Lutheranism and Anglicanism have always baffled me because their approach to major Protestant doctrines like Faith Alone and Sola Scriptura (Bible Alone) do not seem to be honest with the basic meaning of these slogans. For example, Lutherans (and Anglicans) hold that Baptism doesn't interfere with Faith Alone in the slightest, whereas most other Protestants see Baptism as a "work" that undermines Faith Alone. When it comes to Sola Scriptura, both Lutherans and Anglicans will freely embrace all kinds of "Catholic traditions" that aren't directly derived from the Bible, and yet claim these do not contradict Sola Scriptura. For example, the Lutheran and Anglican Liturgies are clearly stripped down versions of the Catholic Mass. The same sorts of Catholic prayers, sign of the cross, vestments, Calendar of Saints and Holidays, etc, are not found directly in the Bible and yet are a central aspect of their worship. This is both a good and a challenging thing for Catholic apologetics.
Ultimately, I think it is good that Lutherans and Anglicans are 'inconsistent' on Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura, because it helps prove the Catholic case that these slogans are effectively meaningless and impossible to defend or define once we scratch the surface. With that long introduction, I think I've set the stage for this post.
Just when I've thought I've seen it all, I come across something astonishing that I'd never imagined could happen. As I was reading the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Lutheranism the other day, I came across an astonishing passage:
Lutheranism acknowledges six specific confessions which distinguish it from other churches: the unaltered Augsburg Confession (1530), the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), Luther's Large Catechism (1529), Luther's Catechism for Children (1529), the Articles of Smalkald (1537), and the Form of Concord (1577). These nine symbolical books (including the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, and Athanasian Creed) constitute what is known as the "Book of Concord", which was first published at Dresden in 1580. In these confessions the Scriptures are declared to be the only rule of faith. The extent of the Canon is not defined, but the bibles in common use among Lutherans have been generally the same as those of other Protestant denominations.
So called "Confessional" Lutherans are those who hold that the "Book of Concord," a collection of their most authoritative documents, is the supreme Confession for what it means to be a true Lutheran. Quite often, the writings of the Book of Concord do not follow what Luther himself taught, and thus Lutheranism actually rejects many of Luther's teachings (e.g. his extreme views on Predestination and rejection of Free Will, his view of polygamy, his view that souls sleep after death rather than going to heaven). What really stood out to me though was the claim that Lutherans have not defined the Canon of Scripture anywhere within the Book of Concord, which is a few hundred pages long! Could it really be that Lutherans do not have a defined/closed Canon of Scripture? That seems outrageous, so I had to look into it more.
After searching for certain books of the Bible within the Book of Concord, I realized there was no place in all its documents where an official list of books of the Bible is ever listed. Without a definitive list of books of the Bible, Lutherans put themselves in a very interesting situation. Virtually all the major branches of Protestantism have "officially" listed their canon, the 66 book "Protestant canon" we all know about, but without a formal Canon the Lutherans cannot technically say they embrace the Protestant canon. This causes problems for Sola Scriptura, because you can hardly claim to go by Scripture alone when you don't even know what the books of Scripture consist of. It also causes problems because since we are now a few centuries past when the Book of Concord was composed, who today in Lutheranism can even speak authoritatively to define the canon? What "magisterium" can be assembled, especially now that Lutheranism itself has broken into so many sub-denominations?
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) is one of the leading and most conservative "denomination" of Lutheranism there is, and on their website is the Lutheran Encyclopedia, which has this to say about the Canon:
Almost all OT Scriptures, with the probable exception of Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Ezra, are either quoted or alluded to in the New Testament. References to apocryphal writings are also made (Ja 1:19 [Ecclus 5:11]; Mt 27:43 [Wis 2:13, 18–20]; Eph 6:11, 13–17 [Wis 5:17–21]). Occasionally also Pseudepigrapha are cited. Jude 14–16 quotes Enoch 1:9. There has been no unanimous agreement in the Christian ch. on the extent of the OT canon. Jerome preferred to exclude the Apocrypha and transmit in the Vulgate* the Jewish canon of the 39 books contained in most Eng. translations. Because of well-established use of the Apocrypha, these writings gradually became part of the Vulgate and were used also by the framers of the Book of Concord, who make no pronouncements on the extent of the OT canon.
