epistolae obscurorum virorum

Dormant

2010-04-13T10:54:00.000+10:00

This blog will be dormant for a while, I reckon.

The Many Moods of Emmanuelle Pearce

2008-03-26T22:13:00.002+11:00

Here are some pictures that capture the mood of Emmanuelle at our Easter Feast. Thanks to Vinni Ramm for the expert photography.

Haldane on Conscience

2008-03-26T16:46:00.002+11:00

Recently I listened to a talk given by Professor John Haldane to students at the University of St Andrews, entitled The Philosophical Legacy of Pope John Paul II. It’s well worth listening to, especially if you want to hear what Suggs’ cousin in law has to say about the previous pope’s philosophical strengths and limitations. Anyhow, at the end of his talk was a question time, and one of the students asked him about the teaching on conscience presented in John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. In his response Haldane made some off the cuff remarks I found so stimulating that I decided to make a more or less accurate typescript (which captures the feel of his rhythms of speech). Here it is:

[A]cting in conscience is acting authentically. It is acting in accord with your own encounter with self. But compatible with that is false conscience. Your conscience can be badly formed, because you might be the subject, I suppose you might say the victim, of bad education. Or the world in which you grew up may have been a brutalized world. So the only values that you encountered were disvalues, negative values, as a result of which you might have formed a view of the world that was a very dark view of the world; or you might have been subject to various psychological pressures or influences and so on, as a result of which your understanding of what it is to be a self is perverse. It’s authentic, but it’s false. So you’re acting in conscience, i.e. in authenticity to the discovered subject, but the discovered subject is a malformed subject as a result of these influences and such like.

Now that’s the counterpart, where Thomas Aquinas says you’re obliged to act according to conscience, but you’re guilty if your conscience is a bad conscience. So you can be in the following dilemma: Whatever you do, you’ll have done the wrong thing, because if you act according to conscience, and your conscience is a badly formed conscience you’ll do the wrong thing. If you don’t act according to your conscience you’ll act inauthentically, and so you’ll do the wrong thing. So there’s an obligation to be authentic, or to act according to conscience, but your conscience isn’t bound to be a good conscience.

Now it’s extremely important, for example, in the debates of the 1960’s, particularly in the area of sexual ethics, but not exclusively there, where people said things like: ‘Well the Church teaches that you should act in accordance with your conscience, so this is a matter for conscience’, whether it be a matter of contraception, or whatever else it might be, ‘it’s a matter for conscience’. That’s true. But everything is a matter for conscience. All ethical action is ultimately a matter for conscience. When people say ‘It’s a matter for conscience’, what they meant was ‘if I feel it’s right, it’s right’. That’s not what the doctrine of conscience is. The doctrine of conscience is: You are obliged to act out of your reflective best self-understanding of what it is right to do. You’re obliged to do what you believe is right to do. But that doesn’t mean that what you do is right. So you can be acting fully in accord with your conscience and doing the wrong thing. And that was Aquinas’ great…he thought that was part of the tragedy of sin, that actually the great effect of sin is that it creates more sin, because actually when you get into sin then whatever you do you’ll do wrong, because your conscience is corrupted and so on...so acting in accordance with conscience doesn’t mean that what you do is right.

I mean conscience isn’t some sort of funny voice in your head. I mean it means your best reflective understanding of what you ought to do. It’s, as it were, reflecting upon what you believe, what you understand about the situation, and so on…acting authentically with your best reflective understanding. But this why false moral theology, if I can put it that way, false teaching in general, is particularly pernicious. Because in the name of the teaching authority that would guide and govern people’s lives it promulgates false understandings. People have a duty…it is certainly reasonable for people to defer to what they recognize as authorities, but now this authority is corrupting you effectively by telling you the wrong thing, then look what position they put you in: whatever you do, you’ll do the wrong thing. Because if you don’t act in accordance with your best understanding, your conscience, you’ll have done the wrong thing, and if you do act in accord with a falsely informed conscience you’ll do the wrong thing.

Now what I would say, however, in case this seems too depressing, is that what would be said here is this: If you act in accord with a false conscience, a badly formed conscience, for which you are not yourself culpable, I mean you’re not responsible for having a badly formed conscience, you’re badly brought up, badly taught, people told you false things at school, then the subjective culpability is diminished.

Conscience does not constitute the rightness of an act, conscience is meant to reveal the rightness of an act. If it tells you that something is right which as it turns out is not right, that just shows that it is a false conscience. So it is not the teaching of the church that something is right if it’s done in accord with conscience. The teaching of the church is that it is wrong to act at odds with your conscience, but acting in accord with conscience doesn’t make what you do right.

Haldane’s off the cuff remarks present, as far as I can tell, a similar approach to that St Paul takes in 1 Corinthians 4:4 ‘My conscience is clear (RSV: I am not aware of anything against myself), but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me’. Haldane’s exposition certainly makes me think about my pastoral responsibility to keep my teaching pure.

Any comments?

Back Again

2008-03-26T16:04:00.002+11:00

Meg and I recently went to a wedding where the groom and half the guests were Brits. The best man, a Brit, the brother of the groom, recounted, in his speech, his experience in customs:

‘When I arrived in Australia I was handed a form to complete that included the following question, “Do you have a criminal record?” This concerned me: I had no idea that having a criminal record was still a requirement.’

This was followed by some chuckles, and then some boos.

He said, ‘I anticipated a mixed response’.

Lent

2008-02-05T11:40:00.000+11:00

Not that it makes much difference, but I won't be writing anything on this blog during Lent.

I'm sure you all will be able to cope with the disappointment!

Meilaender

2008-01-29T12:08:00.000+11:00

Recently my good friend (and Godfather to Francesca) Thomas Pietsch paid a visit to us with his ever-charming wife Chelsea. Thom, who is now going into his third year at ALC (the Australian Lutheran Seminary) spent some time talking theology with me, and we together read a chapter ('Hearts set to obey') from Lutheran theologian Gilbert Meilaender's The Freedom of a Christian). I wish I could reproduce the text here, as it gives a very concise overview (and rightly critical) of the sort of Lutheran ethical thinking that is as popular as it is disconnected from the Lutheran Confessions.

Anyhow, since I can't give a link to Meilaender's essay I will give a link to a wonderful essay by Fr Bernhard Blankenhorn, a Dominican from the US. It's a nice summary of what I understand is called 'Virtue Ethics'. I came across it through a link on the Lutheran - Roman Catholic dialog in the US. Apparently David Yeago - who seems to me to be one of the best theologians in the ELCA - recently spoke at Blankenhorn's parish on the progress of the dialog in the US. I'm hoping for an mp3 of the talk to be put on the web soon.

Bach

2008-01-29T12:03:00.000+11:00

A little while ago I came across a link to these wonderful, free, and legal recordings of Bach's organ works.

If it's your thing, they're worth a listen.

A Test Blog

2008-01-12T10:43:00.000+11:00

Today I have the good fortune to have the inimitable Schutz staying with me [that's SCHÜTZ, Fraser!]. He has been teaching me how to do a few things on my blog, like add a blog roll (see right hand side). I'm now also going to put in my first hyperlink like this (see here).

And my first YouTube link:

That's not me playing, unfortunately.

Well, a real blog soon.

Emmanuelle is Emmanuwell

2007-12-19T21:13:00.000+11:00

Sorry about the title.

Just a note to let you know that E's treatment appears to be going very well. She's even been in my study tearing up paper. This is a good sign.

Thank you for your prayers,

Fraser

Update on Emmanuelle

2007-12-14T16:17:00.000+11:00

I've just got back from the hospital with Meg and Emmanuelle. The tests didn't turn anything up, and the diagnosis is that whatE has is viral; which is, I assume, good news. Anyhow, E is home, and her face is looking so sweet that I'm concerned some bees will try to shove her in their hive.

After not getting much sleep in the hospital last night, M and E are looking forward to some decent rest.

Thanks for your prayers.

The hospital stay proved beyond doubt (if there ever was any) that E is Feisty with a capital F. The staff couldn't stick needles in her, of poke her abdomen, or attach her to various pieces of apparatus without her cracking it.

Emmanuelle

2007-12-13T14:00:00.000+11:00

Little Emmanuelle is in hospital undergoing tests. The doctors don't know what is wrong. Margaret is with her. Please pray for her. She'll be there overnight at least.

The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility

2007-11-27T16:15:00.000+11:00

Having been inspired by William Weedon's 'Homeltical Aphorisms' http://weedon.blogspot.com/2007/11/homiletical-aphorisms.html#comments, I hereby submit 'The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility'. I've ripped this off straight from George Rutler's 'The Cure D'Ars Today', and he ripped it straight from John Vianney himself. So:

The Seventeen Evidences of a Lack of Humility

1. To think that what one says or does is better than what others say and do.
2. To always want to get your own way.
3. To argue with stubbornness and bad manners whether you are right or wrong.
4. To give your opinion when it has not been requested or when charity does not demand it.
5. To look down on another’s point of view.
6. Not to look on your own gifts and abilities as lent.
7. Not to recognize that you are unworthy of all honours and esteem, not even the earth you walk on and things you possess.
8. To use yourself as an example in conversation.
9. To speak badly of yourself so that others will think well of you or contradict you.
10. To excuse yourself when you are corrected.
11. To hide humiliating faults from your spiritual director, so that he will not change the impression that he has of you.
12. To take pleasure in praise and compliments.
13. To be saddened because others are held in higher esteem.
14. To refuse to perform inferior tasks.
15. To seek to stand out.
16. To refer in conversation to your honesty, genius, dexterity, or professional prestige.
17. To be ashamed because you lack certain goods.

