Confessional Subscription: Quia or Quantenus?
Rev. Rolf David Preus| March 22, 2025| Oslo, Norway
Do we subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions because (quia) they agree with the Holy Scriptures? Or do we subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions insofar as (quatenus) they agree with the Holy Scriptures? This raises another couple of questions. Can we know what the Bible teaches? Can we confess what the Bible teaches?
Our friends in the Roman and Eastern Orthodox churches argue that we cannot know what the Bible teaches unless their church tells us. Whether it is the authority of Holy Tradition, the authority of the Magisterium, or the authority of the pope, there is an extrabiblical authority on which we must rely if we want to understand the Scriptures correctly. We cannot rely solely on the biblical text. We need the guidance of the church.
This raises an obvious question. Who speaks for the church? Who is the church? Is it Rome? Is it the Orthodox? Rome claims the papacy is a sign of the church’s unity. That might be so if Rome were the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. In fact, it’s a sign of Rome’s alienation from the Protestants, from the Eastern Orthodox, and from the ancient church. Who speaks for the church? Consider the Great Schism of 1054. Who was right? Rome was right to confess the filioque because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as St. Paul teaches in Galatians 4:6 where he calls him the Spirit of God’s Son. Constantinople was right to reject the claims of Rome that her bishop was the pastor of the entire Christian church. They were both right. They were both wrong. Where Rome agreed with the Bible, she was right. Where the Orthodox agreed with the Bible, they were right. Where they disagreed with the Bible, they were wrong.
Rome and the Orthodox both operate under the premise that if you can locate the true church, you will be able to find the true gospel. Lutherans operate under the premise that if you can find the true gospel, you will have found the true church. For this reason, we cannot ascribe to any pastor, preacher, pope, tradition, or church body normative authority over our doctrine. We must judge all teaching by the sole norm of the Holy Scriptures. As we confess in the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Rule and Norm:
First, then, we receive and embrace with our whole heart the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true standard by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged.
This is called the sola Scriptura or Scripture alone principle. For sola Scriptura to be valid requires that the Bible be both true and clear. Rome argues the insufficiency of the Holy Scriptures to establish doctrine, requiring the interpretation of Rome’s tradition and the magisterium. Liberal Protestantism argues the errancy of the Holy Scriptures, thus setting up as a norm whatever it is that finds errors in the Bible. We need both the clarity and the truthfulness of the Bible, or our confessional insistence that Scripture alone is the norm by which all teachings and teachers are to be judged cannot stand.
Sola Scriptura is a claim that we can, by reading the Bible and accepting what it says, know the divine truth. If we can know it, we can confess it. The faith that is confessed faithfully is the faith that is born from God’s Word. The Bible’s clarity, its normative authority, and its inherent power make faithful confession possible.
If the truth is clearly revealed, clearly articulated, clearly established, then it can be confessed. Ambiguous texts here and there do not militate against Scripture’s clarity. Their existence reinforces it. Questions about the meaning of certain words, phrases, expressions cannot be avoided. Our ignorance does not make the Bible unclear. And of course, our carnal reason will always try to make God’s Word more reasonable. There are paradoxes in the Bible that no amount of ingenuity can resolve. The Scripture alone principle does not require us to craft a system by which every topic of Christian doctrine fits neatly together with every other topic. It requires that we confess what the Bible clearly teaches.
If we subscribe to the Confessions because they agree with the Bible, the Bible must be both true and clear.
The Bible’s clarity is explicitly and implicitly taught in both the Old and New Testaments. The Psalmist writes, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” When St. Peter describes what he saw as an eyewitness on the Mount of Transfiguration, he goes on to assert that the Scriptures are a more sure word of prophesy than what he had personally witnessed. After establishing the truthfulness of the Bible, he immediately goes on to teach its clarity. It’s a light shining in a dark place.
