No One Is Saying...
The above clip is from a larger podcast video found here.
“No one is saying that the Lutheran liturgy is not a treasure. Just don't make consciences burdened to think that salvation is not secure unless every rite of the liturgy is done just right. Thank you, Augsburg Confession 15 on church ceremonies. Also, don't make the liturgy legalistically narrow, making it into a type of work to make satisfaction for sins. This was the error of the Catholics that the reformers wrote against. Again, Article 24, the Apology on the Mass.”
— Rev. Dr. Tim Ahlman
It is a great irony that Dr. Ahlman uses these words “No one is saying,” and then proceeds to make a really horrific accusation against apparently someone in the LCMS, that someone is burdening consciences “to think that salvation is not secure unless every rite of the liturgy is done just right.”
Who says this? President Harrison? The seminary presidents? Professors? The Praesidium? Gottesdienst? The CTCR? The CUS Board of Directors? The newly-reestablished COW? The editors of various synod publications? I’ll tell you who: “No one is saying” anything like this. It’s just another broad-brushed smear with no grounding in reality. What is true is that “No one is saying” this.
And then to elaborate that someone in the LCMS is making the liturgy “a type of work to make satisfaction for sins” and in so doing is repudiating Apology 24. Really? Apology 24? The one that begins like this?
"In our churches Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other festivals when the sacrament is offered to those who wish for it after they have been examined and absolved. We keep traditional liturgical forms, such as the order of the lessons, prayers, vestments, etc."
That Apology 24?
The only repudiation of Article 24 that I have ever heard in the LCMS has come from CoWo guys, like the one who said that Article 24 “is no longer binding,” or from others who say that it is “descriptive, not prescriptive,” and those who claim that other passages from the confessions have somehow rendered Article 24 null. But now we apparently have some unnamed liturgical advocates in the LCMS who are repudiating Apology 24 and embracing papalism. Who are these people? Where are they writing or arguing for such things?
The answer is, “No one is saying” this.
No one in the LCMS is saying that people go to hell for messing up a rite, or that the liturgy makes satisfaction for sins. No one. Not one man jack. If Dr. Ahlman can give some examples, we would be happy to join him in act of unity to correct the people who are teaching such a doctrine about the “treasure” that is our beloved “Lutheran liturgy.” For it is a treasure, and not all liturgies are, in fact, Lutheran. The problem is, “no one is saying” any such thing about conscience-burdening and satisfaction-making. It’s all Bubulum Stercus.
This is yet another straw man, yet another false accusation, yet another calumny against Lutherans of the same kind that precipitated the writing of the Augsburg Confession in the first place. And to call that “koinonia” is just the cherry on top.
Wow.
But I have an idea. If this really is a thing, maybe ULC can write a blog post called “In Their Own Words” and provide some actual quotes. But don’t hold your breath. Because as Dr. Ahlman says above: “No one is saying...” And this is most certainly true.