Nolite Confidere in Principibus

2007-11-27T11:23:00.000+11:00

That is, ‘Do not put your trust in princes’ –Psalm 146:3 (145:2 in the Vulgate). ‘Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish’.

These words were going through my mind on Saturday night as I saw the election results. One of our ‘princes’ – John Howard – has left the scene to be replaced by our new ‘prince’ - Kevin Rudd. The prayers of our little congregation are with our new Prime Minister, of course, just as they were with our old one. But neither man, thank God, has been or will be the Saviour of our Nation.

On Saturday night, as I heard the crowds cheering, I got to thinking about changes in my experience - and in my understanding - of political debate. In recent years I’ve grown less eager to hear (from myself and others) politicians (of any political stripe) vilified. I welcome (and enjoy) vigorous discussion on the merits (or otherwise) of political policy and ideas, but when conversation descends into name-calling and personal attacks on politicians it gets me down. I can’t help feel that such conversation is a display of a lack of faith in God – that is, I can't help feeling that when faith in God weakens then we have to find scapegoats other than the Lamb of God - and so I hear vilification of politicians, from myself or others, as reluctance to take our anger and frustration to the One who is ultimately responsible: God.

But on Saturday night I heard the crowds not simply cheering, but chanting the name of at least one politician. And this disturbed me more than any of the abuse I have heard poured on any politician. Personal attacks on politicians I can understand, even if it gets me down. But chanting the name of a politician?

Nolite confidere in principibus. It's my suggested motto for election nights.

For Charles

2007-11-27T10:49:00.000+11:00

Charles, my brother in law, wants less theology and more pics of his nieces and nephew. So, here's a picture of Emmanuelle, looking as cute as a bug's ear.

The Word and the Church

2007-10-31T10:43:00.001+11:00

In the last few weeks, in preparation for the next round of the national Lutheran / Roman Catholic dialogue, I’ve been reading on the place of Scripture in the life of the Church. One key passage from Vatican II sums it up this way:
“It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church, in accord with God’s most wise design, are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.” (DV II 10)
As the dialogue process proceeds, I look forward to hearing what the Catholic participants have to say in their understanding and explanation of these words. It seems to me that one could accept this teaching while at the same time holding that the Church is ‘under’ Scripture. We’ll see.
In looking through the Book of Concord, I’ve been surprised to find how few references there are to the place of Scripture in determining doctrine. There are, however, some important passages that deal directly with the issue, including this one form the beginning of the Formula:
“1. We believe, teach, and confess that the sole rule and standard according to which all dogmas together with [all] teachers should be estimated and judged are the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testament alone, as it is written Ps. 119, 105: Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And St. Paul: Though an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you, let him be accursed, Gal. 1, 8.” (FC Ep. I 1)
What interests me about this passage is the use of the passives ‘should be estimated and judged’. Estimated and judged by whom?
A typically protestant answer might be ‘estimated and judged by each individual Christian’. But is this the way that Lutherans, at least as we expound our confessional teaching, would rightly answer?
It seems to me that the next round of dialogue will be interesting.

The Body as an Obstacle to Human Freedom

2007-08-27T19:50:00.000+10:00

Over the last 13 years I have enjoyed a close friendship with Lutheran Pastor Adam Cooper. Apart from the similarity of our age and cultural background, one of the things that has bonded us as friends is the similarity of the questions that we bring to the Lutheran Confessions. In particular, we have enjoyed hours of conversation thinking through the role of the human body in salvation, and how the reality of the salvation of human beings as embodied creatures is addressed (or left unaddressed – because not a point of contention in the 16th century) in the Lutheran Confessions. While Adam has pursued theological questions regarding the body in an academically rigorous way (see, for example http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/HistoryofChristianity/EarlyChurch/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5OTI3NTcwMA==) I’ve plodded along in my own rather undisciplined (and less intellectually powerful) way, reading a fair range of theology, history, and philosophy, and dragging into conversation whomsoever I can on the role of body in our destiny as human beings.

Now I’ve just this afternoon finished talking through with Adam a draft of a paper that he is preparing for our next district pastors’ conference. We’ve gone over a number of familiar issues, and one in particular that I want to blog about is the way that, in our contemporary culture, the body seems to be seen as an obstacle to human freedom.

It seems to me that in western society there has for the past two millennia been a basic (although waning) assumption that bodily existence is a given, and that human flourishing and happiness (and even beatitude) is the result of submitting to the bodily limitations that we enjoy as created beings. From the point of view of theology, confessing the reality of the resurrection of the body has been a way of understanding that our existence as creatures with bodies is not an obstacle to us seeing the face of God – to us finding our eternal completion in the gracious presence of the holy angels around the throne of the Lord of hosts. In fact, Lutherans have confessed (with the whole of catholic Christianity) that our salvation will not happen without our bodies, and that our bodies, that are the result of God’s creative power, that are baptized into Christ, that feed on the body and blood of the Lord, will somehow be resurrected in glory.

But it seems that something has been happening in our culture so that this understanding of the destiny of embodied humanity has receded into obscurity, and that the human body, so far from being seen as the place in which our salvation is worked out with fear and trembling, is seen as an obstacle to the desires the human spirit.

I’ll give one example of what I’m talking about. Consider discussion on the meaning of marriage. Catholic Christianity would see the given-ness of the distinction between the sexes as the foundation to what makes marriage what it is – a lifelong union between a man and a woman established by God through which God, in addition to giving his human creatures comfort and love, desires to transmit new human life. In a catholic Christian understanding of marriage sexual differentiation is not an imposition on human freedom, but the very way in which human beings, created as men or women, freely find a significant (even sacramental) completion of their statuses as human beings made male or female.

In our contemporary western society, however, there seems to be a repudiation of the given-ness of human beings as male and female. Rather than reading the language that God, the author of the body, has inscribed upon it, postmodern western people seem to read the body as a text without any meaning except that which the disembodied human spirit gives it. The body, though the means by which the human spirit exerts its will, is also an obstacle to the limitless desires that are part of the human spirit. In terms of marriage, this attitude plays itself out in an apparent variety of ways: male to male and female to female ‘marriage’; ‘marriage’ between three and more persons; ‘marriage’ between siblings; ‘marriage’ between humans and non-humans (I don’t know of any actual legally binding cases of the last form of ‘marriage’ on this list, but presumably it’s only a matter of time). In all this there seems to be a desire somehow to escape the limitations of embodied life, or at the very least to treat bodily existence as presenting a problem to be overcome by the application of new techniques say, for example, in this context, of a lesbian couple using technology to create a child (or, in the future, of a cross species pair creating a hybrid).

Of course much of this way of seeing contemporary western society will be familiar to readers of C S Lewis. Back in mid 40s Lewis was able to discern the very different way of viewing reality that began to emerge in western society during the renaissance. In the Abolition of Man, he wrote: “There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating them from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”

But Lewis, the professor of English, didn’t live to see Derrida. As far as I can tell, Derrida did a Nietzsche on texts, insofar as he presented a way of reading literature in which authorial intention recedes, and interpretation is all (Roger Scruton, as it happens, sees this as a form of idolatry, and I think he is right). It seems to me that our contemporary culture as a whole is now in the throes of ‘doing a Nietzsche’ on the ‘text’ of the body – in talking, legislating, and acting with the understanding that there is no authoritative intention for the body (that there is no God who gives salvation to embodied human beings).

(I could also add that it seems to me that western culture is slowly coming to terms with its‘doing a Nietzsche’ on creation, but that it is trying to overcome this apparent disaster by deifying creation. This does not bode well, I fear. The gods, traditionally, desire human sacrifice, and Moloch desires child sacrifice.)

In my opinion widespread acceptance of the supposed obstacle of bodily existence reveals itself bodily in the form of tyranny by the bodies of the powerful over the bodies of the weak. I think that it was at work already in the ‘Total War’ of (especially) the Eastern front in WWII, and I can’t help thinking that it was at work in -a powerful irony here - the dialectical materialism that found political expression in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, and is still alive and sick in North Korea. These days, it seems to have a specially technological twist: Embryo experimentation, abortion, cloning, contraception; creating hybrids; sex-selection; a renewed eugenic enterprise not dissimilar in spirit – but far more sophisticated in technique - to that of the Nazis; all this seem to me to be the fruit of an exaltation of the disembodied spirit. And it seems to be working itself out in a willed sterility that is apparently sweeping across most of the western world.

Well…this is a bit far from interpreting the role of the body in salvation in a Lutheran Confessional context, I grant. But what else is a Blog for, if not to express such opinions!