Beyond these explicit statements affirming the Bible’s clarity we have the example of our Lord Jesus. The way he uses the Bible is proof of its clarity. Consider his argument in the wilderness with the devil. In response to every temptation, Jesus quotes the Bible. “It is written.” Note that he doesn’t bother explicating the text. He doesn’t explain to Satan what it means. He simply cites it. It speaks for itself. It is crystal clear.
Those who deny the clarity of the Bible point to the many different interpretations of the Bible and the many Protestant sects that cannot agree with each other but all claim to believe that the Bible is the only source and standard of divine teaching. If the Bible is clear, how can there be so many different interpretations of it? Sola Scriptura cannot be valid as a theological principle if those who employ it come to contradictory doctrinal conclusions.
But they don’t. The Reformed don’t deny that the sacramental bread is Christ’s body because of anything the Bible says. They do so because their system of theology says that the man Jesus cannot possibly be in more than one place at the same time, so clearly when Jesus said of the sacramental bread, “This is my body,” he could not have meant it. They put their reason over the written Word as judge and interpret the Bible in such a way as to get it to correspond to what their system requires. When human reason trumps the clear Scriptures, sola Scriptura has been abandoned.
The Arminians, whether Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical Free, or whatever, do not deny the bondage of the will and the total depravity of man because of anything the Bible says. They deny it because it conflicts with their own personal experience. To achieve the personal experience that will authenticate their faith requires a free will. When human experience trumps the clear Scriptures, sola Scriptura has been abandoned.
Those who elevate tradition above the Scriptures belong to the same category as those who elevate personal experience above the Scriptures. Tradition and experience are the same thing. Tradition is collective experience. We see great theological similarity between Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Both appeal to extrabiblical authority and interpret the Bible in such a way as to make it conform to that authority, namely, their own personal or corporate experience.
Only the Evangelical Lutheran Church faithfully follows the sola Scriptura principle. The Lutheran Confessions are not a Lutheran interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. They do not impose on the Holy Scriptures a system to which the sacred text must conform. They are a clear and faithful exposition and exhibition of what the Holy Scriptures clearly teach. Don’t take my word for it. Read them for yourself! Having spent (or perhaps wasted) quite a bit of time arguing theology with sectarians of various stripes, I am quite familiar with agenda driven theological arguments and reading into or out of the Bible what one wants the Bible to say. It’s done all the time. But the Lutheran Confessions don’t do it.
This is why we Lutherans subscribe unconditionally to the teaching of the Lutheran Confessions. If we take seriously both the clarity and truthfulness of the Holy Scriptures, we cannot but subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions. Why? Because the Lutheran Confessions are in doctrinal agreement with the Holy Scriptures.
Here is the pertinent portion of the ordination rubrics from the Agenda of the Lutheran Service Book concerning the confessional subscription of the ordinand:
P Do you believe and confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice?
R Yes, I believe and confess the canonical Scriptures to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.
P Do you believe and confess the three Ecumenical Creeds, namely the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian Creeds, as faithful testimonies to the truth of the Holy Scriptures, and do you reject all the errors which they condemn?
R Yes, I believe and confess the three Ecumenical Creeds because they are in accord with the Word of God. I also reject all the errors they condemn.
P Do you confess the Unaltered Augsburg Confession to be a true exposition of Holy Scripture and a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church? And do you confess that the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Small and Large Catechisms of Martin Luther, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, and the Formula of Concord—as these are contained in the Book of Concord—are also in agreement with this one scriptural faith?
R Yes, I make these Confessions my own because they are in accord with the Word of God.
P Do you promise that you will perform the duties of your office in accordance with these Confessions, and that all your preaching and teaching and your administration of the Sacraments will be in conformity with Holy Scripture and with these Confessions?
R Yes, I promise, with the help of God.
Note the response: “Yes, I make these Confessions my own because they are in accord with the Word of God.” The ordination vow in use in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod has a quia confessional subscription.
