Why I Am (Still) Lutheran

So I've been on pilgrimage viewing holy sites and relics, learning to work through the Via Dolorosa and the rosary. I've stayed at St. George's, visited Mount Athos, and ended at Rome. And I get back, to no suprise, finding that people have been concerned whether I would have become dissatisfied with Lutheranism (and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, in particular) and taking bets as to whether I'd end up Anglican, Catholic, or Orthodox. After all, I haven't been silent about things I find dissatisfying in American Lutheran churches.

This is my response. This will be a long and theologically dense post, but I encourage everyone to read it who wants to know exactly what is going on in this brain of mine. And I hope that my months of wrestling with these questions will help those going through the same process. So grab your dictionaries and hold tight.

Allow me to begin by explaning why Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy are on the table as options, and why the denominations and sects of Protestantism are not. I don't divide the Christian world into Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant. I think it's a sloppy taxonomy. Rather, I have a fivefold division: Oriental Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglican-Lutheran Reformation, and Protestantism.

Oriental Orthodoxy branched off from the Great Church after the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. This was one of the most important ecumenical meetings in Christian history, as it defined who Christ was and thus who we, as Christians, worshipped: of fully divine nature (the same nature as Father and the Spirit), of fully human nature (via the Virgin Mary), with these two natures subsisting in one person, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The churches of the east- Armenians, Ethiopians, Copts (Egyptians), and Aramaic-speaking Syrians- disagreed. They though that this was too close to the Nestorian heresy (that Christ is two natures in two persons) and said instead that Christ is one person of one nature, that one nature being a merging of the divine nature of the God and the human nature of Mary. This is miaphysitism, and it was condemned as heresy. They were therefore no longer part of Mother Church, and for this reason (and many cultural reasons), are simply not an option for me.

You'll notice that I do not define Protestantism to include Lutherans or Anglicans. This is very specific, and it is a key to understanding how I understand the church and the history of Christianity. The church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. All orthodox Christians confess this in the Nicene Creed, and I refuse to believe that the writers of the Nicene Creed (at the Councils of Nicea in AD 325 and Constantinople in AD 381) meant this to be merely a fuzzy statement of unity. No, they meant- and I think they were right to mean- that denominations, sects, schisms, and all such other tragedies tear into the heart of Mother Church.

I separate Anglicans and Lutherans from Protestants because Anglicans and Lutherans never intended to break away from the church of Rome, with its longstanding continuity reaching back to the apostles. The bishops and parishes of the English church (with its own long pre-history) were wrenched away from communion with Rome thanks to the political machinations that plagued Tudor England and the illegitimate exercising of temporal power by the late medieval popes. The schism did not formally occur, however, until the excommunication of Henry VIII, and this sent an entire country with formally consecrated bishops into ecclesiastical exile.

The Lutheran situation was slightly different, but the conclusion is the same. Martin Luther was looking for a theological debate on the theology of indulgences (1517); what he got was a refusal to debate and a demand to recant at the Diet of Worms in 1521. He refused to recant with his famous words: "Unless I am convinced by Scripture and by plain reason and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God. To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen." Unlike the English Church, the Lutherans had no preexisting ecclesiastical (church) order with bishops, priests, church buildings, and such; they had prepared no such thing, because they were not the official church and as a theological movement, the Lutherans had never intended to set up an alternative church structure to the one they knew and loved: Mother Church, in communion with Rome. But when they discovered themselves thrust out of her arms, they were forced to build a para-church in exile so serve the needs of their (my) theological movement until the day of reconciliation.

The best metaphor I have heard for this situation is drawn from World War II, and has been oft-repeated by the Lutheran (ELCA) theological and churchman Carl E. Braaten. When Nazi Germany invaded France in the summer of 1940 they occupied the northern half of the country, including Paris, and set up the puppet regime in Vichy under Marshall Petain to control the south and the French colonies. At this time, Charles de Gaulle fled to England to establish the Free French Forces to continue the fight against Nazi Germany and reestablish the fallen French Republic. But at no time did de Gaulle- or anyone else- imagine that the Free French Forces were somehow a substitute for France; nor did they believe that they could exist happily alongside the Vichy French regime. And just imagine if they had somehow gone on to think that they could somehow start France anew, and that they weren't exiles after all, but bold adventurers. Preposterous.

But that, I think, is the attitude of Protestantism, defined over-against Lutheranism and Anglicanism. In my mind, Protestantism truly begins with Calvinism, and includes all those churches that are either Calvinists or reactions to Calvinism. Allow me to explain.

In the first case, Calvinism (and, more broadly, the Reformed tradition) never had quite the same self-conception as Lutherans or Anglicans. There isn't that deep and haunting soul-searching about the tragedy of the Reformation. Catholics-in-exile? Not at all. The early Calvinists seemed quite happy to be outside the Roman church, and readily went about setting up a counter-church organization in Calvin's Geneva. In Calvinism, and its Protestant successors, we seem to be talking less about a reformation of the Roman church than a reformation of Christendom. The idea is not to remake the Catholic Church, but to make a new church entirely, using the Bible as a blueprint.

This attitude, and their understanding of the Scriptural blueprint, led to three important distinctives in their theology. First, Calvinists placed a heavy emphasis on predestination. God's eternal decree determines who will be saved (through the cross), and who will be damned. It determines, with no participation of free will, who will live eternally, and who will merit eternal wrath. This predestination to eternal life and to hell, both, is thus called double predestination. Second, Ulrich Zwingli (the first reformed thinker, before Calvin, whose ideas nevertheless became more prevalent than Calvin's in Calvinism) believed that the sacraments were merely signs, and thus that baptism does not actually save persons and that the bread and wine of communion do not become or convey the physical body and blood of Christ (as Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, and most Anglicans believe). As a result, what does baptism do, especially if we are baptizing infants (as Calvinists did)? Baptism does not save the infant, since it is not predestination and does not actually impart grace; unfortunately, Calvinism struggled- and struggles to this day- to provide a sufficient answer, and has only really said that baptism brings us into the visible church community, somehow. And third, the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition has placed a strong emphasis on the role of covenants in the history of redemption, from Adam to Abraham to Moses to Christ. These covenants are either conditional (do this and you will live, do that and you will die) or gracious (you will live, period, or you will die, period, regardless of what you do).

