Being infected by Neo-Lutheranism

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Neo-Lutheranism, which we will define later, is still going on in those who identify themselves as Lutheran today. To know if you have been infected by it, it is more interesting to test yourself honestly how you would answer the checklist questions below.

1.       Do you/your pastor, romanticize the past? Is there nostalgia, the longing, the sigh that everything good about Christianity happened in the past? This is akin to thinking of the life of your parents when they lived the happy days of 1930-1960 when things were pristine and simple but do this now to your faith.

2.       Do you/your pastor, get into vestment debates? Is there quibbling when it came to the proper attire to use when mounting the pulpit or taking the divine service? Is the alb to be preferred over the Geneva gown?

3.       Do you/your pastor treat the Book of Concord as another authoritative Scripture? Yet your pastor confesses more than what is in the BoC eg like getting into the proper view of church fellowship w other Lutherans or non-Lutheran Christians?

4.       Do you/your pastor rally over the proper form of the liturgy? Do they quibble with the way a section of it is worded or sequenced ie the concern for the form/formality rather than what is going on in the heart? Another example of this is arguing or insisting what is clearly Scripturally an adiaphora, a non-adiaphora.

5.       Do you/your pastor emphasize the Sacraments over the exposition of the Word? Normally this happens when the pastor preaches on a text that speaks no where of Baptism or the Lord’s Supper and then suddenly, he inserts either of these in his sermon. Another, are you ok with your pastor preaching abysmal sermons (or no sermons at all) so long as you get the Lord’s Supper for Sunday?

6.       Do you/your pastor treat your Synod as the visible church? Is there comfort/confidence you are in the right group? Do you think the distinction between visible and invisible church is not important? This is demonstrated in not emphasizing conversion.

7.       Additionally, as my observation, do you/your pastor emphasize Universal Objective Justification – the belief that all (whatsoever) are already declared forgiven/justified in Christ 2000 years ago, without reference to repentance/faith etc.

 

If you have been brutally truthful in answering these questions with a “YES”, then I am afraid you have been infected by Neo-Lutheranism to a smaller or greater degree.

 

Is it bad? Look at the above questions, are they Biblical positions to stand on? The Bible tells us to pick the good and throw the bad but anything that seemed good done in extreme to the detriment of other good things becomes excessively bad too. Scripture should limit how far we go. St Paul says to test everything and hold fast to what is good, which implies drop what is bad, see 1 Thes 5:21.

 

Neo-Lutheranism is a movement back in 19^th century which is a reaction to rationalism and pietism. Sometimes this is called German-Puseyism. What happened to Anglicanism has happened to Lutheranism when the Oxford Movement came to the first. It is still happening as we speak.

 

The Oxford Movement’s aim is to align Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church because it has become too plain or ordinary, the famous proponent of this is John Henry Newman, which as we have seen eventually went to being a Roman Catholic cleric.  In this movement, we see prominent characters, the one leading the way is C. F. W. Walther with well-known ones like Adolf Hoenecke and Johann Löhe. There were more, see the link.

 

I am sure those in the Neo-Lutheranism did not willingly know or advocate going to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy but the above leads to those camps eventually. If you have known ministers who went to those bodies perhaps, they carried their Neo-Lutheranism to one of these results. Ideas do have consequences. There is a way the seems right to a man but the end of it is death Prov 14:12.

 

Any man, no matter how he has been respected by others can never be more respected than Scripture.