As we discuss the quia confessional subscription, let us consider briefly how many of the confessional writings we subscribe. If the corpus of confessional documents is limited to the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism, this does no suggest that the one who subscribes is not also in agreement with the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, and the Formula of Concord. There is nothing in the entire Book of Concord that departs from the teaching set forth in the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s Small Catechism.
A quatenus subscription is not a subscription at all. I can subscribe to the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, or Mein Kampf in so far as these documents agree with the Holy Scriptures. Each of these documents assert things that are biblically sound. They assert things that are unbiblical and wrong. A Christian may subscribe to those things that are biblically sound. He may not subscribe to those things that are unbiblical. To subscribe to a document is to confess the entire document, that the entire document entirely agrees with God’s written Word. If it doesn’t agree with God’s written Word, it cannot be subscribed. A quia confessional subscription is confessing that the teaching of the Lutheran Confessions agrees with the Bible.
A quia confessional subscription is not confessing that the Confessions agree with the teaching of the first seven ecumenical councils, though they do agree with their trinitarian and Christological confessions. We subscribe and confess the creeds, not on the authority of the ancient church, but on the authority of Scripture alone.
A quia subscription does not confess that if you were there at the time the Lutheran Confessions were written you would have signed on. It confesses that what was written in the sixteenth century is as true today as it was when it was written because what was written was taken from and agrees with the Holy Scriptures, which are the written Word of God.
A quia subscription does not confess that the Confessions teach the whole counsel of God because they don’t. The Scriptures teach many things that are not mentioned in the Lutheran Confessions. A quia confessional subscription agrees with everything the Bible teaches whether or not the Confessions treat the topic. The Lutheran Confessions do not address a number of issues we face in our day that are settled in the Scriptures. A quia confessional subscription does not limit our doctrine to what the Confessions explicitly address. The Bible forbids women from serving as pastors. The Bible forbids homosexual activity, whether or not the couple is monogamously devoted to each other. A quia confessional subscription confesses the Bible to be the pure and clear fountain of Israel. It confesses the plenary and verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
A quia confessional subscription does not confess that the Confessions contain no errors. The Formula of Concord asserts that garlic impedes the power of a magnet. It doesn’t. That’s an error. But it is not a theological statement, nor does it purport to be. A quia confessional subscription is not confessing that what is not intended by the Confessions as binding doctrine should be regarded as binding doctrine. For example, in the Smalcald Articles (I, 4) the virgin Mary is called “ever virgin” in the Latin translation. If this were more than an honorific title and intended to be a confession of biblical truth, the original German would make this confession. But it does not. The perpetual virginity of Mary falls under the category of pious opinion, not divine doctrine. For it to be divine doctrine it must be clearly taught in the Bible. The Book of Concord agrees with the teaching of the Bible. Subscription to it pertains to the teaching of the Bible, not to other matters. We do not consult the Confessions for instruction on economics or political theory. We don’t expect the Confessions to teach us authoritatively on any extra biblical, extra theological topic. The preposition quia modifies the Confessions’ agreement with the Bible.
It should go without saying that the quia subscription to the Lutheran Confessions does not require agreement with everything Luther wrote. Most of the Confessions were not written by Luther, and of the thousands of pages of Luther’s writings we have access to, we subscribe only to the Small Catechism, the Large Catechism, and the Smalcald Articles, though I should add that the Formula of Concord does give some of Luther’s writing on the Lord’s Supper confessional status in article seven.
Subscription to the Book of Concord does not mean that we believe that there may not be better theological arguments to make than the Confessions made, or that every single Bible passage they cite is aptly applied, or that in some other way the Confessions are not perfect. Of course, they’re not perfect. The Bible is. This is why we identify the Bible as the norm that norms and the Confessions as the norm that is normed. Let me reiterate. The Bible is the only true standard by which all teachings and teachers in the church are to be judged.