Why go through this? Because these three beliefs all produced strong reactions, and it is Calvinism and the three reactive movements that make up Protestantism in all its varied forms. Against the Calvinist theory of predestination, Jacobus Arminius, a late sixteenth century Dutch theologian, contended that God only predestines people according to his foreknowledge of what choices humans make. Therefore, God predestines people to eternal life on the basis of their willing, or choice, for salvation, and people to hell according to their willing, or choice, against Christ (most American Protestants, I think, believe this). This was the beginning, in Protestantism, of the 'free will' position that ended in the modern American demand that people 'choose Jesus' or some such thing. Second, the fuzzy Calvinist answer concerning what baptism does- it brings us into the church community, somehow- led many English Calvinists to adopt the position of early church heretics and the radical Anabaptist reformers (and anarchist revolutionaries), rejecting infant baptism altogether. After all, if they're not professing Christians, and baptism doesn't actually impart grace or save them, how can they be part of the church community? And third, Calvin's strong covenant theology produced the particularly strange reaction called dispensationalism, which would require a lengthy post in itself, so I'm not going to bother. Suffice it to say, this odd corner of theology and history is where the belief in the rapture came from.

A less theological and more obvious point of Calvinist belief and counter-Calvinist reaction: Puritans and charismatics. Calvinism had a very serious, sombre, sterile view of worship. The Puritans were strict Calvinists who believed in no dancing, no instruments, no hymns apart from the Psalms. The reaction? Dear me, the Pentecostals.

Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, free church evangelicals, and charismatics are all either Calvinists or reactions to Calvinism. This is Protestantism- Calvinism and counter-Calvinisms- and that is the problem. Protestantism is not on the grid for me, because I take 'one, holy, catholic, and apostolic' seriously, and because I do not view the Scriptures as a blueprint on which to build the church ex nihilo; and clearly, the results of believing otherwise are schisms upon schisms. But I hope this makes it clear why I view Anglicanism and Lutheranism differently.

So if I cannot consider Protestantism, what makes Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism so attractive?

I'll deal with the attraction to Orthodoxy and the basic reasons I cannot be Orthodox together. Orthodoxy is deeply attractive, first of all, because of its ancient roots. The liturgies in use go back to the fourth century at least, with earlier precedents. And what beautiful liturgies they are. And in some ways, there are fewer barries between Lutheran theology and the Orthodox Church than between Lutheranism and the Roman Catholic Church. There is no dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, no dogma of papal infallibility (indeed, no pope), and there are no councils beyond the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the first millennium. I think the Orthodox have a rather healthy view of the Virgin Mary between the Catholic demi-goddess and the Protestant incubator. Orthodoxy also has a balanced ecclesiology, being neither papal nor congregationalist, but centered on the community of bishop. And, as in Lutheran theology, Orthodox theology sees salvation as the very heart of theology and life; indeed, their view of salvation as a process of transformation of the person from sinful brokenness to perfect communion with the divine- indeed divinization, the whole process of which they call theosis (god-becoming)- is deeply attractive.

Unfortunately, almost all of the critiques of Catholicism and its soteriology (theology of salvation) coming below apply to Orthodoxy as well. I'll simply address them to Catholicism, but be assured that Orthodoxy falls squarely in the target as well. And to be perfectly honest, Orthodoxy is very impractical for me. I'm a Western Christian, and as beautiful as I find the Orthodox liturgies, I also find them more than a tad impenetrable. And beyond the stylistic differences, there is a very unfortunate feeling of non-participation by the laity in worship. Worship in Orthodoxy is something largely done by the priests, with the laity as passive receptors (I witnessed this firsthand in the Holy Sepulchre and on Mount Athos). The priest-as-mediator theology so heavily critiqued by the Lutheran reformers against medieval Catholicism is alive and well in Orthodoxy. And, while I haven't the time to argue the point in such a lengthy post, I simply do not believe that worship can be a performance. When active participation by the laity- through responsive chant and readings, participation in the Sacrament of Holy Communion, through the confession of sins, and the like- goes out the window, whether in Orthodoxy or Protestantism, something has gone terribly wrong.

And then there's the fact that I'm not Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romanian, or any of the other ethnic groups around which the Orthodox Communion is organized. Orthodoxy is a community of national and ethnic churches, and unfortunately, this tends to be a problem when one lives in a country without strong Orthodox roots. In fact, this has long been a problem in the history of Orthodox evangelism, but that's another story.

As for my own ethnic-national roots: Anglicanism, in some forms, is a real live option for me. I think they have the best English language liturgy in existence. They are, after all, Anglican. Anglicanism is also theologically broad, allowing for a wide and truly catholic communion unified under bishops in common worship. Yes, unified under bishops in common worship. That is a particular dream of mine, and it's something I want to be a part of. Thanks to this unity-in-diversity, Anglicanism offers one the ability to engage in a dialogue and debate while still finding common ground in worship. I could hold all my Lutheran beliefs as an Anglican; my college roommate, living in Washington, D.C., is doing exactly that. He has joined a parish of the new (broadly conservative) Anglican Church in North America after leaving his native Evangelical Lutheran Church in America when the latter slid too far to the left.

The Anglican Church also has the benefit of being truly global. You can find an Anglican parish almost anywhere. For a traveller like myself, this provided a real degree of comfort throughout my journies.

