The Church in Crisis

By Dr. Carl Braaten

Remember, we have no "Lutheran" Christ, no Lutheran salvation. We are a Lutheran "movement.", a movement for the sake of the whole church.

We Lutherans have certain distinctive principles or banners we wave in order to describe our movement. You learned them in your catechism.

The first of these principles is SOLA GRATIA, grace alone. By grace alone we arc saved, saved by God's initiative, nol by our practice, feelings, or by our intellectually affirming true and proper doctrines.

Nothing we do brings us into the right relationship with God. By divine initiative alone a way of salvation for this world has been provided. Salvation is not conditioned by human goodness, intentions or good works.

The second principle is SOLA FIDE, faith alone. Nol faith without works, noi faith motivated by works, not faith brought about by accumulating good works. Faith aloneùit is the open hand that receives the grace of God in Jesus Christ. It means being opened up by the Spirit 10 receive what God pours into our hearts.

CHRIST ALONE is the third principle. Without it, the other two are meaningless. Christ is God, very God, God in the flesh. Some people are trying to push the idea that Christ is only Jesus, an earthly man who set a very good example, even to die point of dying for his beliefs. Indeed, the church has many heroes and martyrs, but Christ is not one of them. Jesus is God in the flesh, "Emmanuel".

Jesus Christ is very God, "of one substance with the Father" as the Creed says. lie is of the very same "stuff as God the Father, who created the universe. CHRIST ALONE is God's unique self-identification. When we look to Jesus, we sec the human face of God, and nol simply the wonderful presence of an extraordinary human being.

The fourth principle – SOLA SCRIPTURA, Scripture alone. When push comes to shove in die church, as is happening right now, we should go to the Scriptures. Consider this big debate on human sexuality. It seems Americans think about sex morning, noon and night; America is saturated and obsessed with sex. And now ihe church, our poor young little baby church, ihc Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), heard that the world is interested in sex. So t the ELCA says, "ME TOO!" We Lutherans are going to talk about sex – isn't that wonderful!"

Our parents never talked about sex; they just did it – or we wouldn't be alive. But we ELCA Lutherans are supposed to talk dutifully about sex, just like our culture tells us to. This little church says, "Let's have a task force and write about sex so we can titillate the imagination of all those secularists out there." And the rest of us poor Lutheran folk have to take the embarrassing rap for it all, under the gaze of the lascivious mass media.

Scripture Alone – it means that the sexuality ELCA task force should have had biblical theologians on it lo tell us what the Scriptures teach about human sexuality and morality, about marriage and family, about sin. But on that task force mere was one, and only one, lowly biblical theologian. Whether he knew anything about sex, nobody knows. But judging from the document, if this task force was right, then the church has been wrong – not Lutheran church, but Reformed, Catholic and Orthodox churches – all Christian churches have been wrong – for two thousand years!

How wonderful. Suddenly Lutherans have discovered something no other Christian in 2000 years ever thought of. They tell us to study the sexuality document. There's another alternative – flush it! Unless, of course, you're terribly interested in just plain sex.

Another principle, without which Lutherans would be indistinguishable from other religious cultures is, the CONFESSIONAL PRINCIPLE (as in your "Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans"). By confessional we mean that we subscribe to the three ecumenical creeds of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Within them we have the firm confession of who God is, what He does, also for the world and for us, and what we can expect from Him in die future. Adherence to tin's principle means that Lutherans arc not going to invent a new Christianity but that we are a part of the universal stream of Christianity on earth. Many Protestants don't have (his principle, and accordingly, lack the firm guidelines or parameters within which dieir theology is to be worked out.

The next principle: WORD AND SACRAMENT. It's in the Word and Sacraments that Jesus promises to be with us – not in any old place, but in the living Word and in the bread and wine that have been consecrated as his body and blood. This is the importance of the church: it is where Jesus meets us in His Word. Lutherans at their best have maintained a massive and faithful concentration on the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments, it is still where Jesus Christ meets the world today.

The next principle deals with whether the proclamation from the pulpits of our congregations is true, or whether we're being treated to mere editorial opinions of some individual pastor. It is the principle of LAW and GOSPEL. The whole counsel of God is to be proclaimed, the whole Law, die whole Gospel, both dimensions, unadulterated and unabridged. Today pastors in many places try to preach the Gospel without the Law. They make God's grace cheap grace: "God loves you, so do as you please. He doesn't care because He's as full of love and understanding as you wish your parents would be." Nobody says no; nobody is there to set guidelines and hold the front against our desires and lusts.

Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral illustrates the issue. I le said die first big controversy in his church was whether there should be a cross in the sanctuary. Some of die lay liberals said no, because a cross is a very negative concept: the cross has to do with killing, with blood, and that turns people off.

Or think of this: some feminists are even saying that the cross is a case of "divine child abuse"! All because die Son was pul lo death in order to reconcile God the Father with the world, and the world with God.

Apply this principle to your worship when you leave die pew next Sunday. Ask if you heard both die Law of God and me Mercy of God. Yale University professor H. Richard Niehbuhr said, "Liberal pulpits preach a God without wrath, who brings people without sin into a kingdom without judgment, to a Christ without a cross." Sweet Jesus! That is not what our Lutheran tradition commands our pastors to preach. The PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS is the eighth principle. It means that every Christian has received the free gift of grace through baptism, and has thereby been commissioned to spread the good news of the Gospel everywhere in daily life. Simply put, it means "being Christian in your daily life." This principle releases lay people to "do their Christian thing", not only in the church, but also in the world.

The ninth principle is FAITH ACTIVE IN LOVE. Believers in Christ have been set free. Our real liberator is Jesus Christ. We do not have to liberate ourselves because the freedom we have in Christ is a gift, and we are to practice that gift, to unpack it and express it in all our relationships.

Faith active in love means there are two great words of our Lord to guide us: the Great Commission to spread the gospel to all creatures, and the Great Commandment that we arc 10 love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves. These two great words from our Lord free up the Christian life.

The final principle of the Lutheran movement we call THE TWO KINGDOMS. God rules the world in two ways, as king of a spiritual kingdom and as king of an temporal kingdom. They are not the same. What God is doing in the world for the world's salvation in Jesus Christ is different from what God is doing in the world through business and education and recreation and all other social activities. There is a distinction between what God is doing in the "order of creation" through human laws seeking justice and equality for all human beings in society, and what God is doing specifically and particularly through Christ for the salvation of each of us and of the world.

The TWO KINGDOMS are two ways God works in the world. In this manner God draws the proper distinction between the church and the world, between the Gospel and government, between the love of God and his justice, which is supposed to be implemented through common law.

These are the fundamental principles of Lutheranism. It is time for Lutherans to become more conscious of their heritage and to find ways of understanding it. practicing it. and implementing it.

* Dr. Braaten is director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. He gave this and the first part, published in the last issue of F.O.C.L. POINT, as an address at the annual F.O.C.L Reformation Rally, in Sacramento, in October 1993.