But if the Scriptures are the only norm by which all doctrine must be judged, why do we need Confessions? Why not rely solely on the Scriptures? Why not make the Scriptures our creed?
First, the Holy Scriptures are not a creed. They are God’s Word. They are not an expression of the church’s faith. They are the written Word of God. The church did not give us the Bible. She received it from God. God speaks to us in the Bible. We confess what he has spoken in the creeds and confessions. Theodore Schmauk put it this way: “Confessions are the answer of earth to the revelation from Heaven.” (The Confessional Principle and the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, pp 9-10) He writes:
Confessions are Scripture digested, assimilated, and beating in the life pulses of the Church. Pulse-beats of Scripture are they, come up out of the believing Church’s heart into free, public, courageous, joyous and solemn utterance. (p 9)
Second, faith must be confessed. Here is how St. Paul treats the topic of faith and confession.
But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:8-13)
“We believe, teach, and confess.” How many times in the Epitome of the Formula of Concord do we begin our confession with these words? We believe. “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith . . )” We teach. “ . . .(that is, the word of faith which we preach.)” We confess.
. . . that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Confessional subscription is much more than saying that this agrees with that. Confession is always confession of Christ. To confess the Lord Jesus Christ is to confess justification through faith alone as we do in Article IV of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology. To confess the Lord Jesus Christ is to confess the true presence of his body and blood in the sacramental elements of the Lord’s Supper as we do in Article VII of the Formula of Concord. To confess the Lord Jesus Christ is to confess everything the Bible teaches about him, not just as historical facts, but as the saving truth on which the soul of the confessor rests. We confess the faith through which we are justified by God. We confess the faith because we are justified by God. Our confidence in confessing is confidence that our confession is true. More than that, it is confidence that we are righteous. The personal faith of the individual Christian and his confession of the true faith with fellow Christians cannot be separated.
Faith and confession are two sides of the same coin. As Charles Porterfield Krauth put it, “Faith makes men Christians; but Confession alone marks them as Christians.” Faith is invisible to everyone but God. Confession is faith made manifest to men. When God speaks, we say Amen. This is what Confession is. Krauth says, “The Scriptures is God’s voice to us, and the Confession, our reply of assent to it.” (citations from Schmauk, p 30)
Unconditional confessional subscription is not dead orthodoxy. The faith that is confessed is the living and daring confidence in the grace of God by which we are rescued from sin and death. Those who receive mercy are merciful. Faith flows into love for everyone for whom Jesus died. Faith and love must always be distinguished but cannot be separated. We speak the truth in love. Confessional subscription is first and foremost a confession of the gospel of the full and free forgiveness of all our sins by God’s grace alone, for the sake of Christ’s holy and vicarious obedience and suffering, graciously given to us in the gospel and sacraments of Christ, received by us through faith alone. Dead orthodoxy is heterodox. If orthodoxy means the right worship, then we cannot ascribe it to the faithless. The essence of worship is faith. That unbelievers may lay claim to an orthodox confession simply means that hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue. In fact, there is no such thing as dead orthodoxy. The true confession comes from true faith.
Third, we need Confessions so that each generation will not be required to reinvent the wheel. Consider the catholic creeds. We know what we believe about God. We know what we believe about Christ. The pure biblical doctrine that was under attack by various heretics in the early centuries of the Church was defended by our fathers, not by an appeal to ecclesiastical authority, but by the faithful appeal to the Holy Scriptures. The biblical teaching concerning the two natures in Christ and the Trinity that was faithfully confessed in the Nicene Creed continues to be confessed with the very words used in the fourth century. The Bible does not change. The truth does not change. The faithful confession of the truth does not change. Those who won’t bind themselves to the catholic creeds are described by St. Paul in 2 Timothy 3:7 as, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” When the Church speaks with the authority of God’s written Word, she speaks as the “pillar and ground of the truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15
Fourth, the church has the right and the duty to hold her teachers to that pattern of sound words that Scripture requires. The word that translates into English as confess is in Greek, ὁμολογέω, to say the same thing. Confession is, by definition, a corporate activity. The personal confession of the individual Christian does not belong to him alone. It belongs to the church.