Continuity and Discontinuity

2007-08-15T11:02:00.000+10:00

I’ve recently been reading the seminary’s copy of ‘Catholic Matters’ – the new book by Richard John Neuhaus (editor-in-chief of First Things http://www.firstthings.com/). I’ve been an RJN fan for some time – in fact I was pleased to attend a lunch with him in Melbourne a couple of years back (thanks Schutz http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/), and I have fond memories of myself, Pastor Adam Cooper, and Lutheran seminarian (but then Classics student) Tom Pietsch (http://tom.untothislast.net/) engaged in conversation with RJN in St Patrick’s presbytery later that night. We’d got RJN talking on the topic of private opinion in the thought of John Henry Newman. But that’s for another post.

Anyhow, back to the book. In it, RJN proposes a way of looking at the life of the Catholic Church since Vatican II that makes a lot of sense to me. Rather than seeing the aftermath of Vatican II in the Catholic Church through a left/ right, progressive/ conservative filter, RJN suggests making a distinction between those who see the council as a great break with the past and those who see it in continuity with the past (he calls the two groups ‘the party of discontinuity and the party of continuity’). Viewed through this filter, he suggest that both the radical progressive theologians and the schismatic traditionalists are both in the party of discontinuity – they are united in the common conviction that the council brought into being a new church – one that is radically discontinuous with what went before.

It got me thinking that a ‘party of discontinuity’ and a ‘party of continuity’ exists outside the Catholic Church, and is an ecumenical reality. At least, these different parties seem to have a life in the LCA. Consider: How are we to receive the Book of Concord? As confessions of faith that are to be read as radically discontinuous with the Catholic Church (and I’ll be specific – with the church that was in communion with the pope – yes, even the ‘antichrist’ papacy), or continuous with it?

The Confessions, in their plain sense (if I may put it that way), invite the conclusion that Lutherans should be committed to the party of continuity. The Augsburg Confession states: “Only those things have been recounted whereof we thought that it was necessary to speak, in order that it might be understood that in doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Church Catholic. For it is manifest that we have taken most diligent care that no new and ungodly doctrine should creep into our churches.”

Now before Schutz accuses me of wanting to do a Tract 90 on the Book of Concord, I’d like to say that here the Augsburg Confession specifically invites us to do a Tract 90 on it. So there.

But more importantly: Ecumenically speaking, isn’t a commitment to being of the party of continuity – no matter to which ecclesial body one may belong- the sine qua non of movement toward the goal of outward, visible unity?

Bendigo Cathederal

2007-08-06T17:19:00.000+10:00

In the last week we've had a couple of friends up to stay (Athanasius Stambolidis and Vinni Ramm), and so have been doing a bit of sightseeing. For the first time I've got 'round to taking pictures of the local Catholic cathederal, which, as you will see, is pretty special (especially for a city of 100,000 people).

David Preus and Sara Butler

2007-07-26T21:45:00.000+10:00

In the last week attended a talk given by LCMS theologian Daniel Preus on the JDDJ. I am grateful to have had the chance to hear a Missouri theologian make informed comment on the JDDJ. In due course I'll put up a post on aspects of the talk (and my own response to it).

In the last week I've also been reading Sara Butler's 'The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church'. This is a very impressive (and wonderfully concise) book that gives a clear presentation of magisterial teaching on this controversial issue. Since Schutz has done a great post on this (and since I can't be bothered writing any more tonight), if you're interested check out what he says http://cumecclesia.blogspot.com/search?q=butler

This isn't much of a post, is it?

Snow

2007-07-26T21:39:00.000+10:00

Last week we had some great weather 'round here. More ice and frost in Bendigo, but down the road was snow, and miles of it (I should know since I drove through it). Beautiful.

Muggeridge and Virtue

2007-07-04T12:10:00.000+10:00

I've been having a great time reading Malcolm Muggeridge's 3 volume autobiography 'Chronicles of Wasted Time'. It's a wonderfully cynical and humorous work, and is an invitation to deepen one's own cynicism about politicians and, especially, journalists (the way he writes about his time as a journalist at the Guardian is as illuminating as it is wicked). I'm just coming to the end of the second volume which deals, among other things, with his time in the secret service in Africa during the Second World War. He makes this observation:

"As so often happens, Afrikaners tend to combine a tolerance of collective wickedness, as is embodied in the vile doctrine of apartheid, with particular squeamishness in matters of personal behaviour. Similarly, the privately immoral are often the loudest in protestations of public virtue. Hence the insistence of the New Testament that a balance must be struck and maintained between our duty to God and to our neighhbour."

As a Lutheran I would prefer to say that we must distinguish but never separate our duty to God and to our neighbour. But still, an interesting observation that seems to hold good today.

From Popper to Pearson

2007-07-03T10:25:00.000+10:00

Last night I sat in front of the telly reading through some newspaper articles from The Weekend Australian (June 30-July 31). Included was an article by Noel Pearson headed ‘Needless Misery’. In the article he said: "[W]hat policies do we need so that all avoidable suffering is avoided in our society? We cannot remove evil from the world and I am not basing our hopes of escaping avoidable suffering on supra-human powers. I am asking us to use our considerable human powers to escape avoidable suffering. This is a question for our social policy: are our policies maximising the avoidance of such suffering? The answer is no. There is too much misery – chiefly endured by the disadvantaged in our society, the lowest classes – that is avoidable. And we do not need to achieve a socialist nirvana to relieve this suffering. I suggest that we can and must aim to hold a capitalist democracy to account to be consistent with the eradication of avoidable suffering."
When I read this I immediately recalled the teaching of Karl Popper in his classic ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’. Get a load of this summary by Magee in his brilliant and brief survey of Popper’s philosophy:
"The general guiding principle for public policy put forward in The Open Society is: ‘Minimize avoidable suffering’….The Popperian approach has this consequence right across the board: instead of encouraging one to think about building Utopia it makes one seek out, and try to remove, the specific social evils under which human beings are suffering. In this way it is above all a practical approach, and yet one devoted to change. It starts from a concern with human beings, and involves a permanent, active willingness to remould institutions." (Popper Bryan Magee’ 84-85)
Maybe one the many reasons I like Pearson’s writing is that I find it to be so Popperian (and also so Christian, in that in focuses on the good of individual human beings without ignoring the fact that human beings always live in community).
Anyhow, in this post I have got to mention Popper, Magee, and Pearson (and the teaching of the Lord). Just the sort of post I like to present for the consideration of the multitudes of you who read my blog.

Noel Pearson and Lateline and the Lord's Teaching

2007-06-27T16:45:00.000+10:00

Last night Noel Pearson was interviewed on Lateline. I just watched the clip on the following link :

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s1962844.htm

If you have 20 minutes to spare, watch and listen to the man. He is being interviewed about the Howard government's policy to intervene in Aboriginal communities where there are children at risk of (or already suffering) sexual and physical abuse.

Noel Pearson is an Aboriginal from Hope Vale, and a Lutheran Christian. His approach in dealing with the political process seems to refect a deep knowledge of the teaching of the Lord. The Lord told his disciples, "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. " One interpretation that I make of this command is that we who are called to follow the Lord should understand, with serpent-like shrewdness, the way that powerful people will seek to manipulate and to use us according to their interests. I also take it to mean that we disciples should be utterly transparent and guileless in our own dealings with all people, and especially those who are vulnerable. I see Noel Pearson as understanding well that there are political aspects to the Howard government's present policy on intervention in Aboriginal communities. But I also see him as being transparent and guileless in his defence of vulnerable children.

I have always read Noel Pearson's writings with interest and sympathy. He's no Aboriginal Messiah, of course, but I look with hope to what may happen as a result of his outspoken leadership on issues of vital importance to Aboriginal people and all Australians.

Sophie Scholl

2007-06-25T17:14:00.001+10:00

Last night the Meg and I watched ‘Sophie Scholl’ – a recently released movie about the White Rose student resistance movement in Munich during WWII. There are many movies that leave me feeling defiled, but this is not one of them. Instead the movie presents well and sympathetically the interplay between faith and political action. What’s more, without having to descend to tiresome moralizing, it got me thinking about the need for our own nation to be scrupulous in upholding laws that are in accord with natural law. Anyhow, this is my first movie recommendation on this blog.

Popper and Polemical Theology

2007-06-23T11:58:00.001+10:00

This is another quote from Magee, but this time it’s about his friend Karl Popper, and what Magee learnt from Popper’s way of arguing. I would love to read more polemical theology that was written following Popper’s example (and I would love to write polemical theological with Popper as a guide).