Unfortunately, the Anglican Communion, while taking 'catholic' and 'apostolic' very seriously, seems to have drifted far from 'one' and 'holy.' All of the problems in the conservative American Lutheran denominations- my Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod- and the liberal American Lutheran giant, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, are present in Anglicanism. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

"Holy." The Episcopal Church in the USA, the Anglican branch in this country, is on the leading edge of a leftward movement that pervades the Anglican Communion. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a conservative. That doesn't mean I'm intolerant, or unsympathetic. In fact, an embrace of liberal Christians is not at all the problem. The double problem is the exclusion of conservative Christians and the politicization of the the church. I would find the leftward leaning in the Anglican Communion, in particular in the Episcopal Church, less offensive if the focus were on, say, extending foregiveness to homosexuals and welcoming them as members of a congregation. As it is, however, the program is not to extend Christian charity by rightly balancing sin and forgiveness, but by redefining the mission of the church as one of the contemporary American dogma - political tolerance. The Episcopal Church, it seems, is more concerned with accepting homosexuality than accepting homosexuals.

I find this severely distorts- and evidences a severe distortion of- the mission of the church. Accepting homosexuals does not exclude conservatives. Yet demanding homosexual consecration to the priesthood and the episcopate does. It pushes conservatives out of congregations, because the ecclesial elites are spitting in the face of traditionally and sincerely held moral sensibilities. I could mount a lengthy biblical argument against the practice, as well, but purely on the level of prudence it seems like the Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Communion, could work to draw a finer line between accepting homosexuals and accepting- through faux marriages and sensationalistic consecrations- homosexuality.

This is the most visible issue, but I merely use it as an example. My primary problem with the Episcopal Church is not this one mere issue, but the far deeper problem of Christian and church identity. I believe the church has a role to play in the public sphere, even in politics. On abortion, for instance, I think the church must make a firm stand, because it cuts to the heart of what the church means when it believes in the sanctity of the human person (including, by the way, the person of the fetal Christ, one person from the virginal conception). But there is a real difference between standing, as the church, for matters of deepest principle (against abortion, against slavery) and turning the church into a political platform.

Second, I find the whole issue of Bishop John Shelby Spong disgraceful. No, he's not gay. I'm not talking about Bishop Gene Robinson. I'm talking about a former bishop of the Episcopal Church who, during his time as bishop, denied the virgin birth, resurrection, and divinity of Christ, and was never disciplined for it. He left his office in good standing. I cannot and will not be a part of a church with that sort of record.

"One." The other reason I cannot be part of the Anglican Communion is that the ideal of a church under bishops united in communion and worship is, today, merely an ideal. As it is, the Anglican Church as focused so thoroughly on being catholic- too often meaning broad and tolerant- that centripetal forces have ripped apart the center. On the one hand, this is the partner of the problems above, wherein the church, in its attempt to be broad and tolerant, has become a narrow haven for liberal Protestants.

But all these criticisms largely apply to the Episcopal Church, and not the Anglican Communion as a whole. Many Anglican churches are deeply conservative, and many are sensibly broad. While the Anglo-Caucasian world of Anglicanism is moving steadily left, the vast majority of Anglicans, especially in Africa and the rest of the Global South, fall into these two categories. These conservatives and moderates came together in Jerusalem in the summer of 2008 at the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON). These churches did not break away from the Anglican Communion, but rather affirmed their commitment to traditional Anglicanism, an oppositism to secularism and the political agendas of the American, Canadian, and English churches, and committed to running their churches through a Council of Primates (heads of the churches, as in Orthodoxy) rather than through identification with the Archbishop of Canturberry (a strangely papal structure). They also, most controvertially, agreed to create the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) as a broadly conservative alternative to the Episcopal Church USA and the Anglican Church in Canada.

I was very, very excited about the ACNA. The ACNA united most of the churches that broke away from the Episcopal Church over the past couple decades due to debates over women's ordination, homosexual ordination, and the performance of homosexual marriage ceremonies: about a dozen para-church organizations and missions in all. It is not recognized as an official Anglican church by the Archbishop of Canturberry, but such recognition is not required under the settlement at GAFCON; their status is therefore a serious matter of dispute. They are, however, in communion with the Anglican Churches of Nigeria and Uganda, powerhouses in the Communion. The ultimate goal, I think, of the ACNA is not to serve as an alternative to the liberal Episcopal Church, but to replace it as the official Anglican church of North America. Significantly, four whole dioceses of the Episcopal Church up and left to become dioceses of the ACNA. Ouch.

So why not up and leave for the ACNA? First, because its status is still very much under dispute, and I'm not about to board a ship that might sink. The LCMS (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) is a far safer option. Second, because whatever problems I might have with the LCMS, they are all magnified in the ACNA. I would like it if the LCMS were larger (it is 2.4 million members in about 6,100 parishes); am I about to join the miniature ACNA (100,000 members in about 800 parishes)? I am concerned about the history of the LCMS as a small denomination with a long history of internal disputes, schisms, and a 'mighty fortress' syndrome; shall I join a brand new denomination composed solely of breakaway sects?

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Far and away, my biggest problem with the ACNA is that 'unity in diversity under bishops through common worship' fails precisely at the last word. I'm a high churchman. Everybody knows this. I like my incense, my bells, my processional, my chant, my holy water, my icons. And don't even get me started on how weekly communion is fundamental to the life of the church. And if you know the LCMS, you know that there must be a little bit of tension for me there, because while I can certainly find such churches, it's a bit of a struggle. But now, take a look at the ACNA. You really have no idea what you're going to get. You may get a great high church Anglican liturgy, but on the whole, the ACNA worships according to American Protestant standards. On average it is lower than the LCMS.

This practice, of course, is reflective of theology. Because the Anglican Church has always been broad, it has always been willing to embrace Calvinists and Arminians within their fold. That means it has always been susceptible to the diseases of Protestantism: disunity, schism, a loss of catholicity, a loss of traditional worship. That, of course, is exactly what we see. And that is part and parcel of a central paradox for me: how to be a conservative in ethics and doctrine, a moderate in biblical scholarship, and high church in my worship and ecclesiology? Where is that church? Wherever it is, it isn't the ACNA.

