Genea:Logically Lutheran?
I recently ran across a pastor making an argument defending his own personal bona fides as a Lutheran. This was used to support his assertions about what it truly means to be a Lutheran (incidentally, he has since resigned from the LCMS roster).
And this was his argument:
His father was an LCMS pastor.
He was baptized in an LCMS church as an infant.
He attended LCMS parochial school.
He was ordained in an LCMS church.
I have heard several other similar arguments from LCMS pastors, one who argues that he is a 4th generation Lutheran pastor. Oh my! There are Siamese cats and Knights of the British Empire that lack that kind of champion or royal pedigree!
So if one’s arguments are validated by such things, I suppose nothing I say can have any force at all. I have no Lutheran pastors in my family tree, not even going back centuries. Not even one. I was not raised as a Lutheran. I was not baptized as an infant. I have never attended a Lutheran Sunday school, VBS, parochial school, or college. I was even ordained only as a second career seminarian. I clearly lack the genealogical purity of those with the impressive family tree. I’m either a mongrel or a bastard. And I will joy:Fully answer to both - and have been called much worse. 🤣
Years ago, I was asked to visit a homebound lady (who had left our church many years ago) by one of her relatives. When I inquired if the lady were still a Lutheran (unbeknownst to me, she was, in fact, a member of another area LCMS parish that was vacant), the explanation that I got was was a long handwritten letter that her ancestors were Lutherans in the Black Forest, and they came to this country on a boat 200 years ago.
This way of defining what a Lutheran is by genealogy is similar to the oft-heard dictum: “I’ve been a Lutheran all my life, and we never…” as an argument against chanting, wearing a chasuble, or celebrating the Lord’s Supper every week. It is a variation of the appeal to authority fallacy (argumentum ad verecundiam).
It is as fallacious as the proposition I once heard from a man who insisted that Lutheran churches are defined as such because they have red doors. He was serious.
John the Baptist quashed this genealogical view when he said, “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt 3:9). It doesn’t really matter what your pedigree is, as the truth is the truth whether spoken by one with a champion bloodline or a cur. Truth can even be spoken by an ass (Num 22:22-34, and I’ll cop to that moniker as well!). St. Paul warned St. Timothy about people who cite such irrelevancies as an argument, who, “devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.” (1 Tim 1:4).
Sometimes those who want to engage in apologetics against Lutherans will attack the person of Martin Luther. Typically, their allegations are ridiculous assertions that no serious historian believes. But even if Luther were the worse scoundrel in the world, it has nothing to do with what it means to be a Lutheran. It’s as relevant as whether the door of your church is red.
I have had people explain to me that they’re Lutheran because they “made their communion” in Nineteen Whatever under Pastor So-and-so (even though they have long since stopped attending church). Or they went to Lutheran schools at some point. Or they were “baptized Lutheran” (nobody has ever been “baptized Lutheran”). Even the “I’ve been a Lutheran all my life” is impossible, as nobody has ever been baptized in utero, let alone at the moment of conception. We are all converts.
To be a Lutheran is to be a confessor of the Bible and the Book of Concord. Nothing more, nothing less. Our Lutheran orthodoxy has nothing to do with the color of our church doors, our time in grade as a Lutheran, our ancestors, or even what Martin Luther had to say about beer or marriage or even the Gospel itself - unless he is confessing what is in Holy Scripture.
To be a Lutheran means we really believe that Scripture is the inspired Word of God - the Triune God. And the Word Made Flesh is the Son who became incarnate, who died to justify us, and who rose again to give us eternal life. And we believe, teach, and confess that the Book of Concord correctly expounds the Scriptures.
Lutherans are Lutherans whether they are descended from kings or horse thieves, whether they were raised Lutheran or even Atheist, whether they came to Holy Baptism in NICU immediately after birth, or in old age - and without regard to the color of the church door.