“One of the things that impressed me most, and has influenced me science, was Popper’s way of dealing with opponents. I had always loved argument, and over the years I had become quite good at identifying weak points in an opponent’s defence and bringing concentrated fire to bear on them. This is what virtually all polemicists have sought to do since ancient times, even the most famous of them. But Popper did the opposite. He sought out his opponent’s case at its strongest and attacked that. Indeed, he would improve it, if he possibly could, before attacking it – over several pages of prior discussion he would remove avoidable contradictions or weaknesses, close loopholes, pass over minor deficiencies, let his opponent’s case have the benefit of every possible doubt, and reformulate the most appealing parts of it in the most rigorous, powerful and effective arguments he could find – and then direct his onslaught against it. The outcome, when successful, was devastating. At the end there would be nothing left to say in favour of the opposing case except for tributes and concessions that Popper had himself already made. It was incredibly exciting intellectually.” Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher pp152-153

Magee, Science, and Metaphysics

2007-06-23T11:44:00.000+10:00

Here is another quote from Magee. I plan for there to be many more yet. This is a nicely put observation on the relationship between science and metaphysics. Enjoy:

“To may working scientists, science seems very obviously to suggest an ultimate explanation, namely, a materialist one; but a materialist view of total reality is a metaphysics, not a scientific theory. There is no possibility whatsoever of scientifically proving, or disproving, it. The fact that it is held by many scientists no more makes it a scientific theory than it can be said to be an economic theory because it is held (no doubt) by many economists. Science is compatible with metaphysical outlooks of widely differing and mutually incompatible kinds. Some of the most path-breaking of twentieth-century scientists, including Einstein himself, have believed in God. The founder of quantum mechanics, Schroedinger, was attracted by Buddhism. For the individual there is not, and never has been, a conflict between fully accepting the claims of science and holding non-materialist beliefs. The realization that this is so seems to be spreading at last, though the number of people who assume the contrary is still large.” Bryan Magee, The Confessions of a Philosopher p.218

My Little Pony and Hot Wheels

2007-06-23T11:14:00.000+10:00

In our household there are many sorts of devotion. I think that it's fair to say that my daughter Francesca has developed a devotion for My Little Pony, and my son Oscar has developed a devotion for Howheels. I provide photographic evidence for your consideration.

Magee and Politics

2007-06-18T22:08:00.001+10:00

If you’ve been reading this rather inactive blog site, you’ll know that I’m rather keen on Bryan Magee’s ‘Confessions of a Philosopher’. Recently I found some comfort in rereading his reflections on his years as a Labour Party MP in the UK:

“At one and the same time they were richly educative years and disillusioning. Learning about everyday politics, and how to function effectively as part of it, was wholly to the good, but I was dismayed to discover how small a role ideas and ideals played in it all – and, to the extent that they did play a role, what shabby ideas and ideals they were, for the most part. Most political activity was actually a pursuit of self-interest in the light of situational logic. It was opportunistic in character; and in the Labour Party’s case originated with the material interests of the trade unions in particular, and after them the less well-off fifth or sixth of society. Most of the ideas articulated were rationalizations of this activity, and they went out not in advance as a beacon and guide, but after the event as justification. Most of these rationales were based on rudimentary notions of common humanity, justice and fairness, and when expressed by ordinary party members came out as a form of wet liberalism. That, at least, was the case with the majority. Alongside them was a substantial minority who were tougher in practice and more astringent in theory, and they were the dissident left. Their guiding light was Marxism, expressly so with many intellectuals, though more often making itself felt as an unarticulated influence on people who were not primarily intellectuals – and on their many organized groups who acted as apologists for the Communist regimes, and engaged in lying about them while savagely attacking anyone who told the truth. I found all this appalling.”

As I said, I found some comfort in rereading these words. I’m encouraged not to expect too much from our political leaders; and to I’m encouraged to pray for them.

The Lord's Reward

2007-05-19T11:10:00.000+10:00

This Sunday I’m preaching on the Revelation reading (but I’m including the less pleasant verses also – so the whole of 22:12-21), and especially on the verse “See I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work”. What captured my eye in this reading when I first looked at it last Tuesday was the mention of reward. In the last few days I’ve been looking at different Scriptural passages that deal with reward, and at the Lutheran Confessions on merit.

The Scriptural passages I’ve been looking at are: Matthew 6:1-34; Luke 6:20-26; Romans 2:6-11;;Romans 13:8-14; Romans 14:12; 1 Corinthians 3:5-16; 2 Corinthians 9:6-7; Galatians 6:7-10; Ephesians 6:5-8 ; Ephesians 6:1-4.

What the confessions have to say is very interesting. Get a load of these quotes:

First, from the Athanasian Creed:

At his [the Lord Jesus’] coming all men shall rise with their own bodies and give an account of their own deeds. Those who have done good will enter eternal life, and those who have done evil will go into everlasting fire. This is the true Christian faith. Unless a man believe this firmly and faithfully, he cannot be saved. The Athanasian Creed

Then there’s this from the Small Catechism:

God threatens to punish all who transgress these [ten] commandments. We should therefore fear his wrath and not disobey these [ten] commandments. On the other hand, he promises grace and every blessing to all who keep them. We should therefore love him, trust in him, and cheerfully do what he has commanded. SC 22

And these quotes from the Apology to the Augsburg Confession:

After justification works merit bodily and spiritual rewards because they please God through faith. There will be distinctions in the glory of the saints. AC IV 355

We also concede, and have often declared, that though justification and eternal life belong to faith, still good works merit other rewards, both bodily and spiritual, in various degrees AC IV 366

And this from the Formula of Concord:

We believe, teach, and confess further that all men, but especially those who are regenerated and renewed by the Holy Spirit, are obligated to do good works. FC Ep. 8

And this condemnation from the Formula:

We also reject and condemn that teaching that faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit are not lost through malicious sin, but that the holy ones and the elect retain the Holy Spirit even though they fall into adultery and other sins and persist in them. FC Ep.19

The analogy that I’ve prepared to explain this teaching comes from the family, and it goes like this: It would be perverse for one of my children to think that they become my child by doing the things I reward. If one of my children thought and acted this way, it could destroy any chance of a good relationship between us. But it would also be perverse if one of my children thought that, since they are already my child, then it doesn’t matter how they behave. If one of my children thought and acted this way, it could also destroy any chance of a good relationship between us. The best possibility in my family would be for my children to trust that they really belong on the basis of their status as sons and daughters of the family, and that they would do things that please Margaret and me because we are their loving parents with authority over them to reward them or punish them. Well, so far the analogy.

I take the Scriptural testimony, and the Confessions, to say that we are children of God by God’s grace in Christ alone, and that as children we can behave in ways that merit the temporal and eternal rewards that God desires to give us

This also seems to the be the teaching of the Catholic Church – I just looked up their Catechism this (Saturday) morning, and found this:

2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God's wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions. (The italics are theirs, not mine)

So, there we have it. This is teaching that I have not given a lot of consideration to in my ministry so far, but which seem important and encouraging.

Three Kids

2007-05-16T18:02:00.000+10:00

Here's a recent picture of the three kids.

Brown then Green

2007-05-16T15:27:00.000+10:00

Without recourse to government-funded naked rain dancing, Bendigo has recently received some great rain. Check out these two pictures on how the land behind our church has changed in the last few weeks.

The Large Catechism

2007-05-16T15:06:00.000+10:00

In preparation for this week's sermon I was reading through different passages in the Confessions, and came upon this from the Large Catechism:

All this, then, is the office and work of the Holy Spirit, to begin and daily to increase hoilness on earth through these two means, the Christian church and the forgiveness of sins. Then, when we pass from this life, he will instantly perfect our holiness and will eternally preserve us in it by means of the last tow parts of this article. (LC II, 59 -italics mine).

It's the second sentence here that interests me. On what passage(s) of Scripture, do you think, Luther's teaching of instant perfection in holiness is based?

Magee, Jesus, a Funeral, and the Resurrection

2007-04-21T21:13:00.000+10:00

If you've read my musings on previous posts, then you'll know that I'm keen on a philosopher by the name of Bryan Magee, and that I think his book 'Confessions of a Philosopher' is a gem. As I was preparing for a funeral on Friday I found myself recalling some of the things Magee recounts in relation to his reading of the New Testament (and of the Gospels, it seems, in particular). After summing up his (perhaps rather idiosyncratic) interpretation of the Lord's teaching, he concludes:

[T]he fact that there was anyone at all going around preaching things like [Jesus preached] two thousand years ago in a desert area of the Middle East is, to say the least of it, surprising...[W]ithin the limitations of morality he goes as deep as anyone was to penetrate for the better part of two thousand years. When it comes to tellingness of moral insight, a question like 'What will a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self?' is unsurpassed. (pp 355-356).

Well, I hardly disagree. But what got me thinking was that this same Jesus, whose moral teaching is so striking that it has undeniable power for anyone who cares to listen to it, also said things like this:

In my Father's house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? (John 14:3).

A great moral teacher who gives a personal promise of eternal life. He speaks with such authority when it comes to good and evil that I can't believe that he lies about heaven and hell. And yet this word of promise about the Father's house he gives privately, to his chosen disciples.

It makes me think about the mystery of the Resurrection of the Lord. His empty, open tomb was there for all to see. Accessible. Perplexing. Ambiguous in its meaning. But the Lord revealed his glorified body only to those whom he chose to be his witnesses; and he explained the meaning of his death and resurrection privately. And yet even his own hand-picked disciples, beholding his glorified body with their eyes, and hearing his words with the ears, could still doubt (Matthew 28:17).

The Resurrection seems almost as unbelievable as death.