So in the end, my attraction to Anglicanism turns out to be largely theoretical. Some Anglican churches, in some parts of the world- namely in Jerusalem- may be perfect for me. But as an American? It simply doesn't click.

Now for the big one. Rome.

I have avoided, up to this point, engaging in sustained biblical and theological debate. But that is precisely the nature of my relationship with Rome. Openness to diverse methods of biblical scholarship? Rome has everyone from the medieval scholastics to the greatest historical-critical exegetes of the twentieth century. Ethically conservative? Can you find a church that has done more for stand up for the dignity of the human person? A strong, and applied, understanding of the church's social mission? Catholic social theory knows peacemaking, social justice, ethnic reconciliation, and environmental stewardship like nobody's business. High church? It's the definition of high church.

Aside from doctrine, Rome is everything I could ask for. So doctrine is where we go.

First off, I hope my foray into the history of Protestantism (Calvinism and counter-Calvinisms) helped clarify exactly how I view Lutheranism and myself-as-Lutheran. Unlike the Anglican Church, which is first and foremost a national church with extra-national provinces, Lutheranism is first and foremost a theological movement within the broader church. It was originally conceived, and in another (better) world would have been, a theological movement within the Roman Catholic Church, like Thomism, or Le Nouvelle Theologie, or Molinism, or any of the other contending schools of theology that still exist and debate within the Roman fold. But the Lutheran movement was not allowed to flourish as a Catholic movement, and we were excommunicated; we thus became Catholics-in-exile. Catholics-in-exile. Rome is Mother Church; but she has been a very abusive parent. The Lutheran reformers, as you can read in the Lutheran Confessions in the Book of Concord, were even willing to exist in her fold alongside other theologies, so long as we had the freedom to debate on, to preach, to proclaim the gospel. Unfortunately, it was not to be, and we have set up denominations- temporary para-church organizations, really- to serve the needs of our faithful for five hundred years.

We are not schismatics. We are Catholics-in-exile. We want back in. So what prevents us?

Allow me to run down a list of reasons that, for me, are not definitive.

It isn't the Catholic view of Mary. I am happy to ascribe to Mary the many titles that Catholics grant her. I find such titles as Theotokos (God-bearer), Ark of the New Covenant, Queen of Heaven, and New Eve to be thoroughly appropriate, and even biblical (or logical outworkings of biblical motifs). I'm quite happy with them all. I do have a problem with the dogmatic definitions of the past couple centuries: namely, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was conceived without original sin) and the Dogma of the Assumption (that she was raised into heaven like Elijah). I find the previous dogma dead wrong, and the latter more something that a person might believe as pious option. You have to believe in the Assumption in order to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome? That strikes me as very, very odd. But I think I could get past both if I were convinced that being in communion with Rome that important.

It isn't the cult of the saints and the prayers to the saints. Those are not part of my spirituality, but I don't think that is the sort of issue on which the church stands or falls. Catholics, after all, do not believe that the saints possess magical powers which we need to petition them to use; a much more fair way of characterizing the Catholic view is praying with saints. They are asked, in Catholic tradition, to pray alongside Christians on earth in order to petition God for favor. If it is superfluous, it is only superfluous in the way that asking a friend or a fellow congregant to pray with you is superfluous. Perhaps they cannot hear us? Maybe so, but again, I don't think it is so central an issue that it would keep me from the church that gave birth to Western Christendom.

Papal infallibility. Now here's a tricky one. I certainly don't believe this, but I also don't think it is a terribly important issue. Papal infallibility, despite unending claims by the uneducated, does not mean that whatever the pope says is true. If the pope says that Twix is better than Snickers, that doesn't make it so. Nor does it even mean that he is infallible when speaking on religious matters. Pope Benedict XVI wrote a wonderful book called Jesus of Nazareth, but he made it very clear that he was writing as a scholar, as Joseph Ratzinger (his real name), and that one could take it or leave it. Even when writing or speaking as the pope, he is not writing or speaking infallibly. When the pope writes an encyclical (general letter to all the church) he might outline a theology of society, economy, and politics (Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum) or a theology of the body (Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae), he explains truths which are derived from infallible truths, and are meant to guide the bishops and priests of the church in their ministries, but that doesn't make them infallible. The pope is only infallible inasmuch as he is speaking ex cathedra, that is: he, as the pope, in his capacity as the shepherd and teacher of the apostolic communion, specifically defines, on a matter of faith and morals, a dogma of the church, which has already passed into rite, usage, and common belief. This last point is key: the pope cannot make up new dogmas willy nilly. The point of papal infallibility is not to give the pope more power, but to bypass the lengthy process of calling an ecumenical council (like the aforementioned Councils of Nicea or Chalcedon, or like the Councils of Lateran IV, Trent, or Vatican II), so that beliefs already held by the church but not officially proclaimed may be made official without much hassle. Thus the only two times the pope has spoken under infallible authority have been with those two contentious Marian dogmas: the Immaculate Conception, defined by Pope Pius IX in 1854 in his statement Ineffabilis Deus, and the Assumption, defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950 in his statement Munificentissimus Deus.

The problem here is twofold. First, whether something had passed into rite, usage, and belief as a (non-infallible) tradition depends solely on whether it has passed into rite, usage, and belief among Roman Catholics. Therefore, like the Roman Catholic church councils since 1095 (the split with the Orthodox), these definitions only serve to make the Roman Catholic church narrower. Each and every one puts up another barrier to those who would otherwise want to become Catholic. Second, as in all instances when humans are given such meta-human authority, it is susceptible to corruption. We have yet to see a real example, but what checks are there on this power?

