Category: Theology Quotes

Is he wrong? An Easter Question

llwilmoth

George Lindbeck’s willing to say it:

What the good God is doing to the church, it seems to me, is destroying us bit by bit. And I think that God insists God wants us to be united. And destroying each denomination’s identity is precisely the way in which eventually we’ll have to be united.

from Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic (Baker Academic, 2012), 118.

At least three arguable claims here, it seems to me.

  1. the church is being destroyed
  2. by God
  3. on account of church division

The first claim would be the easiest to develop given the growing literature on the current decline of the contemporary Western church. For instance, HERE.

The third claim, to my mind, would be the weakest. Or maybe I should say, the sort of sociological analyses advancing the first claim seem to point the finger elsewhere, or at least offer a more multifactor explanation. I certainly have my share of ecumenical sympathies, but I’m doubtful church division can bear this weight alone.

I’d venture to say division troubles theologians more than the typical lapsed churchgoer. The latter would conceivably mention church scandal among their reasons for disaffiliation, but I’d suspect division wouldn’t be the first scandal in their minds. Theologians might reply it’s a further measure of the severity of the scandal of division that our consciences have dulled to it, but that could also just tell us decline is overdetermined. There’s plenty more sufficient reasons to pick from out there.

The second claim, though, that God is behind the church’s decline, nonetheless remains a genuinely theological proposal in what’s too often merely a sociological conversation. Is our current trajectory (what would you call the opposite of a Great Awakening?) just a historical trend that ebbs and flows like any other tide, and therefore a big nothing burger, even if temporarily disappointing, or is it an act of God? Is God telling us something? Judging us? 

As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” Ro 8.36

But if that’s the case, to what new life may we hope to be raised? Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Herman Sasse on the present Christ

llwilmoth

The Church that Luther believed was the Church of the real presence. … Perhaps there are many among us who have…taken offence that Luther remained so stubborn in the strife over the Lord’s Supper concerning the meaning of the words of institution: ‘This is my body.’ That is not his obstinate nature but his great worry that the Church of the Reformation would lose that upon which the Church has always lived, … If Christ is in a heavenly location far from this world, where he has only left behind authority, orders, and commands; if we confuse him with our fantasy, and must visualize him with our faith; if he is only present according to his divine nature, and not also according to his human nature as the God-man, who has taken on our poor flesh and blood, and is present with us according to his humanity, as he is present with the Father according to his divinity, then we are a lost little band in this world. Because, we have to admit that without him we are nothing, that without him and his presence, the Church is a helpless, poor, despairing band of men.

from Witness (2013), 318. Originally preached 1943.

See also Luther on the present Christ.

The Only Weapon …

llwilmoth

Woe to the church that uses other weapons, and would even borrow them from the world! She is no longer a Church of her Lord. No theological learning, no ‘Christian culture,’ no wise church politicking, and no attempt to win ‘influence’ in the world conquers the world for Christ and defeats the kingdom of darkness, but the Word of God alone.

from Herman Sasse, Witness (2013), 204. Originally preached 1936.

In short, I will preach it, teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything. Had I desired to foment trouble, I could have brought great bloodshed upon Germany; indeed, I could have started such a game that even the emperor would not have been safe. But what would it have been? Mere fool’s play. I did nothing; I let the Word do its work.

from Martin Luther, 2nd of the Invocavit Sermons, 1522

Consider also – D. Z. Phillips on Religion and Culture

Herman Sasse on whether the Church has a future

llwilmoth

Yes. Because Jesus has a future. As Ignatius of Antioch once put it, ‘where Christ is, there is the Church.’

Do you really think the church is a thing of the past? That to believe in Jesus means to believe in a man or a message of the past? No, if anything has a future in the world, it is the Church. Perhaps, it is a future that no one can foresee, a future with a completely different outlook than we have now. But a future, which only when it is past, when all is said and done, will we men in the future be able to look back and describe, because the future of the Church is the future of Christ. She travels through the angst and distress of this world, from his incarnation to his return. Yes, the future of our Lord Jesus Christ is the blessed future of the church.

from Witness (2013), 85. Originally preached 1940.

P.S. Readings of Matthew 16:18

Neither useful nor pleasant

Quote llwilmoth

Here’s an abrasively honest passage from a good, little, recent introduction to Christian faith I’d been meaning to read for a while and finally got to. The church, rather than being an association of like-minded people, is more likely to be a group of people you would never choose to be friends with if they […]