Humble Confession

Two standard characteristics attached to our Lutheran heritage are a keen awareness of the fallen nature of humanity with the resultant corruption of our human thought and the not unrelated virtue of humility. Of course, the centrality of humility is cemented by the teaching and example of Christ and his apostles.

Both of these factors feature prominently, I think, in the reluctance of students, pastors, and especially parishioners to hold and make strong assertions about the absolute and complete correctness of our doctrinal confession. In other words, motivated by an awareness of the frailty and inability of human reason coupled with an emphasis on exhibiting humility in all we do, and finally exacerbated by the sentiments of democratic equality and tolerance, many Lutheran believers seem hesitant to declare with certainty that we confess the right doctrine. The problem, no doubt, is that if we Lutherans are right, then everyone else must be wrong. Thinking we alone hold correct doctrine seems a trifle arrogant—a blatant violation of the required humility, a failure to take seriously the fallen and so tenuous nature of all human thinking, even thinking about doctrine, and above all, a failure in being nice.

So, on what basis do we stake our claim to correct doctrine and our rejection of the earnest and sincere, though errant, teaching of other Christians?

The key is to recognize that our doctrine is not the creation of Luther, Melanchthon, or any other Lutheran—or for that matter of any other man. Not even St. Paul created doctrine. God’s people hold to God’s truth. That truth was not generated by thoughtful theologians, brilliant philosophers, observant students of nature, insightful analysts of human being, or ecstatic seers into metaphysical wonders. God’s truth was delivered by God’s messengers (usually in opposition to their own inclinations) and supremely and full by himself in the incarnation. This means that the apostles and prophets simply taught what they had been given to teach. In the New Testament church, this unified, consistent, and complete body of teaching was called simply the paradosis or the tradition (II Thessalonians 3:6). Throughout its history, the task of the church has been faithfully to receive and then pass along the content of that one right teaching or doctrine.

As clearly evidenced in the New Testament (Galatians and Acts 15), combating error and clarifying the content of that right teaching was part of the church’s work from the very beginning. But while we conduct the continuing work of doctrinal education and correction with humility and careful circumspection, we also conduct it with a confidence grounded not in self or human capacity, but in the accuracy of a faithful confession of the received truth. Luther exemplified this approach as he sought to realign the church’s teaching with God’s doctrine. “But by the grace of God our doctrine is pure; we have all the articles of faith solidly established in Sacred Scripture” (Galatians LW, 27, 42). Scripture is the norm. Luther could brashly call Rome to repent of errant teaching and stubbornly resist the innovations of other reformers because he knew he was standing on the foundation of the paradosis normed by the Bible.

The Book of Concord, then, is nothing more than an expression of the church’s right teaching—the same teaching revealed by God, fully manifest in the incarnation, handed down by the apostles, and made explicit for posterity in Scripture. That divergent doctrines of heterodox believers can consistently and invariably be traced to errors in an overestimation of the capacity and accuracy of either human reason or human institutions or both should reassure all who confess with the Book of Concord that they are indeed confessing with the faithful teaching of the church of all time.

There is nothing arrogant about holding to doctrinal truth. And it is precisely a keen awareness of the devastating impact of human sin that makes us all the more determined to confess not what makes sense or is reasonable or is widely accepted or is fervently believed, but only what has been revealed in Christ and then passed down by the faithful church. So, with confidence, joy, and zeal we continue to confess what we have received, and we continue to invite others to join us in that life-giving confession.