Moving on. It isn't monasticism. I have no problem with monasteries, monks, nuns, and the lot. The monasticism condemned by Luther and the early Lutherans in the Book of Concord had, indeed, fallen far away from the monastic ideal. In fact, medieval German monasticism was much more like Eastern monasticism. These monasteries were not centers of good works, where monks worked for the good of the community and provided essential services like clothing, food, healthcare, education, etc. They were centers of private and communal prayer where monks were encouraged to spiritually improve themselves; they were also, most notoriously, places where large amounts of wealth were amassed in the form of lands that were owned by the church. These were Luther's primary problems with monasticism: the cultivation of attitudes and theologies of works-righteousness and the corrupt holding of landed wealth by the church. And yet Luther praised the founder of monasticism, St. Benedict of Nursia, for St. Benedict promoted monasteries as very different institutions: places of supreme humanity, service to the pooor, the orphan, the widow, and places where the rule of poverty, not the hoarding of wealth, was the rule. As far as I can see, the Council of Trent cleared up many of the corruptions in monasteries. While a theology of works-righteousness still rules in the monasteries, this is less a problem with monasteries than with Catholic theology as a whole. I think the institution of the monastery was happily salvaged by the post-Reformation Catholic Church. A job well done.

In case this actually needs to be said, my problem isn't rituals, icons, stone and wood churches, or anything else on the endless Protestant litany of complaints against the rich symbolism of Catholicism which is so poorly understood here in America.

And by the way, if you're Protestant, and after narrowing this all down you're still wondering why I'm not Catholic, I highly suggest you go back and reevaluate your theology.

Because the answer, of course, is the doctrine of salvation and justification.

As Luther himself said to his opponent Erasmus, "I praise and commend you highly for this also, that unlike all the rest you alone have attacked the real issue, the essence of the matter in dispute, and have not wearied me with irrelevancies about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like trifles (for trifles they are rather than basic issues), with which almost everyone hitherto has gone hunting for me without success." The real issue being, of course, the free grace of salvation.

The great issue of the Reformation was salvation, and specifically justification. But before launching into my argument, it is very important that I define exactly what Lutherans, Catholics, Orthodox, Calvinists, and Arminians believe (and why Orthodox, Calvinists, and Arminians as well as Lutherans and Catholics? You'll see).

I'll start by noting that salvation and justification are treated as nearly synonymous by all these traditions (except perhaps the Orthodox, who really don't talk about justification at all). All of these traditions assume that when we're talking about justification, we're talking about the ultimate fate of men's (and women's) souls. Other elements might be involved in salvation- regeneration, adoption, sanctification- but these are ultimately determined by what happens in justification.

Unfortunately, forget for a second that Catholics, Orthodox, and rest all have very different views about how one gets justified. A related issue that really muddies the waters is that while they all equate justification with salvation, they all mean something very different by justification (and thus salvation). We can't even agree on what is happening, let alone on how it is happening. So as I define what each tradition means by 'grace,' 'faith,' and 'works' (let alone 'by' and 'through'), I also need to define what each tradition means by 'justification.'

So let's begin our survey.

Calvinism: Justification is a legal act performed by grace alone through faith alone. First of all, Calvinists take very seriously the Greek meaning of 'justification,' dikiosis. Dikio means 'righteous' or 'just,' and thus dikiosis means 'to justify' or 'justification,' or 'to make righteous' or 'to rightwise.' Therefore, when Paul says that justification is by grace alone through faith alone, whatever that means, it means that we are made 'righteous.' Somehow, then, we are made righteous (justified) not by being made better people, but by grace alone through faith alone. How, then, can God say that someone is righteous when they are still going around sinning? He must be giving them a righteous status from elsewhere. God is, in short, imputing (legally crediting) righteousnes to the sinner from an outside source. Where does this righteousness come from? From Christ. Christ lived a perfectly righteous life by obeying all the commands of Torah and being perfectly ethical, and when God forgives sins by legally crediting (imputing) the crucified Christ with our sins, he credits the sinner with the righteousness of Christ. This is called double imputation, a glorious double exchange of my sin for Christ's righteousness, and it is central to the basic Reformation contention about justification. Justification is therefore forensic (legal and declaratory), a single moment in a legal exchange.

'Through faith alone' means that faith is the means, or criterion, on the basis of which we receive this declaration. Notice we have skipped from 'by grace alone' immediately to 'through faith alone.' In Calvinism, faith is a requirement (the sole requirement) on the basis of which sinners receive the double imputation of our sin to Christ and Christ's righteousness to us. This saving faith, by the way, is not simply belief: it is notitia (knowledge of the content of belief), assensus (belief in the content), and fiducia (loving trust in the content of faith). It is not bare knowledge of facts, but an active love and trust in the salvation provided by Christ; and it is fiducia, by the way, that produces good works. As Calvin and his followers have repeatedly said, "we are justified through faith alone, but saving faith is never alone."

But this faith cannot be borne of ourselves, otherwise it is a work. It must come through grace and grace alone. The place of 'by grace alone' in Calvinism is that faith can only arise in the sinner, bound to sin, death, and Satan, through the miraculous intervention of grace. Faith that saves (faith with fiducia) is not a work, but is itself a gift of God. This is where predestination comes in. God has chosen, according to the Calvinist, from before the foundation of the world whose eyes he will open to faith and whose eyes he will keep firmly shut. So faith in the cross of Christ is dependent entirely on the word of God. We do not choose; we are chosen.

Catholics: Justification is a process performed by grace and (human) will, through faith and works. This is one reason I wanted to explain Calvinism first: virtually everything is different from the Catholic view, and they place each other in stark relief. Catholics take dikio, righteous or just, very seriously as well. But rather than looking for an external righteousness (of Christ) granted by God in a legal exchange, they take the word to mean the visible righteousness that all can see. Who is righteous? Well, the person who acts righteous, obviously. It is not a legal exchange that happens in a moment, but a process that transforms the sinner into an ethically upstanding person. This process (dikiosis, justification) continues throughout life and even after life in purgatory, until all believers are perfect and ready for resurrection at the end of time. The process of growth in visible righteousness that goes from conversion to death that Protestants (and Lutherans) call sanctification is justification, according to Catholicism. And this is no mere semantic difference: the question of whether justification is a legal act performed by God or a process performed by both God and the human sinner is precisely the whole point. But I get ahead of myself.

