En route to the Retractationes of an opinionated little old hobbit
As this old codger has reached the term of the Psalmist’s estimate of the normal span of a man’s life, he is wondering whether the time has come for him to put his pen to a burst of Retractationes. Bill Weinrich must be much more familiar with Augustine’s swan song than am I, but I remember Henry Chadwick pronouncing in his plummy tones how in this his literary au revoir the Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of Grace more often insisted that he was right than admitted being in the wrong. But anyone who leaves behind a larger than usual literary legacy cannot possibly have been right all the time. I recall the late Orthodox theologian Fr Thomas Hopko holding forth on the East’s view of the papacy in Brock University’s Senate Chamber just a couple of minutes’ walk from the seminary: ‘The Pope is not infallible; nobody ever is.’ Schluβ, Punkt, fertig. Or, as Augustine himself once put it, ‘Causa finita—case closed.’
In his own major contributions to the New Testament the Beloved Disciple after whom I imagine myself named repeatedly insists, in a way that harmonises most beautifully with Paul in 1 Cor 13, that the purest orthodoxy is fit only for throwing in the barf bucket unless it is professed and promulgated by a loving heart whose lips will intentionally shaft no one. Only in abstract dogmatic formulation can faith, hope, and love be disentangled; like the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, they only belong together in a single indivisible whole. Is it possible to identify even one major doctrinal controversy in the history of the Church where love was not swiftly defenestrated in the manner of the imperial diplomats in Prague in 1618? Truth of course had to be retained whole and unimpaired, even when it was grasped differently according to the perspectives of different locations and points in time. Yet good was inextricably woven together with ill as heresiarchs and patrons of orthodoxy and churchmen of every range of opinion in between broke #8 with impunity and left to succeeding generations a heritage of hatred and prejudice whose effects are still at work today. As defenders of Chalcedon and those unable to accept the ‘vile Tome of Leo’ slowly morphed over a century’s time from two parties within the one Church into two Churches each anathematising the other, ghastly executions took place, bequeathing a legacy of bitterness that still packs a powerful punch. Intense theological discussions took place in Augsburg following the closure of the Reichstag of 1530, some of them actually getting somewhere, but this salutary exercise was rendered a foul-tasting dish as a married priest from Bavaria enrolled in theological studies at Wittenberg was burned as a relapsed heretic during a visit home to attend to family business. Nor do fingers of accusation of lethal violence point in just one direction in the century of Reformation(s).
A similar process to that which marked the rent between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians was underway during the half century that passed between the reading of the Augsburg Confession in 1530 and the promulgation of the full Book of Concord in 1580. In the Small Catechism Luther transcended his own persona by saying nothing nasty about anyone, contenting himself with a thetical presentation of what he saw as the heart of the matter that continues to reach the hearts of Christians of all confessions today. An urgent task for Confessions scholarship of our time is that of disentangling abiding truth on which no compromise is thinkable from the Donald Trump tweets that slipped into the subscribed texts, snarky remarks that could not be avoided human nature being what it is. Vis-à-vis other Christians we need to realise, in the face of a mountingly hostile world, that the glass is at least half full, that Wilhelm Löhe’s ‘ecumenical peace practice’ needs to go into full drive, and that we need to take the words out of our mouths, examine them from all directions, and only issue them when we know that they are being said in the peace of Christ.
If anyone thinks this a call to repentance addressed to him or her, let me here inject some contrition and confession of my own. Back in 1986 I issued an inflammatory little essay on the Consecration directed against hoc genus omne of receptionists in general and the late Eugene Klug RIP in particular; it really was a blast of brash adolescent folly for which the new kid on the theological block should have had his hide sorely whipped. And it surely added to the woes of my beloved father in Christ, now also my earthly kinsman, Dr Robert Preus, who was very saddened by my unlicensed sortie but, in the kindness of his dear old heart, refrained from rebuking me. It also grieved the heart of my beloved elder brother in the Lord, Kurt Marquart, who agreed with me on the essence of what was said but shed bitter tears over the Art und Weise/way it was said.
Before a couple of years had passed, I found myself on the CTS campus and was moved (by the Holy Spirit through my guardian angel, I believe) to write a note and put in Dr Klug’s mailbox. The viciously rude young man wrote that he needed to ‘munch a crowburger’ before his senior by many years. As the Lord so wondrously and beautifully arranges these things, whom should I bump into a few hours later but Dr Klug himself, who graciously forgave me as a prelude to a kindly conversation. Of course, Gene Klug and I were never going to sing from the same hymnal on matters eucharistical, but it sure felt better to be reconciled with him. At a later, final meeting I had with him and after his death, I rejoiced to be at peace in Christ with him. That’s how Jesus wants it to be wherever His holy name is confessed.
We Lutherans are a scrappy bunch, there’s no getting away from it. But before we let theological controversies get out of the starting gate, we must be sure that we have gone through or will later go through some stages with those we are disagreeing with. A while ago I went to someone I’d been on the outs with in our tiny LCC. ‘The way I’ve been treating you for a while has been appalling, and I ask your forgiveness.’ My interlocutor paused a while, agreed that his/her behaviour had not been stellar either, and made the identical request in the other direction. A handshake was exchanged, the air cleared, and boy I’ve felt better at heart since.
Methinks a voluntary moratorium on theological-cum-ecclesiastical polemics is in order, at any rate if the former son of thunder John the Beloved Disciple cuddled up to the breast of Jesus is to be allowed any say in the matter. If you say, ‘That’s a bit rich coming from a feisty little fighter like Stephenson,’ I see your point. But we cannot operate in the Church qua Church unless the verbal sequence ‘I apologise, please forgive me; I forgive you; I love you’ is as routine as brushing one’s teeth in the morning.
Up in LCC we have almost without thinking about it got into the habit of unanimously re-electing synodical and district presidents at successive conventions; that’s the default way to go with our bishops, I think. Such childlike deference and subordination does not exclude the possibility or restrict the practice of saying, privately and behind closed doors, ‘Dear father, permit me to raise A, B, C.’ Allowing conventions to degenerate into political catfights and engaging in unpleasant campaigning is not the way to go in the realm where Christ is acknowledged as King. ‘Little children, love one another,’ someone said way back when; but wait, that’s also word of God for today!
This opinionated little old hobbits Retractationes have barely begun. …