But confession is personal and individual. St. Paul writes to Timothy:
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing. 1 Timothy 6:12-14
Jesus personally confessed before Pontius Pilate. Timothy personally confessed in the presence of many witnesses. This personal and individual confession is also corporate and churchly. Since confession is a churchly activity, the church has the duty to ensure that her teachers willingly submit to the teaching of the Confessions because these Confessions are taken from and agree with the Holy Scriptures.
Here we must understand the nature of the church’s authority and distinguish it from the civil authority. The church’s authority is essentially evangelical. Yes, the church is required to preach and teach God’s law, but the law serves the gospel. The law that shows us our sins is answered by the gospel that forgives us our sins. The law that was powerless to effect in us the new birth or the sanctified life remains the holy and immutable will of God for our behavior. But only the gospel of the free forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s vicarious obedience and suffering has the power to effect faith. The authority of the church is in the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, that is, in what brings us to faith and keeps us in the true faith.
This church doesn’t exist up in the clouds somewhere, but it is here below, identified by her marks, that is, the pure preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments. This is the church that binds her servants to her scriptural Confessions. Subscription of the church’s servants to the church’s Confessions acknowledges the authority of the church to require such subscription. But we must keep in mind that submission to the church’s authority is not submission to the church as a bureaucratic structure or an episcopal or congregation or synodical or presbyteral government. It is submission to the church’s confessions. Why? Because they are drawn from and agree with the written Word of God. The church’s authority is theological, not political.
Listen to what we Lutherans confess in the Preface to the Book of Concord.
In conclusion, we repeat once again that we are not minded to manufacture anything new by this work of agreement or to depart in any way at all, either in content or in formulation, from the divine truth that our pious forebears and we have acknowledged and confessed in the past, for our agreement is based on the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures and is comprehended in the three Creeds as well as in the Augsburg Confession, submitted in the year 1530 to Emperor Charles V, of kindest memory, in the Apology that followed it, and in the Smalcald Articles and the Large and Small Catechisms of that highly enlightened man, Dr. Luther. On the contrary, we are minded by the grace of the Holy Spirit to abide and remain unanimously in this confession of faith and to regulate all religious controversies and their explanations according to it. (From the Preface to the Book of Concord, Tappert, pp 13-14)
Clearly, if we are minded to regulate all religious controversies and their explanations according to the Book of Concord we are asserting that the Confessions are a norm for our doctrine. But how can this be when, as we have seen, we confess that “we receive and embrace with our whole heart the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true standard by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged.” How can we simultaneously confess that the Bible is the only true standard by which all teachers and teachings are to be judged and that we will regulate all religious controversies according to the standard of the Lutheran Confessions? It is because “our agreement is based on the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures.”
