Lutherans do not treat their pastors as infallible, but test their preaching and teaching by means of the Word. The Bereans did not rely on a board or committee to judge what they were being taught. CTCR or presidential approval is not like the old Imprimatur or Nihil Obstat under the papacy. Perhaps we should also look to independent entities whom we trust to help us discern what materials we will make use of: trusted professors, faculties, scholars, pastors, etc. We are not prohibited from holding a higher standard than the low bar that something has been declared free of false doctrine by a committee.
And let us not forget that we must never suffer the moral injury of allowing our consciences to be violated. As Luther said at Worms, “It is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.” If your conscience will not permit you to approve of this project, no-one has the right to pressure or compel you to violate your conscience - regardless of one’s position or lack thereof in the church.
Let us be patient. Let us be vigilant. Let us be above reproach. We have the right - and the duty - to write, to make arguments, to express our opinions, and to go after repugnant ideas - avoiding the temptation to go after individuals with whom we disagree. Attacking individuals ad hominem is not acceptable. But what is acceptable is going after rotten ideas: exposing them, opposing them, and repudiating them. In fact, the latter is a duty that we all have if we are to pursue the truth.
I would like to call to mind the role of the faithful laity in our “late unpleasantness” of the 1970s. Whereas pastors can be politically pressured, it is much harder to institutionally thumbscrew lay people, who cannot be threatened with losing calls or being removed from employment. Faithful laymen should not underestimate their ability to confess, and the good that they can do, by being faithful and vocal.
Perhaps we have been too trusting of our political apparatus - not to mention personal friendships - to do for us what we should be doing for ourselves. Times like these are a wake-up call. How often are we warned about trusting princes?
Let us thank God for allowing us to see where we stand as a synod. Let us not grow weary, bitter, or despondent. Let us take up our pens and get to work. Let us confess in season and out of season. If our leaders will not sound the alarm about dangerous doctrines and ideologies, then let the pastors and the laity do so. And we must, for the sake of our own parishes and children, as well as for members of our military, and our co-confessors around the world who are bearing the cross of imposed wokeness.
No matter what ultimately happens with this book, it will not change the reality that we will continue to preach, and to hear the proclamation. We will celebrate, and receive the Eucharist. We will absolve, and be absolved. We will teach, and learn. We will visit shut-ins with that which fortifies them to everlasting life. We will continue to bind up wounds and heal brokenness. We will baptize. We will confess the faith. And we will continue to be faithful to Scripture and Confessions - including our fidelity to the Divine Service. We will continue to do so no matter who is elected to positions of authority, and no matter what materials those authorities approve or disapprove.
We need to refocus on what is truly important.
And it is important that we continue to go about our work in the kingdom and not be discouraged, whether we win or lose battles along the way, whether we rejoice in, or are disappointed by, the behavior of our temporary leaders on this side of glory.
Let us, especially pastors, heed St. Paul’s advice to Titus:
Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.
And maybe a fitting response to this divisive episode is to read and study the confessional text of the Catechism itself, rejoicing in its salutary doctrine and true explication of the Word of God - which is for us, not a point of disagreement or discord, but rather a point of agreement and concord. For unlike matters of politics, economics, and sociology, in which there are a diversity of opinions, the Catechism, in and of itself, without accretions or commentary, is indeed ever-contemporary in its applications. As the Catechism’s author wrote in the preface:
“But for myself I say this: I am also a doctor and preacher, yea, as learned and experienced as all those may be who have such presumption and security; yet I do as a child who is being taught the Catechism, and every morning, and whenever I have time, I read and say, word for word, the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Psalms, etc. And I must still read and study daily, and yet I cannot master it as I wish, but must remain a child and pupil of the Catechism, and am glad so to remain.”