Catholic theology professes that God's grace is the principal agent in transforming the human person, but that the person must cooperate to receive that grace through human will. Grace is offered, but we must choose to receive it (sound familiar?). This grace comes in many forms: the sacraments, particularly beginning with baptism and continuing in holy communion, but aided by confirmation, confession and absolution, etc., all of which are received through the acceptance of the human will. This grace also generates faith, or stirs up an inherent human capacity for faith (there is debate on this in human circles), and we only go on to grow in visible righteousness because of this faith. But this faith is borne of human will and human capacity. This necessary faith, by the way, does not necessarily possess fiducia. Good works will not necessarily flow from it; they must be striven for. These works, however, make us more righteous. The more good we do, the more good we are.

Allow me to make clear that certain Protestant caricatures of Catholicism, at precisely this point, have been clear off the mark or exaggerated for polemical purposes. For one, humans may only choose to receive grace, in this scheme, because God has graciously allowed us to choose (how it is gracious to leave it on our shoulders, I do not know); also, our works that merit an increase in righteousness are only meritorious because God has graciously allowed us to contribute to the process of justification, for otherwise our works would been seen for the trash they are (though again, how this is gracious, I do not know). My disagreements aside, one must see that from the Catholic point of view, people are justified (made righteous) when they really are acting righteous. And how do they view Calvinists, who look for God to legally declare Christians righteous on the basis of Christ's obedience, even though we Christians aren't acting perfectly righteous? Well, say Catholics, we are making God to be ignorant or a liar, and likely both. We are, they say, implicating God in a legal fiction.

By the way, one might ask (if one was so inclined, though it baffles me where this question first came from): where does this merit that God gives out to people doing righteous acts come from? The answer is that Christ won on the cross a great treasury of merit, which is added to by the righteousness of the saints. This merit is then doled out to believers who do good works. Odd? I thought so, but it has bearing later.

(Orthodox: This is really a side note, but I'll put it this way: everything that I just said about Catholicism is basically true about Orthodox, except that Orthodox don't make a firm distinction between faith and works. For them, faith and works are really two sides of the same coin: works are done because of faith, but faith is only faith if it is loyal fidelity to the law of God. And through these faith-works, we are unified to God's nature, becoming one with him, becoming gods ourselves. For them, the point is not dikiosis, but theosis. Not justification, but deification. It is the flip side to the incarnation of Christ. As St. Athanasius said, "God became man that man might become god.")

Arminian: Justification is a legal act performed by grace and human will through faith alone. Take the Calvinist framework and change the final bit of it. Justification is a single event, a legal exchange of our sin for Christ's rightoeusness, decreed by God on the basis of faith alone. How do we acquire this saving faith (notitia, assensus, and fiducia)? Calvinists say we are given saving faith through the gracious act of God alone, a choice on God's part willed by him since before the foundation of the world. Armininism broke off from Calvinism at just this point. Arminians offer up a Protestant version of the Catholic answer: Grace is offered, but we must choose to receive it (ah, that's why it sounded familiar!). In other words, we must choose to believe. Like Catholics, Arminians say that we can make such a choice because God, in his graciousness, has offered sinners bound to sin, death, and Satan an opportunity to make such a choice (this grace is technically called prevenient grace in Arminian theology, if you care that much). But it is essentially a retreat within Protestant ranks from the Reformation position; and sadly, and strangely, it is now the most widespread belief about grace and human will in America.

Lutheran: Justification is a legal act performed by grace alone through faith alone. Just like the Calvinists, right? Well yes, in a way. Lutherans do believe that justification is a forensic act whereby God imputes our sin to the crucified Christ and imputes Christ's righteousness to us, on the basis of faith alone given in grace alone. However, there is much more to the Lutheran view.

First off, double imputation is only one thing that happens in justification. Justification includes a much broader whole, including adoption into the family of God (centered on the family of the Trinity) and the regeneration of the human person that begins sanctification. This is all true in Calvinism, but it is heavily overshadowed by the Calvinist emphasis on imputed righteousness.

Second, and most distinctively, while Calvinists believe that God grants his gracious declaration on the basis of faith alone, with faith as the proper criterion (issued through grace), Lutherans understand the relationship between grace and faith differently. Faith, we say, is not a criterion on the basis of which God grants his declaration of righteousness, but the attitude of existential trust that receives grace. It is grace itself that declares a person 'righteous,' 'adopted,' and 'redeemed,' and faith that makes that present in a person. And because faith is understood less as belief than as trust and fidelity, (i.e., the emphasis is on fiducia rather than assensus), it makes sense that it would be the thing by which grace is received as well as the thing by which works are produced. Grace, faith, and works fit together more neatly, I think, in Lutheran theology.

I also think this view does more justice to the Pauline phrase 'by grace through faith.' On the Calvinist formulation, it seems more like it is faith by which people are justified, through the means of grace; on the Lutheran formulation, it is actually grace that saves, through the receptivity of faith. And where is this grace? In Word and Sacrament, of course, the standard Lutheran answer. The proclamation of the word of the gospel- the Good News that Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord and Savior- captures us from the captivity to sin, death, and the devil and sets us free to believe; and the grace of the sacrament of Holy Baptism places God's seal upon us, truly saving us because though we be infants in body, we are always infants in the eyes of God. Real grace raises our dead souls when they hear the gospel word 'Lazarus, come out;' comes through water baptism when we are adopted into the family of baptism, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But that's another argument.