It is impossible for the Scriptures to err because the Bible is God’s Word and God is incapable of error. But the Confessions are not inspired by God and surely, they are capable of error. This is true. It is possible that the Confessions could teach false doctrine because they are written by men subject to error. The question is not whether the Confessions could teach falsely on any point. It is whether the Confessions do teach falsely. C. F. W. Walther, in an essay delivered in 1858 entitled, “Why Should Our Pastors, Teachers, and Professors Subscribe Unconditionally to the Symbolical Writings of our Church?” addressed this point, saying:
But is it not possible that the Symbols of the orthodox Church contain errors in less important points? Yes, but the possibility does not establish reality. Only a skeptic, who is always learning and never coming to the truth, despairs of ever finding the truth and will maintain: Men have written this, and therefore it must contain error. But if error should really be found in our Symbols, we would be the first to pass the death sentence on them. But we defy the whole world to point out an error in doctrine in our Book of Concord. For the past three hundred years all the enemies of our Church have tried in vain to find an error, but have failed. They have shown, and we admit it, that our Symbols contain points which are contrary to their blind reason; but they have failed to prove that our Symbols contradict Scripture in the smallest point. Walther, page 248-249
The Confessions are the norm that is normed. The Scriptures have judged the Confessions to be true expositions and exhibitions of the Word of God. This judgment will not change. We Lutherans confess in the Formula of Concord,
This agreement we have set forth as a certain and public testimony, not only to our contemporaries but also to our posterity, of that which our churches believe and accept with one accord as the correct and abiding answer in the controverted articles. (FC SD Rule and Norm par 16 Tapper p 507)
Who is the posterity of which they speak? That’s the question before us today. If you are the son of a Lutheran pastor who is the son of a Lutheran pastor who is the son of a Lutheran pastor, you might consider yourself to be of the posterity of Lutheranism. But that’s not how it works. Just as the children of Abraham are of the faith of Abraham, whether they descended from Abraham or not, just so a Lutheran is a Lutheran by his own personal conviction, not because he is descended from many Lutherans.
What do you believe? The psalmist writes and the apostle cites him, “I believed, and therefore I spoke.” (Psalm 116:10; 2 Corinthians 4:13) What you believe is what you confess. Just as God did not coerce your faith but took out your heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh, even so Christ’s church does not coerce confession. The unconditional quia confessional subscription is voluntary. It is heartfelt. It cannot be made in obedience to any other authority than the authority of God’s written Word. When you subscribe unconditionally to the Lutheran Confessions you are saying what you sincerely believe, without any reservations of any kind. When a man pledges his fidelity to his wife on the day of their wedding, does he secretly hold onto certain reservations that might permit him to divorce her later? No. Nobody forced him to marry her. He should not marry her if he is not prepared to be faithful to her for the rest of their lives.
Similarly, nobody is forced to subscribe unconditionally to the Lutheran Confessions. It is always voluntary. Indeed, if it is not voluntary, and if it is not unconditional, that is, quia, because they agree with the Holy Scriptures, then his subscription is not just ill advised, but positively wrong. No one has the right to bind himself to a teaching authority above and beyond the authority of the written Word of God.
What does this say about a church body adopting a binding doctrinal resolution that obliges its members to teach in accordance with it? Can one agree to teach in accordance with a standard that has not been judged by the Scriptures and found to be faithful? Is a majority vote at a synod convention a sufficient basis on which to make a confession? The church must constantly be on her guard against moving her fidelity from the Scriptures and the Confessions to an external institution. This is not just an academic question. If the church body to which you belong has ties to both the Lutheran World Federation and the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, and you receive support from both, to whom do you owe your allegiance? The answer of those who accept a quia confessional subscription is clear. You owe your allegiance to the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. You owe no loyalty to the heterodox. As St. Paul writes, “For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” 2 Corinthians 13:8
The quia confessional subscription becomes quatenus when applied to a church body. The Confessions do not change. Church bodies do. Rome says that you find the right church and then you will have found the right gospel. Lutherans say that you find the right gospel and then you will have found the right church. Churchly loyalty that is not first and foremost confessional fidelity is idolatry. Our subscription to the teaching of a church body is a quatenus subscription. It can only be insofar as that church body teaches in accordance with the Word of God.
Since the Lutheran Confessions have been judged by the Holy Scriptures to be doctrinally sound, we may in good conscience subscribe to them. We subscribe to them because, quia, they agree with the Holy Scriptures. Our devotion to a particular church or church body is always contingent on that church’s holding onto the true confession of the true faith. The subordination of ecclesiastical loyalty to confessional loyalty is extremely difficult to do in practice. We have the tendency to seek out a living voice that is authoritative and what better place to look than to the official pronouncements of the church body to which we belong? There is always some tension between confessional and ecclesiastical loyalty.