The Lutheran Encyclopedia says two noteworthy things here: First, it says that the NT does indeed reference the "Apocrypha" (i.e. "Deuterocanonical Books") that Catholic Bible's have, such as Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, etc. Most people are aware of the super-clear prophecy of Jesus in Wisdom 2:13-20 (HERE), but I didn't know of the awesom Wisdom 5:17-21 reference to "putting on the whole armor of God". Second, the above quote says the framers of the Book of Concord themselves used the "Apocrypha" and that the Book of Concord makes no pronouncement on the extent of the OT canon.
Doing a simple search in the Book of Concord, I came across this passage on the Lutheran view of Praying to the Saints:
Besides, we [Lutherans] also grant that the angels pray for us. For there is a testimony in Zech. 1:12, where an angel prays: O Lord of hosts, how long wilt Thou not have mercy on Jerusalem? Although concerning the saints we concede that, just as, when alive, they pray for the Church universal in general, so in heaven they pray for the Church in general, albeit no testimony concerning the praying of the dead is extant in the Scriptures, except the dream taken from the Second Book of Maccabees, 15:14.
Here the Book of Concord refers to the Second Book of Maccabees as "Scripture". (The passage in question has been discussed by Catholic apologist Joe on his blog HERE.) What all this effectively means is that Lutheranism technically is espousing a 73 book Sola Scriptura, using the Catholic canon. This causes serious problems for Sola Scriptura when different canons are being used, and in fact actually makes Sola Scriptura self-refuting. Now many Lutherans today would find this silly, but the fact remains (1) they have no official canon, and (2) they aren't actually hostile to the Deuterocanon as many of us have been taught to think.
In fact, it was only within the last 100 years or so that the LCMS changed direction on this issue, but more covertly and in dubious fashion. The official publishing house of the LCMS is Concordia Publishing, and here is what they say on the Lutheran Study Bible:
The German Lutheran study Bible tradition in the Missouri Synod continued into the early twentieth century, with each Bible containing Lutheran notes and studies. Concordia Publishing House sold more recent printings of the Weimar Bible and kept the Altenburg Bible in print as well. This tradition came to an end somewhat abruptly in the first few decades of the twentieth century when the Missouri Synod moved from being primarily a German-speaking church to an English-speaking church. Interestingly, also at this time the apocryphal books that had been in every edition of the Bible since the time of Luther no longer appeared in English editions of the Bible published by Concordia Publishing House.
So sometime in the early decades of the 1900s, Protestant publishers, including Concordia, got together and dropped the Apocrypha from their printed Bibles, including editions that had always had these books. Can you imagine the audacity of such a monstrous crime of removing books from the Bible by your own whim and spreading these new Bibles for public consumption with the public not really knowing any better? Imagine how different apologetics would be if at least some major Protestant denominations retained the Apocrypha. And recall how often Catholics are attacked by Protestants for 'hiding the Bible' and 'keeping it in Latin' and such, yet these same folks say nothing of the removal of the Apocrypha. None the less, the Book of Concord is more authoritative than the LCMS and Concordia Publishing, so per 'true' Lutherans, the canon remains undefined and the apocrypha still holds some degree of acceptance.
Given all this, we've finally come back to my original point: Lutheranism is just baffling in many respects. If 2nd Maccabees is technically endorsed by Concord, then why is the famous Maccabean prayers and alms for the souls in purgatory not count as Biblical proof for the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory? Despite endorsing Sola Scriptura, Lutherans have no coherent answer for these kinds of questions. Still, I think the most valuable point for Catholics here is the apologetics usefulness of the Lutheran position. On one hand, Catholics can really quiet down many of the mainstream Protestant attacks, by pointing out Lutherans are Protestant yet reject many mainstream Evangelical claims in favor of many "Catholic sounding" claims. On the other hand, Catholics can put the Lutherans in a bind by pointing out the absurdity of not having a closed canon, as well as no way to close it, among other related uncomfortable teachings.
7 comments:
You write that Lutheranism is "baffling". This is because Lutheranism is an unprincipled farrago, borrowing from multiple sources of tradition and previous teaching with no underlying basis other than what happened to get institutionalized in the Lutheran churches due to historical accident. Calvinism exhibits a kind of admirable clarity- once you grasp its basic theological principles with regards to justification, scripture and authority, you can more or less deduce the rest of it sight unseen.
Now, despite its admirable clarity, Calvinism is still a clear product of its 16th century milieu and it has no genuine basis in the teachings of the early church. It rests entirely upon a historically idiosyncratic and anachronistic reading of Paul that has no plausible historical antecedents.