The funeral I was taking was for a woman who had died in her mid fifties. She was a very active person who was evidently greatly loved by her family, friends, and workmates. Six weeks ago she was fine, but was quickly taken by very aggressive brain tumors (NB Nick Lindner, if you’re reading, Kate Drummond was this woman’s neurosurgeon). It was hard to believe that her body was in the coffin at the front of the church. Or that her body is now in a box six feet under in a cemetery at Spring Hill. Or that I will also die.

Lord Jesus, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Naked Rain Dances

2007-04-21T21:03:00.000+10:00

On Thursday night I was briefly interviewed by a journo from the Herald Sun (a Melbourne tabloid). She wanted to know if we up here in the dry country were going to heed Malcolm Turnbull's (an Australian politician's) advice and start praying for rain. I was in a freewheeling sort of mood, and this is what ended up in the paper on Friday:

IF Malcolm Turnbull says Australians need to start praying for rain, church leaders in country Victoria reckon everyone needs to start catching up on them…
Bendigo Lutheran Pastor Fraser Pearce, whose parish stretches to Castlemaine and Seymour, said constant prayer would continue.
"But there haven't been any naked rain dances or anything," he said.
"We also pray for our politicians to have wisdom, I wouldn't like to be in their position at all."

Well, as I said, no naked rain dances. Yet.

Sasse and the Lord's Supper

2007-04-12T19:11:00.000+10:00

Sasse’s ‘This is My Body’ is a book that I first read (on the recommendation of the formidable Zdenko Zlatar) while studying history at the University of Sydney. It’s a book that I’ve returned to repeatedly, each time with a deeper appreciation of Sasse’s scholarship. It’s also true that each time I’ve returned to the book I have felt more acutely questions that seem to be unresolved in the Lutheran tradition. So, for example, have a look at this gobbet from chapter four:

‘Here lies the fundamental difference between the Lutheran and the Roman understanding of consecration…For Luther it is the word of Christ, and nothing but his word, which is the cause of the Real Presence of the body and blood in the Lord’s Supper; there is no secondary cause. The minister to whom the consecration is reserved is the minister of the Word and the Sacraments, the appointed administrator of the means of grace; he is not, however, a priest in any other sense that that which regards all believers as priests because they are members of the priestly people of God.’ (p137)

When I read Sasse on this point (and indeed whenever I read the Confessions and the Lutheran Fathers on transubstantiation) I feel a certain shame at my relative ignorance of Aristotelian philosophy. I assume that when Sasse uses the term ‘secondary cause’ he is employing it in a technical, Aristotelian sense, and I fear that I can not repeat accurately and in my own words exactly what Sasse is getting at. It is apparent that this insistence that there is no 'secondary cause' has its genesis in polemic against the views of certain late medieval Catholic theologians (I would assume particulalry as these views relate the priesthood to the sacrifice of the mass), and may be primarily rhetorical, rather than theological, in its force. Nevertheless I have a question that such an argument provokes in me, and to which I cannot find a clear answer in the Formula, Chemnitz, or in any writings from Lutheran theologians that I’ve had the opportunity to study. It’s this: what is the place (if any) of the body of the minister in the Lord’s Supper?

I’ll explain what I mean: In the Lutheran tradition the focus in the Lord’s Supper is on the Words of Institution not as historical report, but as the performative words of Christ that effect what they say they will effect: the change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ (although the word ‘change’ needs to be understood with some care so as not to give the impression that the Lutheran church has a particular theory as to how this change is possible, and so as not to give the impression that the bread and wine cease to be bread and wine). But in all this the fact is that the performative words of Christ need to be spoken, to be somehow incarnated. From the point of view of the Augsburg Confession, the one speaking the words should be ‘rightly called’. But this, at least to me, immediately suggests that there is something other that the words of Christ that effect the change of the bread and wine; that is, that the words are spoken by a rightly called person.

Let’s say someone in the Lutheran church wanted to maintain that in fact any baptized person could, in an emergency, celebrate the Lord’s Supper (and, insofar as it was an emergency, be somehow ‘rightly called’). Presumably they would assert that the person should be baptized. Then it would be the word spoken by a baptized person that would effect the change in the bread and wine (and not simply the word). Let’s say they would not even insist on this, but that they would simply assert that it would need to be a person (and not, say, a synthesized voice) proclaiming the words. Then it would be Christ’s word spoken by a human being that effected the change in the bread and wine. But if they would not even insist on this, then what? What in the Confessions would provide a convincing refutation of someone wanting to propose a disincarnate ministry?

According to the Augsburg Confession Christ instituted the Ministry for the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, so that justifying faith may be obtained. The Ministry is an office that needs to be filled. But can we say, from the Confessions, that Christ necessarily calls particular people - that is, particular human beings- to the Ministry, or is it conceivable that the Confessions allow for a disembodied Ministry? If the Word and Sacraments could be delivered by other than human agency (say, by sophisticated robots), would this be problematic from a Confessional point of view? In the Confessions, what is the place (if any) of the body of the minister in the Lord’s Supper?

Now there’s a strong theme in Lutheran theology that the Lord’s Supper needs to be celebrated according to Christ’s institution, and I can see that a strong argument could be made that Christ instituted the Sacrament to be celebrated by human beings – that the Lord handed the leading of the celebration of the Holy Supper into the care of human beings (and indeed, some might add, male human beings), not robots. Fine. It’s just, if we make this argument, can we then go on to say that there is no secondary cause of the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper?

Well I’m thinking about it, and would welcome comment.

Back Again

2007-04-10T10:32:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm back again after Easter, with nothing much to Blog about just yet. Blogging (and, for me, reading blogs) can be addicative; the Lenten 'fast' from blog reading and writing was refreshing, but I'm enjoying having a look at what's been put our there since I switched off on Ash Wednesday!

Good to see that Peter Holmes has a site. What happened to Marco's 'Confused Anglopapist'?

Any other new sites I should be looking at?

Lent

2007-02-20T12:51:00.000+11:00

Not that I've been doing much on this blog recently, but just to let you know that I won't be putting anything on this site (or reading other sites) during Lent. So if you don't hear from me, it's not because I'm ignoring you!

The church blog site will continue as normal.

See you after Easter!

The First Day of School

2007-02-04T22:58:00.000+11:00

Last Wednesday was the first day of school for Cesca, and the first day of school this year for Oscar. Here's a picture of them walking down past the church on their way to school.

Attitude

2007-01-12T14:03:00.000+11:00

Yesterday evening we had dinner at the Pietsch's. Before the meal Oscar went outside with Tom and Jordan to have a hit of cricket. The bat they used was just about full sized, and so quite heavy. Oscar was concerned about this. Why?

"When I get 50 I won't be able to raise it above my head".

If he had said "When I get a double century I won't be able to put it above my head" I would have been particulalry impressed. But nevertheless, the boy has attitude.

For the statisticians out there: He got 4. With help.

Confessions of a Philosopher

2007-01-04T13:32:00.001+11:00

One book that I’m re-reading at the moment is Bryan Magee’s “Confessions of a Philosopher: A Journey through Western Philosophy”. This free-ranging book takes the form of an intellectual autobiography, but includes compact and clear overviews of some of the most important philosophical reflections in the Western tradition. Magee was a teacher of philosophy at Oxford, a member of parliament in England (Labor), and a television personality. He was well-acquainted with Bertrand Russell, and was close friends with Karl Popper. He has written extensively on a range of subjects; he is never boring.

Last night I re-read a section that is a real two-fisted polemic against uncritical atheism. I’m so used to reading academics rail against theism, that it’s refreshing to read what Magee has to say. Just so you know, Magee is a thoroughgoing agnostic. He says, for example, “It is true that we might have immortal souls, though I am inclined to doubt it. And it is true that the might be a God, though I am inclined to doubt that even more. (p199)” So you can see that he doesn’t attack dogmatic atheism from the point of view of a believer. But get this:

“I have little intellectual patience with people who think that know there is no God, and no life other than this one, and no reality outside the empirical world. Some such theistic humanism has been one of the characteristic outlooks of Western man since the Enlightenment, and is particularly common among able and intelligent individuals. It is the prevailing outlook, I suppose, in most of the circles in which I have moved for most of my life. It lacks all sense of the mystery that surrounds and presses so hard on our lives: more often than not it denies its existence, and in doing so is factually wrong. It lacks any real understanding that human limitations are drastic, in that our physical apparatus must inevitably mould and set very narrow bounds to all that can ever be experience for us – and therefore that our worldview is almost certainly paltry, in that most of what there is almost certainly lies outside it. It is complacent, in that it takes as known what it is impossible we should ever know. It is narrow and unimaginative, in that it disregards the most urgent questions of all. I, like Kant, would go so far to say that it is positively mistaken in believing that there is no reality outside the empirical realm when we know that there must be, even if we have no proper understanding of it. Altogether, it is a hopelessly inadequate worldview from several different standpoints simultaneously; and yet it is one that tends to identify itself with rationality as such, and to congratulate itself on its own sophistication. Throughout my life I have found most of its adherents unable to understand that truly rational considerations lead to quite different conclusions…Their attitude is what Schopenhauer called ‘shallow-pated rationalism’” (p200-201).

