It is always fun hearing a Confessional Lutheran argue against
Lutheranism (see comment 2)! I remember those days with some fondness, yet not for that
reason alone but because they stand closer to the angels and with a few
firmer roots in the Tradition, I shall always cheer for the Confessional
Lutheran.
Yet I do so with sadness, knowing that two premises
undermine their argument (both against Lutheranism and with the Orthodox
and Catholics). These are:
1) Confessional Lutheran arguments
cannot escape the atmosphere and water of Lutheranism within which they
are formed. In other words, many suppositions of Lutheranism still lurk
beneath and within the Confessional Lutheran argument--something I many
fought to deny for many years, but ultimately could not. As support, I
point not only to the arguments among Confessional Lutherans about their
own self-understanding of the Confessions, but also to the odd
co-mingling of Chemnitz and Gerhard (among others). There is a
discernible gap among the former and anything that grew up in "Lutheran
Orthodoxy."
2)
At the end of the day, there is no Confessional Lutheran ecclesiology,
not simply because ecclesiology is hardly a topic in the 16th-18th
centuries (one has to look to Loehe to find the beginnings of an
attempt), but also because Lutheranism and Confessional Lutherans agree
on an ecclesiology that is at variance with the "faith once
delivered"--an ecclesiology which was clearly
apparent in Luther and Chemnitz, but which changed dramatically the day
that Lutherans accepted the fact that they are Lutherans.
As for
this present presentation by the learned Subdeacon, his main point still
needs to be reckoned with; namely, how can the Lutheran Confessions, in
several places, speak of God being reconciled to man. One of my Lutheran pastor friends once tried to argue this case, but it was not convincing,
especially when he was asked to play by his own rules
("bible-locatedness"). It shall, I fear, forever remain a puzzle for
those of us who have rejected the notion that Jesus was praying that the
Father had abandoned Him (Ps 21 [22]), thereby consigning Him to a
wrath and fury worse than hell, all so that He might appease God's
wrath.
But now I'm back where I began--with the Lutheranism
(i.e., Robert Jensen's "Calvinism with a bizarre sacramentology attached")
which hides within the Confessional Lutheran defense.