When a pastor is ordained, he becomes a member of the ministerium of a particular church body. It is only natural that he would pledge his loyalty and allegiance to that church body. For the confessional Lutheran, however, his loyalty to the synod to which he belongs includes placing that church body under the authority of the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. Now, a man is accountable to his employer. A pastor is accountable to the congregation that pays his salary. A missionary is accountable to the synod that pays his salary. But a minister of Christ is first and foremost a minister of Christ. St. Paul writes: “Let a man so consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful.” 1Corinthians 4:1-2 Faithful to what? To the mysteries of God. The faithful minister of the church places the church under the authority of the written Word of God. Since the Evangelical Lutheran minister knows that the doctrine confessed in the Book of Concord is drawn from and agrees with the written Word of God, he has no hesitation in placing the church under the authority of the Lutheran Confessions.
What this means in practice is that while a Lutheran synod has every right to produce doctrinal statements that confess to the world where she stands on controverted issues of our day, she has no right to use her own crafted doctrinal statements as the standard for discipline. Since there is no churchly doctrinal authority beyond the clear teaching of the Holy Scriptures, Scripture alone must judge all doctrinal matters. The Confessions serve as a faithful witness to the true teaching of the Holy Scriptures. If a written confession of faith in addition to the Confessions were to be adopted that would serve to regulate doctrinal controversy among us, it would have to be by the unanimous and voluntary choice of everyone subjected to it. When a church body presumes to discipline its members by a standard to which they have not previously voluntarily bound themselves because that standard is drawn from and is in conformity with the Holy Scriptures, it has become a sect. It has made itself, rather than the Scriptures, the only rule and norm according to which all teachers and teachings must be judged.
I’m sure it’s obvious to all of us that a strong confessional subscription goes together with a love for pure doctrine and a desire to keep our doctrine pure. We Lutherans even sing about pure doctrine in our hymns!
God’s Word is our great heritage
And shall be ours forever.
To spread its light from age to age
Shall be our chief endeavor.
Through life it guides our way
In death it is our stay
Lord, grant while worlds endure
We keep its teachings pure
Throughout all generations!
Why is maintaining pure doctrine our chief concern? Is it so that we may demonstrate that by being right in our doctrine we are thereby righteous before God? Is it so that by our orthodox doctrine we will merit divine approval and reward? Is it so that we may win the orthodoxy contest between us and the sectarians? Listen to the great confession we Lutherans make in the words of the Preface to the Book of we Concord.
By the help of God’s grace we, too, intend to persist in this confession until our blessed end and to appear before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ with joyful and fearless hearts and consciences. (From the Preface to the BOC, Tappert, p 9)
First is God’s eternal love that before time began purposed to send his Son into this world to save us from our sins. Then is the vicarious obedience and suffering of Jesus that wins for the whole world forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Then is the proclamation of the gospel that engenders the faith by which it is received. Then is the confession of that faith with joyful and fearless hearts. Then is the return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead. To understand the quia, that is, the unconditional confessional subscription, we must look forward to that day, at the end of time, at the end of this world, when we shall appear before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ. What will we claim for ourselves? What do we have that we can show him? We will offer him what he offered to us and claim it as our righteousness before him. As we sing in the hymn:
I have naught my God to offer,
Save the blood of thy dear Son;
Graciously accept the proffer,
Make his righteousness mine own.
His holy life gave He, was crucified for me,
His righteousness perfect He now pleads before Thee;
His own robe of righteousness, my highest good,
Shall clothe me in glory, through faith in His blood.
Everything we confess as Evangelical Lutherans in our symbolical books is distilled in this confident claim. Our confession is based on the infallible Word of God. Our confession flows from our God-given faith in the merits and mediation of Jesus. Our confession is our public display of confidence in the faithfulness of our gracious God who has taught us so to confess. On the last day as we are facing eternity, we will confess before Him what we confessed before each other and the world, with confidence that our confession is his divine and saving truth.