To get what he’s saying here it helps to have read his comments on Kant and Schopenhauer, but even as it stands it has some real power. What he has to say on Nietzsche is just brilliant; I’ll blog on that anon!

Our Christmas Letter

2006-12-21T12:15:00.000+11:00

Well, most of it....

Christmas 2006

God give you joy as you celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas!

The most significant even of this year for our family has been the safe arrival of our baby daughter, Emmanuelle Magdalen. After some initial difficulty, I have mastered the spelling of her name, and I’m enjoying the bird-like human being that she is becoming. We haven’t yet settled on a shortening for her name. I’m considering calling her by the first 2 digits of her medicare number.

Believe it or not, Francesca will be starting school next year (she turns 5 this February!). If they are offering a subject on ‘The Care and Grooming of Toy Ponies’ she will be a star student. Francesca is very much like a pony, as it happens. In fact it’s tempting to go and buy her a float, so that we can transport her properly for long trips.

I’m glad to say that Cesca is a budding Shakespeare enthusiast. She recently sat down and watched the whole of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. It could be that she is actually a fairy enthusiast. Or, in the end, just a TV enthusiast.

One more thing with Cesca: every time I look at her buck-toothed smile I know that one day I will be helping to pay for an Orthodontist’s BMW.

Oscar has had a great year at school, with an excellent teacher. He must use up loads of energy at school, because, although he eats so much cereal that he was recently approached by Kellog’s to head up their Australian operation , he is a skinny fellow. Really, you could play xylophone on his ribs. Oscar recently played Joseph in the church’s Christmas presentation, and insofar as all he had to do was act asleep (for Joseph’s dream), he was a natural. If the Christmas story included Joseph playing Demolition Derby on PS2, then Oscar could handle that part of the role with aplomb as well.

You won’t be surprised to hear that Meg has been spending most of her time caring for the kids. She’s a fantastic mum, and the kids love her.

I’ve had a good year here in Bendigo. If you want to see pictures of what’s happening in our lives, as well as read my various rants and conspiracy theories, then look up my blog: http://epistolaeobscurorumvirorum.blogspot.com/

I’m looking forward to the celebrations and festivities of Christmas. May God bless you with a relaxing and refreshing break, and with the peace Christ Jesus freely gives!

Fraser, Margaret, Oscar, Francesca, and baby Emmanuelle

Tagged by Schutz

2006-12-13T15:55:00.000+11:00

I notice that I've been tagged by David Schutz on his blog 'Sentire cum Ecclesia'. The theme is 'five things you may not know about me'. I think being tagged means that I'm meant to do a blog on the tag theme. Well, here goes...

1. I consider Shane Warne to be a genius. On the field.
2. I met my wife (proleptically speaking) at St Mark's in Sydney when I was in year 12 and she was in year 7; but I thought she was a university student.
3. In my first year of university I got four passes. The perfect first year of Arts.
4. I was in a band with the current Anglican Priest at St Bart's, Norwood.
5. I eat Carman's muesli most days of the week. My sister in law introduced me to it. It's great stuff.

Is that OK?

If Alex Pietsch is reading this, I'll tag him.

Sanctified Vision and Praying the Bible

2006-12-07T20:01:00.001+11:00

There has recently been written (2005) a very good short introduction (139 pages) to Patristic exegesis called 'Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible' by John J O'Keefe and R R Reno (The Johns Hopkins University Press). I bought it because I had read it praised very highly by ELCA theologian David Yeago. It is one of the most refreshing books on the church fathers that I have read.

One quote: "However opaquely, Ignatius expresses the single most defining feature of patristic exegesis: the presumption that knowing the identity of Jesus Christ is the basis for right reading of the sacred writings of the people of Israel" (p28).

Up at Synod a couple of months back Adam Cooper and I, in our spare time, read through sections of Mariano Magrassi’s ‘Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina’ (The Liturgical Press, 1998 – also short – 126 pages). This book is a gem. It is a sophisticated, scholarly, and amazingly clear and simple introduction into the monastic tradition of reading the Scriptures.

One quote (which is a quote of Smaragdus): “Reading enables us to learn what we do not know, meditation enables us to retain what we have learned, and prayer enables us to live what we have retained. Reading Sacred Scripture confers on us two gifts: it makes the soul’s understanding keener, and after snatching us from the world’s vanities, it leads us to the love of God.”

Beautiful; and a nice complement to Luther’s meditation, oratio, and tentatio.

The Interpretation of Art

2006-11-14T08:45:00.000+11:00

Here are two recent creations of my son, Oscar. He likes his art to have a message.

In case you can't read his script, he's saying.

"To mum and dad. Both of you area (are a) good mum and dad and you both are prit (pretty) and spshl (Special)."

"To mum. Dot (don't) be scrd (scared). I will be with you for mst (most) of yor (your) life."

Bids on these works can be made on ebay. In 50 years time.

The Open Society and Its Enemies

2006-11-13T21:35:00.000+11:00

At the moment I'm reading the first volume of Sir Karl Popper’s ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ (I read the second volume a couple of years back). This wonderfully stimulating work, now regarded as a classic defence of liberal democracy, was written by Popper in New Zealand during the darkest days of the Second World War. Popper, a native of Austria, had, as a Jew, to flee from the murderous persecution of the Nazis. After the war he moved to England, where he lived until his death in 1994.

What Popper writes appeals to my small ‘l’ liberal sensibilities, but leaves me with questions.

For example, Popper makes the following statement,

“[Individualism] has become the basis of our western civiliaztion. It is the central doctrine of Christianity (‘love your neighbour’, say the Scriptures, not ‘love your tribe’); and it is the core of all ethical doctrines which have grown from our civilization and stimulated it. It is also, for instance. Kant’s central practical doctrine (‘always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means to your ends’). There is no other thought which has been so powerful; in the moral development of man.”

This resonates with me, probably because it acknowledges something that is indeed in the Christian tradition, and that does indeed go back to the teaching and practice of the Lord. This focus on the value of the individual was, as it happens, also a significant feature in the writing of that great 20th century apologist, C S Lewis. Listen to Lewis in ‘The Weight of Glory’,

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -these are mortal, and their life is to ours the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit -immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we have to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people that have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feelings for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him Christ vere latitat -the glorifier and the glorified, Glory himself -is truly hidden."

Great stuff. But Lewis writes this with a general willingness to examine the question ‘What is a human being’, whereas (as far as I can tell) for Popper this sort of ‘essentialist’ question is not only redundant, it is destructive of true respect for human individuals.

But there’s the question that I want to put to Popper: "Sir Karl, as soon as you talk of 'human individuals' you must have some practical but unstated definition of what constututes a 'human individual'. Well, in your case what is the defintion? How do I know what you are talking about? Are disabled people human beings? Are poor people human beings? Are embryos human beings?"

Popper seems to be a dedicated nominalist, and at a methodological level, at least, would, it appears, want to defer the question of the definition of a human being in favour of attempting to solve problems confronted by particular human beings. This style of argumentation seems to work only if his readers agree to defer the question explicitly, but to have an agreed and unstated implicit definition of what constitutes the essence of a human being.

Popper’s apparent dedication to deferring the ‘essential’ question seems to me to be a practical impossibility (a practical impossibility, I would say, akin to that faced by the moral relativist, who at a practical level must use ‘ought’ language). In fact there seems to be an irony: Somewhere along the line, as far as I can tell, we human beings must show at least part of our ‘essence’ by being practical essentialists; we must, in our behavior and even more or less explicitly in our speech a definition of what we consider makes a human being. We must have a practical answer to the ‘essential’ question.

But Karl is dead. I can’t get an answer from him. I’m left thinking that he smuggled an understood but unstated essentialist definition of ‘human being’ into his text but that, given his loathing of Plato’s (and Hegel’s and Marx’s) historicism, he was afraid to admit it. The best interpretation that I can put on his approach is that generally speaking we only start asking for a definition of what makes a human being when something is desperately wrong (the murder of racial minorities; the creation of embryos as means to an end; the defence of slavery). And in human history, and even in the last few days in Australia, the definition of who is part of the human community is so often restricted in the interests of the rich; the powerful; the healthy.

Well, I’ll keep reading ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’, and literally thank God that people like Popper have been dedicated enough to do the hard work of writing to defend the dignity of human beings, even if they have not understood that we all, even the smallest of us, are created in the image of God. And I’ll keep wishing that I could question Popper, and hear what he had to say.

Cribbage

2006-11-01T21:25:00.000+11:00

My mum has, this year, started to teach my boy, Oscar, to play cribbage. He’s really taken to it. This picture is from earlier in the year, and shows my son and my dad together at the card table.

The Girls

2006-10-28T14:10:00.000+10:00

And here's three photos of the girls. Cesca at 'pirate day'; Emmanuelle in a good mood; and Cesca after having her hair curled for 'pirate day'.

A note about 'pirate day': Only after I picked Cesca up did I realize that ‘pirate day’ actually involved the children coming to kindergarten in order to spend the day illegally downloading and burning music and movies. I must say that I felt a little foolish getting her all dressed up. Then again, the constable found my proclaimed ignorance of the nature of the activity somewhat plausible when I picked Cesca up from the station. If her teacher makes bail they'll be back as a class for 'internet fraud day' which should be a real hoot.