This illustrates something rather important about the value of "internal coherence". While Lutheranism is theologically unprincipled, it still manages to retain more of what is good and true than does Calvinism and its reformed offshoots. The Reformed tradition is, I submit, closer in spirit to a new religion that was invented in the 16th century, forged almost by logical deduction from the reformers' anachronistic readings of Paul. It's more intellectually impressive than Lutheranism as an intellectual system, but, again, it contains less that is true and less that is good.
The Catholic tradition alone manages to unite insight into what is good and true in the tradition with the systematic coherence of a system. Lutheranism gives you some of the former but little of the latter, the Reformed tradition gives you none of the former but lots of the latter.
What's really silly about Lutheranism is the name. It admits openly that their religion was founded by some random guy 1500 years after the birth of the Church.
Concerning the NT canon, its generally believed after Luther all the Protestant uniformly accepted the 27 book canon but Metzger mentions:
in 1596 when Jacob Lucius published a Bible at Hamburg in which the four disputed books are given the title 'Apocrypha', followed by the explanation. 'That is, books that are not held equal to the other holy Scripture. In the same year David Wolder, pastor of the Church of St Peter at Hamburg, published a triglot Bible in Greek, Latin (two versions), and German, the table of contents of which designates the four books as 'non canonical' In 1614 Lucius' title and explanatory note reappear in a Bible issued at Goslar by J. Vogt. In Sweden the Gustavus Adolphus Bible (Stockholm, 1618), not only not only continues to separate the four dubious books at the end of the table of contents but also labels them with the caption Apocr(yphal) New Testament'--an arrangement that persisted for nearly a century in half a dozen or more printings."--Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, page 245
https://books.google.com/books?id=3ieQDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA245&lpg=PA245&dq=%22published+a+Bible+at+Hamburg%22&source=bl&ots=IKTXtSq6j9&sig=ACfU3U2qpYUL6VjMF9HkOYoAnIlsN0gfkw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid9dHBt4zoAhXXs54KHbISDCIQ6AEwCXoECA0QAQ#v=onepage&q=%22published%20a%20Bible%20at%20Hamburg%22&f=false
That's a good point and needs to be brought up more often in Catholic-Protestant debates, since too often we only focus on the OT differences. The harder thing about the NT argument is that no Protestants object to the NT canon today, so it's harder to point this out to Protestants. But it is astonishing to realize that even 1500 years after the Apostles, people were questioning the NT canon. It does show just how radical the "Reformation" was though, where literally anything could be thrown out. It was truly the epitome of Liberalism.
Not sure if it's the same in the USA, but In Australia during the War years because the Lutheran synods were largely of Germanic descent (mostly from Prussian Silesia) there was a large persecution against them (schools closed, church property commandeered, towns renamed, some even sent to POW camps). Because of this many Lutheran parents stopped using German and transferred to English, this lead to influence of the Anglican/Methodist/Baptist traditions and also the English Bible which hasn't had the Apocrypha since the Puritan Revolution.
So imagine the audacity of the English, not the Lutherans; after all Concordia Publishing publishes the Apocrypha still (though as a separate volume now).
Confessional Lutherans, such as myself, see this very simply: Yes, the Scripture is the inspired and infallible Word of God, and from it we come to the most important doctrine: Justification by faith in Christ. As the Apology of the Augsburg Confession says, Lutherans do not "reject the Mass," but we uphold it in its proper sense, as it was done BEFORE Roman Catholicism started adding things which undermine the Scripture -- traditions that are not helpful to the faith. During Luther's time, the Lord's Supper was not distributed to the laypeople, and if it was it was only the bread and not the wine. There was absolutely no good reason for this and it was a HORRIBLE tradition which men created. At the time it was created, maybe there was practical reasons, but it was bad regardless. Indulgences, at the time, were MONSTROUS! In order for the church and the pope to build a building, they lied to the people and said that the pope had the power to release people from purgatory??
But there's nothing wrong with vestments or adornments, provided the priest/pastor doesn't use them for prideful reasons. There's nothing wrong with the ancient liturgies, provided they're not used for financial greed or some other vice. Confessional Lutherans aren't protestants! We never wanted, or want, to break away from Roman Catholicism. We wanted to fix you, to return you to orthodoxy and faithfulness to Christ and His Word. All the other groups that came after, they are protestants because they all sought to start new church bodies.
Luther wasn't God and he wasn't perfect. We don't adhere to everything he said or believe everything he believed. No, the Book of Concord certainly does not include some of the things he believed and it doesn't have to. Certainly the Roman Catholic church doesn't adhere to every teaching of past popes without question, right? Let's be honest, you're not totally on board with your current pope, and for good reason.
Thank you! 👍
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