I spelled out the Arminian version because I wanted everyone to see how far it retreats back into Catholicism; Lutherans, however much we may look and sound and smell Catholic, have mounted a far more serious protest than American Protestants against the Catholic doctrine of salvation. If Luther is right that it is this doctrine and none other- "papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and such like trifles"- is the real issue, then I challenge Protestants to explain why these trifles keep them separate from Mother Church. But again, that's another argument.

It was also important, however, to explain the difference between Calvinist and Lutheran understanding of justification, similar as they are. For a great majority of the critiques that Catholics level against the Lutheran-Calvinist theory of justification miss the Lutheran while striking the Calvinist. One of the great Catholic criticisms is that our theory of justification ignores the familial aspect of salvation, and treats the church (and the people of God) as a corporate entity rather than the extended family of the Trinity. Again, Calvinists technically believe in adoption as a key element in the ordo salutis, but because Calvinists believe baptism is merely an external sign, there has never been a real picture of adoption. For Lutherans, we witness an adoption at every baptism.

(I note, by the way, that this picture of Lutheranism is not drawn primarily from the Lutheran Confessions or Lutheran Orthodoxy, but from Luther himself; the New Finnish Interpretation of Luther has made this abundantly clear)

But forget the fluffy impressions. Let's get down to the arguments.

First of all, I would point out that in addition to these traditional positions, one new heavyweight contender has entered the field: the New Perspective on Paul (NPP). The New Perspective on Paul is more like an ongoing conversation between a number of likeminded scholars- among them E.P. Sanders, James D.G. Dunn, and N.T. Wright, with many more besides- than a school. For one, it is somewhat unfortunate to call it the New Perspective on Paul, since there are as many new perspectives on Paul as there are NPP scholars. What they do all agree on, however, is the New Perspective on Judaism.

Luther made the basic assumption that whatever the details, Paul's opponents were his opponents. The Judaizers, or whomever he was writing against, were thought to believe and preach works-righteousness, whereby meritorious good works would earn us righteousness. Before anything else, the New Perspective challenges this view. Several decades ago E.P. Sanders wrote a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism in which he thoroughly surveyed the literature of Second Temple Judaism- that is, the Judaism of Jesus' and Paul's day- in order to determine whether Jews could be found believing that they were saved through works. The answer was a resounding no.

Rather, it seems, Jews were not even concerned with the question of 'how do I get saved?' so much as 'how can I be marked out a member of the community God will vindicate on the last day?' Notice the question is not even 'how can I get into the community that God will vindicate?' but rather 'how can I make it clear that I'm a member of this community?' In Sander's phrase, Jews of the day already believed in salvation by grace alone; they were, as he put it, "good Protestants." In another of his (in)famous phrases, the question was not "how do you get in?" but "how do you stay in?"

This is what works of the law were about. The Dead Sea Scroll document 4QMMT is the only place where we find the phrase 'works of the law/Torah' outside of Paul, but in line with this general concern, it defines 'works of the law' as those boundary- and barrier-markers that separated Jews from Gentiles and true Israel (the Israel to be vindicated on the last day) from ethnic Jews in general. These were the things, in other words, that marked out someone as a true child of God.

If Paul is condemning marking oneself out as a true child of God by works like keeping kosher, Sabbath-keeping, circumcision, etc., then he is saying that those that God will vindicate on the last day are those who profess faith in Jesus Christ. The NPP asserts, therefore, that whether or not the Lutheran position is true, Paul was addressing different questions than those addressed by the Reformers, and therefore gave different answers.

Suffice it to say that I think the New Perspective on Paul is basically right. The problem with saying that it is basically right is it opens up a whole can of worms, not least among them: "If you say Paul wasn't addressing Catholic works-righteousness, doesn't that leave works-righteousness open as a theological possibility?"

I don't think it does, once we understand the NPP more fully. I rely here on N.T. Wright's most recent, and excellent, book, Justification: God's Promise and Paul's Vision. It is his answer to the Calvinist John Piper who wrote a whole book arguing against Wright's work on justification and the NPP, but while going after his opponent's arguments, he also wants to show them that the NPP is not so threatening as Calvinists (and Lutherans) once supposed. Let me take you through it.

As I said above, Calvinists and Catholics, in their own ways, take dikiosyne (righteousness) and dikiosis (justification) very seriously. For the Calvinists (and Lutherans), if a person is declared righteous the moment they believe, they must somehow really be righteous (on the basis of the imputation of Christ's active obedience). For Catholics, if a person is to become righteous, they must actually become visibly righteous.

Notice an implicit assumption here: righteousness means morally upright. Dikiosyne, on this view, means having a virtuous quality, and perfect righteousness means being ethically perfect. Wright absolutely, under no uncertain terms, says that that is not what the word biblically means. Righteous, he argues at length, is not a quality that one possess but a status. It means 'in the right.' It is a legal term, as Protestants have always believed, but it does not describe the person's moral status; as a legal term, it describes a person's legal status. When a Hebrew judge declared someone 'righteous' he did not mean that that person was morally virtuous (though perhaps they were); when he declared a person 'unrighteous,' he didn't mean they were ethically corrupt (though perhaps they were). The judge means, simply, that they are acquitted (if they are a defendant) or vindicated (if they are a plaintiff).

There is also this curious phase that shows up again and again in Paul, 'the righteousness of God' (dikiosyne theou). The traditional Reformation position has thought that this is the righteousness of God, or Christ, which is transfered to the believer in justification. But according to Wright, this is merely saying that God, too, is 'in the right.' For there was always this nagging question among Jews, 'when will God vindicate us?' After all, God promised that he would make them a great nation (Genesis 15, to Abraham). Is God a liar? No, God is righteous (not guilty of being a liar), because he has been faithful to his covenant promises and saved the world through Israel in the person of the one true faithful Israelite, Jesus Christ.