Tomorrow’s Stephen Bradbury?

2006-10-28T13:34:00.000+10:00

Yesterday Oscar ‘the boy’ had his first school sports day. For a lad who would, left to his own devices, spend his waking hours doing nothing but playing ‘Demolition Derby’ and ‘Ratchet and Clank’ on the PS2, he showed remarkable athletic prowess. No doubt you have already read about the triumphant nature of his efforts in the Sport section of the Age. Perhaps one day, should the real contenders crash in a heap just before the finish line, he will be good to win a gold medal at the Olympics.

The real charm of his performance was his ‘never give up’ and ‘never think things through’ attitude. In two of the races that I saw, after he went over the finish line he turned around and headed, at top speed, back to the start, with, on at least one occasion, his competitors in train. I could only yell out in encouragement ‘Go Forest’.

For this post I’ve included a picture of the boy from a couple of months back. He was sick, and so was still (i.e. not moving, and therefore photographable).

Pastors' Conference

2006-10-06T13:04:00.000+10:00

I've just returned from Pastors' Conference and Synod. When I get some time I'll do my first real blog on the whole thing. For the moment, here's the presentation that I gave to the pastors.

General Pastors’ Conference

Why I am committed to upholding the current public teaching of the LCA

I’ll start with a scriptural example of commitment, and the warning it gives to me about thinking or speaking in terms of binding myself to, or committing myself to, the teaching of the church.

The Lord, on the night of his betrayal, spoke of the way that his own disciples would desert him. He taught plainly; his meaning was clear enough to evoke a response from the disciples. St Peter, who had already made a God-given confession of faith in the Lord, was bold: ‘Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you’. Even after the Lord then assured St Peter ‘Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times’ St Peter remained committed. He said: ‘Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you’. And so said all the disciples (Matthew 26:31-36).

To me this is one of the clearest examples of human commitment to the Lord in Scripture. I don’t get the sense that St Peter and the other disciples were speaking insincerely, or that they had the slightest doubt regarding their commitment to Christ. Yet we all know how the night unfolded. The Shepherd was struck, the sheep did flee; St Peter denied his Lord when challenged by a mere serving-girl.

The disciples’ own behaviour suggests to me that even the most heartfelt human commitment is a faltering thing. St Peter and the other disciples needed to be restored to a right relationship with Christ, based not primarily on their fidelity to him, but on his fidelity to them. They had to learn to order their commitment in relation to his. On this basis I want to make clear that my commitment to the LCA’s teaching, although real and heartfelt, is not of great significance to me. I want to walk the path of discipleship with the Apostles, and this seems to me to involve a frank acknowledgement of the ultimate weakness of my commitment to the Lord, and so also of the ultimate weakness of my commitment to my understanding of his teaching concerning ordination.

I’ll now use an analogy that will hopefully clarify how in practice I experience God’s word binding me in conscience in a way that involves my commitment, but transcends it.

To the best of my knowledge I am deeply committed to my wife, and to my marriage. I would like to think that I love my wife above all other people, and that nothing could lead me to forsake her or be unfaithful to her. Likewise I would like to believe that my commitment to my marriage is rock solid, and has the strength to withstand the temptations that come my way. I think this experience of commitment is important and significant, and that without it my married life would be in trouble.

Nevertheless, when it comes to trusting that my marriage has a future I ultimately look not to my own strength of commitment, but to the words of the Lord. He says, ‘What God has joined together, let no one separate’. Not what human love or commitment has joined together, but what God has joined together. And this is a joy to me. When I hold on to my wife in love and faithfulness I know in conscience that this is what Jesus wants me to do. When I am tempted to covet other women, I know in conscience that this is forbidden to me. My wife, and no other, is God’s gift to me as a marriage partner, even when my love and commitment falter. This gives me great sense of liberation and lightness: God can hold my marriage together in a way that I can not. The Lord Jesus, by binding my conscience through his word, brings his life and power to me and to my marriage.

Why the words of Jesus of Nazareth should have such power in my life is, ultimately, a mystery to me. I experience it as a reality, as something that is consistent with the workings of my reason, but as a reality that I receive by faith.

In employing this analogy I’m not saying that faithful marriage represents the LCA’s current teaching on ordination, and that its opposite represents the move to change this teaching. I’m saying that just as I experience that God’s word prohibits me from infidelity to my wife even when my commitment to my wife is weak or non existent, so I experience that God’s word prohibits me from sanctioning the ordination of women to the public ministry, even when my commitment to this word is weak or non-existent. The analogy is in the way that I experience being bound in conscience even when my personal commitment is in question.

Let me press this analogy a little further. If someone could persuade me that I was mistaken in thinking that the words of the Lord regarding marriage apply to my marriage, or if they could persuade me that I had misunderstood the Lord’s words in a fundamental way, then, of course, my conscience would no longer be bound as it is now. I would be free to adopt a different attitude to my wife and my marriage. Likewise if someone could persuade me that the apostolic prohibitions do not apply to the church here and now, or that I had misunderstood them in a fundamental way, then my conscience would no longer be bound to oppose the ordination of women as it is now. In both examples I could change my commitment in good conscience, although, of course, having good conscience in itself would not make me right before God.
Up to this point in my presentation I think that I’m describing an experience of God’s Word and the place of conscience under God’s Word that I hope is understandable to some extent to most or all of us here. It seems to me that three facts arise from this that are worth noting. 1. There are people in the LCA who experience being conscience bound by their understanding of God’s Word to work for change in the teaching on ordination. 2. There are people who experience being conscience bound by their understanding of God’s Word to oppose such change. And 3. There are also perhaps many people who do not experience being conscience bound one way or the other. This third point seems to be significant in thinking through how a proposal should be put to this conference and the general convention.

Very well, after all this, let me come back to the question that has been put to me : why I am committed to upholding the current public teaching of the LCA? Why do I experience that in conscience I am bound to uphold this teaching?

In one sense it is a mystery. That the words of the Lord Jesus have a living and liberating power over my life is something that I cannot explain, only describe. And, of course I must also openly acknowledge that subconscious factors may contribute to my outlook on this issue. For all I know my upholding of the LCA’s teaching on the apostolic prohibition stems from a repressed hostility to my mother, who is a public proponent of women’s ordination. Well, why not? The Scriptures themselves speak of the inscrutability of the human will. I hardly feel qualified to exempt myself from this inscrutability.

Even so, I am persuaded that the Apostolic prohibitions that are used in our public teaching is the teaching of the Lord Jesus, and that this teaching is not just for certain congregations in the early church, but also for the church in our own time and place. I acknowledge that the way these words apply in our context is a matter to be settled by prudent, evangelical application in our congregations. Nevertheless, I experience my being bound in conscience to this word as a mystery in my life, akin to my being bound in conscience to the Lord’s word to me in baptism, or the absolution, or the Lord’s Supper, or, indeed, my marriage.

I don’t feel ashamed to stand here and say that my commitment to the teaching of the LCA is ultimately a mystery to me. Reality is, after all, a mystery. For me, one of the deepest mysteries of life is the fact that God created us human beings as male and female (Genesis 1:26-27). Although I can rejoice in the way that we human beings, as male and female, are together made in God’s image, I can’t ultimately explain why this should be the case. I simply receive the fact of it in joy and thanks, and meditate about what it means for us in the church to live as men and women with faith in Christ.

I also don’t feel ashamed of the mystery of what seems to me to be the prohibition of woman from the public ministry. It is clear to me the teaching of the LCA regarding the exclusion of women from the ministry can be difficult to explain, particularly in our society where women are welcomed into roles formerly filled only by men, and men take up work in roles formerly assigned to women. In that sense I can understand that our public teaching may constitute a scandal for some, and that for some it may be a cause of shame as we proclaim the gospel in our communities. But I have a confidence, if you like a commitment, that this scandal is part of the scandal of the cross, and something in which we may actually glory. I understand that when we pastors of the Lutheran Church of Australia are called to promise publicly to teach this perhaps unpopular doctrine, it is because the church understands that it is the gracious will of Christ for His people. In other words, my take is that the LCA has understood that this teaching goes back to the Lord, and that He gives it to bless us rather than curse us.

In our history as the LCA we have seen two parts of the Bible as particularly significant in determining what the right teaching and practice is regarding this matter: 1 Corinthians 14:33b-38 (‘As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak…’), and 1 Timothy 2:11-15 (‘I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man…’). Of course the interpretation of these two passages constitutes the basis of much of the debate that we have been having. But I keep coming back to the words in 1 Corinthians: ‘What I write is a command of the Lord’. I’m still persuaded that we are called to recognize the command in Corinthians as a command not of St Paul only, but of the Lord. And, although I continue to be persuaded that the public office of the ministry as it is exercised in the LCA does conform to the teaching of the Scriptures and the Confessions, I welcome debate on this issue as helpful to our church in distinguishing but not separating the priesthood of all believers and the public office of the ministry.

