Evangelical Catholics & Confessional Evangelicals
The Ecumenical Polarities of Lutheranism
by Gene Edward Veith
Imagine a church that is both evangelical—proclaiming the free forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ—and sacramental, centering its spiritual life in the regenerating waters of baptism and the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion. Imagine further a church that is strongly grounded on Scripture, but yet avoids the solipsism of individual interpretation in favor of a comprehensive, intellectually rigorous and eminently orthodox theological system. Imagine a worship service that features both strong preaching and the historic liturgy. Imagine that this is a historical church with a rich spiritual tradition, but without legalism. Imagine, in short, a church that has some of the best parts of Protestantism and the best parts of Catholicism. Finally, imagine that this church body is not some little made-up sect, but one of the largest bodies of Christians in the world.
Such a church might seem like what many Christians—disaffected by both the vacuity of liberal theology and the shallowness of American evangelicalism—are dreaming of. For millions of Christians such a church actually exists—it goes by the admittedly inadequate name “Lutheran.”
Worldwide, there are some 60 million Lutherans on the books, making it the largest Protestant tradition of them all. There are around 9 million Lutherans in the United States, but 5 million in Africa and another 5 million in Asia. Brazil has over a million Lutherans, and it is one of the dominant religions of Papua New Guinea. In the United States, there are about the same number of Missouri Synod Lutherans (2.5 million) as there are Episcopalians.
To be sure, these numbers are uncertain and doubtless inflated, including state churches and those that have all but abandoned their heritage in favor of liberal theology or quasi-evangelicalism. Just as not all Catholics actually believe and practice their Catholicism, the same is true for Lutherans. Nevertheless, this many people consider themselves Lutherans and affirm, in their formal subscriptions, the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament and salvation by grace through faith in the work of Jesus Christ.
Despite its size, the Lutheran Church seems almost unknown in American Christianity. Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, charismatics, and Calvinists are well represented in theological debates, opinion polls, and articles in Christian publications, but Lutherans—who have their own distinctive approach to everything from salvation to politics—are often theological wallflowers.
Billy Graham called Lutherans “the sleeping giant.” If Lutheranism is the invisible Church, or, to paraphrase what Luther said of God, the Church that hides itself, this is partly its own fault and partly the result of its theological tension with American culture. Nevertheless, Lutheranism has much to offer Christendom as a whole. As a Church body with a thoroughly worked-out theology, which it actually follows, Lutheran denominations have retained their orthodoxy more successfully than most. But more than that, Lutheran theology—and spirituality—is animated by a dynamic polarity in which divisive theological controversies are put into balance and thus resolved.
Paradoxy
The distinctive characteristic of Lutheran theology is its affirmation of paradox. Calvin and Arminius both constructed systematic theologies, explaining away any contrary biblical data in a rationalistic system of belief. Luther developed his theology in Bible commentaries, following the contours of Scripture wherever they led and developing its most profound polarities: law and gospel; Christ as both true God and true Man; the Christian as simultaneously saint and sinner; justification by faith and baptismal regeneration; Holy Communion as the Real Presence of Christ in material bread and wine.
Not only have Lutherans always affirmed both “evangelical” and “Catholic” ideas, their way with paradox also resolves issues that have divided Protestants. Calvinists insist on salvation by grace alone to the extent of double predestination; Arminians insist that everyone, potentially, can be saved, and so stress the utter freedom of the will. Lutherans stress grace above all, that God does literally everything for our salvation, dying on the cross, with his Spirit breaking into our lives through Word and Sacrament, the means of grace. But Jesus died for all, and potentially anyone might be saved. Lutheranism affirms the best of both Calvinism and Arminianism, while avoiding the exclusivity of the one and the potential Pelagianism of the other. Charismatics emphasize the Holy Spirit—so do Lutherans, finding that Spirit not in the vagaries of human emotion but even more tangibly as being genuinely operative in the Word and Sacraments. Lutherans are fundamentalist in their doctrinal rigor, while excluding separatism and legalism. Lutheran cultural theology affirms Two Kingdoms, preventing the secular from swallowing up the sacred, and the sacred from swallowing up the secular. This explains why Lutherans can seem both inwardly focused and free and easy, why they seem conservative yet apolitical, and why they often have beer at their church dinners.
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