The question of the 'works of the law' was primarily a question of which sect of Jews- was it the sectarians at Qumran? the Pharisees? the 'poor ones?' who?- were the true Israelites who geographically returned from exile in Babylon. There were works of the law that separated Jews from Gentiles- kosher, circumcision, Sabbath- and then there were works of the law that separated one sect from another (the Qumranites with their distinctive calendar, etc.). These laws marked out the true Israel, which would be the group that Yahweh would call out when he returned to Zion to end the dark night of exile; it would be this group of true, vindicated Israel through whom he would begin the restoration of the world.

As it turned out, no one got it right, although John the Baptist got very close. For in the end, there were no true Israelites left save one: Jesus Christ (and perhaps his mother). And in the end, it was not works of the law that led to the climax of God's plan for the world through Israel, but the faithfulness of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, to God's covenant promises and purposes. The one-plan-through-Israel-for-the-world became the one-plan-through-the-one-faithful-Israelite (Jesus)-for-the-world.

How, then, are we to be part of this? Faith alone! Faith is the only sign that shows we are part of this community, brought in through grace alone. And as part of this community, we are part of the family of the Messiah, adopted by the grace of baptism. Yes, baptism. For at the end of his discussion of these matters in Romans 2-5, Paul says in Romans 6:4 that the Messiah died for our sins and was raised for our justification, and through our baptism we die and rise with him. We are brothers (and sisters) of Christ, and thus sons (and daughters) of the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

One thing this does is break apart the old synonymity between justification and salvation. Salvation is the whole process, from Adam to Abraham to Moses to Christ, from conversion and baptism to death to resurrection; justification is the declaration that we are indeed part of this community that God is saving, and through whom God is renewing all creation. Adoption, baptism, and regeneration thus step firmly into the foreground alongside justification.

And what of the crisis of conscience that Luther suffered? Can this understanding of justification provide solace for the heart? It can, just not simply through the texts once used. Rather than pointing to texts that supposedly speak to the imputation of Christ's righteousness, we can point instead to our adoption as heirs of God, to be regarded as standing together with him in his faithfulness to the point of death, and vindicated through resurrection. Rather than the legal imputation of righteousness, the NPP opens up a way to see this as one piece of a whole that is described by Paul as being one with Christ, and one in Christ. God views us as his faithful children, faithful to the point of death on a cross, and therefore children who, like Christ, are to be resurrected.

Yes, this would mean justification means something slightly different than the Reformers thought it meant; and yes, it means we have to use different texts to get to the same doctrines. But they are, after all, the same doctrines. In fact, I would contend that rather than putting the Calvinist-Lutheran Reformation doctrine of salvation in threat, opening us up to Catholicism, the NPP actually shows exactly why the Lutheran understanding is superior to both the Calvinist and the Catholic expression.

On the one hand, the Lutheran emphases on adoption, regeneration, and baptism as elements in justification (here reformulated as elements of salvation alongside justification) are firmly vindicated by this reading of Paul. On the other hand, it means that the Catholic doctrine of good works meriting righteousness is so far off the radar scene in Paul's day that we can safely say it is a medieval innovation based on medieval notions of merit. If Paul's Jewish opponents believed in covenant inclusion by grace alone, after all, and if Paul and his opponents both agreed that justification was a forensic status rather than some sort of process, how far off the mark is the Catholic doctrine?

This brings me to my final point. If terms like justification, faith, and works require some tweaking, I think the Lutheran understanding of grace remains right on the ball. Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will remains a definitive guide to my understanding of the relationship between grace, faith, and human will. Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will in response to the Diatribe of Desiderius Erasmus, which contended (with Catholics and like Arminians) that grace is received and effected through the human will. Luther mounted a devastating attack in what became his greatest work.

In the fourth century, St. Augustine wrote against Pelagius and his followers who believed that human will and human works were the centerpiece of salvation. Humans must strive, said Pelagius, with all sincere effort to be as best they can be and do all the good they can do, and only then, with great effort, will persons be saved.

Erasmus, and the Catholic Church, and the Arminian Protestants all saw the folly in this view, and thought to minimize its error by saying that one does not need to do great works, but requires only the smallest cooperation of the will.

Luther's response?

That makes the error all the more grave! For at least the Pelagians made God's grace expensive, and understood the great effort required to run after righteousness (that is, moral righteousness). But by requiring merely a human choice to be saved, Erasmus (like the Arminians after him) made God's grace cheap; a trifle to be grasped with ease.

No, he said. God's grace is free, but never cheap. It is not won by human choice, but by the cross of Christ alone, and only the cross of Christ- the divine outpouring of the divine self- can give it. God's grace is free, but never cheap.

Go ahead and read Luther's The Bondage of the Will with Wright's Justification, and try to see how you can reconcile them. It's an interesting exercise, but boy, how enlightening to draw from such diverse- and opposing!- sources. And if you want some individual Scripture verses defending these views of faith, I'll just list them here: grace as free apart from human will (Romans 8:5, John 1:10-13, esp. verse 13!, 6:44), faith as a gift of grace (Colossians 1:29, 1 Corinthians 15:10, and esp. 1 Corinthians 12:3!), baptism as source of grace (Mark 16:16, John 3:5, Acts 2:38-39, Romans 6:4, Galatians 3:27, Ephesians 5:26, 1 Peter 3:21). Go on, look them up; I dare you.

So yes, I must remain in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It is hard and difficult, for I have my criticisms and there are many times when I am deeply saddened by a lack of proper liturgy, or the absence of our Lord's Body and Blood from our table just because it's the second or fourth week of the month, or the lack of bishops; and I want more academic freedom, and catholicity, and grandeur. So what? My conscience is captive to the word of God. The Anglican Church is simply too broad, and the Catholic Church is too narrow. I will fight the good fight within the LCMS, even if that means sometimes guarding my rear.

This is what I believe, and I am convinced by Scripture and sound reason that it is so. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.