I am still persuaded that the exclusion of women from the public ministry is consistent with the whole sweep of Scripture, and with the teaching and practice of the Lord. When it comes to both men and women being of equal dignity the witness of Jesus in the Gospels is in no way unclear. Jesus, in His example and word, understood that men and women together are made in God’s image. Jesus broke with many expectations and sexist human customs of the day, without fear for what people might have thought or said (e.g. Luke 11:38-42 - teaching a woman; Matthew 9:20-26 - dealing graciously with a ceremonially unclean woman; Luke 8:1-3 - having women travel with Him and His disciples). In this he gave a definitive revelation of the law of love. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, this did not mean that Jesus thought the distinction between the sexes unimportant when it comes to proclaiming publicly the gospel. As God in the flesh, the Lord freely chose only men to serve as public ministers of His Word and Sacraments. The Lord chose only Jewish men, but evidently the Apostles didn’t see this distinguishing ethnic mark as a necessary characteristic for those publicly proclaiming the Gospel (for example, we think of Apollos and Timothy, and the witness of the Apostolic Fathers).

In my understanding it was on the basis of the Lord’s own teaching and action that the church, since the earliest days, has constantly taught that only men (but not only Jewish men) were eligible to serve in the public ministry (eg Acts 1:15-26 – the calling of Matthias ‘one of these men’ to replace Judas). In fact until the 20th century the Lutheran churches around the world ordained only men to the public ministry. Even today the vast majority of Christians belong to churches that ordain only men. The single largest group of Christians (the Roman Catholic Church), clearly and publicly teach that on the basis of God’s Word they have no authority to ordain women. This is of particular significance to me in relation to the fact that we Lutherans, after centuries of controversy, recently reached remarkable theological agreement with the Roman Catholics on Justification.

As an aside, I find it noteworthy that the Catholic Church has consistently upheld the exclusion of women from the public ministry while maintaining, what appears from my admittedly limited study, a consistent magisterial teaching against slavery. So when I read that the Western church was slow to speak out against slavery, I have questions. Maybe English speaking Christians were slow to speak out, but for me the Western church means primarily the Roman Catholic Church. And Catholic magisterial teaching against slavery seems to go back to before the Middle Ages. Certainly in the Middle Ages the great and representative Catholic theologian St Thomas Aquinas placed slavery in opposition to natural law, and found no natural basis for the enslavement of people from any religion or race. In the Reformation Pope Paul III, who presided from 1534-1549, publicly and authoritatively taught that Satan was the cause of slavery, and imposed the penalty of excommunication on those who were engaging in the slave trade in the New World. Of course those who were the target of such teaching did not listen; but what’s new? It’s the public and authoritative teaching that interests me.

The fact that women were excluded from authoritative public proclamation of the Gospel by Jesus, by the Apostles, by the Church throughout its history, by the Lutheran churches around the world until relatively recently, and by the clear majority of Christians until this day is particularly significant to me when I consider the fact that women have always played a vital role in the life of the church. From the Virgin Mary onward women have been instrumental in bringing Jesus to the church and the world (e.g. Mark 16:1-8 – the women called to announce the resurrection; John 4:1-42 - the Samaritan woman’s testimony concerning Jesus to her fellow townspeople; 1 Corinthians 16:19 – the church meeting at the house of Prisca and her husband Aquila; 2 Timothy 1:3-7 – the heritage of faith from Lois to Eunice to Timothy). In more recent times, the witness of Bo Giertz on this issue is also significant for me. In his The Hammer of God this famous opponent of the ordination of women was able to portray in a powerful way a picture of men and women, ordained and lay, proclaiming the gospel in their different historical, cultural and vocational contexts.

There’s one more thing. I find it a noteworthy fact that many churches that have ordained women to the ministry have also gone on to ordain practicing homosexual men and women into the ministry, or are currently debating the issue in their synods and church gatherings. Given the fact of the correlation of these two issues in the history of the church, and the given the fact of similar theological argumentation on the basis of Scripture for both issues, I think that in our LCA debate on the ordination of women we would be aided by having an agreed statement on how the two issues are in no way related.

I expect that over the next days we will hear many of the arguments for and against our church’s teaching concerning the application of the apostolic prohibitions in Scripture regarding the ordination of women to the public office of the ministry. I expect that many, probably most, perhaps all of the arguments that we will hear are arguments with which we are already familiar. It would be difficult for me to say of any single argument: here is the reason that I interpret the prohibitions to be binding on me in conscience.

OK. Let’s say the LCA in convention decides in synod to change its public teaching on the ordination of women. Where does that leave someone like me?

First of all a few comments. What gives us our unity is not our synodical organization, but our acceptance of a common body of teaching. Our unity is based not on a common cultural heritage, or on a commitment to the LCA as an institution, or on a common political outlook or even on the fact that this the church in which God has happened to place us and nurture us in faith in Christ. Rather, as is evident in our rites of baptism, first communion, confirmation, and particularly in our rite of ordination, our unity is in a common, publicly accessible, and clearly articulated teaching, as set down in the Lutheran Confessions and the Theses of Agreement. This teaching includes our current position on the prohibition of ordination of women to the public ministry.

Therefore, if the LCA changes this clearly articulated teaching on ordination, it disrupts the current foundation of our unity, unless there is consensus, indeed unanimity, for the change.

Personally speaking, such a change would leave me in formal, outward fellowship with people and congregations who, as far as I can tell in conscience, would be directly disobeying the word of God. Could I stay in fellowship with Christians and congregations who settled into this disobedience, and let it shape the church’s practice of ordination and ministry? I can’t answer this question with any clarity or certainty, and in principle I have not given my thoughts over to what I would do if such a decision were taken. But I can imagine someone saying something like this to me:

“Fraser, that you have qualms of conscience is perhaps understandable, but you are not interpreting Scripture correctly. You need to submit your conscience to the teaching of the church. Think about it: You didn’t make yourself a pastor, did you? You were called by God through the church, and ordained by the church. Now the same church has decided that women, too, may serve with you as pastors in the church. Be guided by the wisdom of the church; don’t be proud and hold on stubbornly to your own interpretation. Let the Spirit lead you in humility to accept the decision of your brothers and sisters, and take up your ministry with joy, knowing that now you are free to proclaim the gospel in a more inclusive way.”

Frankly this sort of talk could win me over. But for it to give me true peace in conscience I would have to believe that the doctrinal decisions of the LCA gathered in General Convention have authority to bind my conscience along with the conscience-binding words of the Lord. I would have to believe that I could stand before God and say: “Lord, it seems to me that your Word prohibits women from serving as pastors, but the LCA, speaking in your name, has declared that my interpretation is not correct. So I let the word of the LCA guide me, and I stand before you confident that I have your approval.” But at the moment I am not convinced that such a confidence would be well founded.

More on the Baptism

2006-09-25T12:21:00.000+10:00

A few more pictures from the baptism. First, Emmanuelle in prayerful repose, then her being baptised, then her receiving the Lord's Prayer.

Emmanuelle Magdalen

2006-09-24T20:19:00.000+10:00

Today we celebrated the baptism of our little baby daughter. As part of the rite her name, Emmanuelle Magdalen, was announced for the first time to family and friends.

We are very thankful for all the family and friends who could join us in the celebrations. The church was full to overflowing, and Pastor Greg Pitesch, the district president, came up to minister the baptism. He also preached and led the Eucharistic liturgy. It was a very joyful service, and we will remember it for our whole lives.

We had a whole sheep on a spit for lunch afterwards, as well as spit-roasted pork and beef. No meat eaters and wine drinkers went home hungry or thirsty!

In the photo are the Godparents (Vinni Ramm, Dania (Danica) Ahern, Jemma Eden, and Sue (Suedom) Westhorp); the parents; Emmanuelle; and Pastor Greg.

Please join with us in giving thanks to God for the safe birth of our little daughter, Emmanuelle Magdalen, and for the gift of baptism by which she has been adopted into God's family!

A Little Baby

2006-09-19T21:48:00.000+10:00

And here she is again. Looking well fed, don't you think? Actually, she was a little overcooked in the womb, but she doesn't seem too upset.

By the way, the posting times that are displayed seem to be the times my posts hit the USA. The baby is sleeping rather well, really.

Gentle Wah

2006-09-19T21:40:00.000+10:00

Not the name of a chinese evangelist, just a description of our little baby's cry. Here's a new picture of her for you all to enjoy.

Conscience, Dissent, and Unity in the Church

2006-09-17T22:42:00.000+10:00

Back in May I was asked to give a talk to the Victorian and Tasmanian District Pastors' Conference, on the above topic. If you are interested in what I had to say, read on...

Conscience, Dissent, and Unity in the Church

Presented to the Victorian District Pastors’ Conference, May 2006, by Fraser Pearce, Pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Bendigo

Speaking in Good Conscience

In the Gospel according to St Matthew, we hear these words of the Lord: ‘I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give account for every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned’ (Matthew 12:36-37). These words, spoken by the Lord, stand as a warning to us. We can be tempted in life to treat the words that we speak with a levity that does not take into account the judgment of God. When we fall into this temptation we speak words that we know, in our conscience, while being plausible and winsome to the people who hear us, do not have the approval of God. When we fall into this temptation we use our tongues to serve the god of human approval, rather than to bless the true God by speaking what is true.

Confessing the Faith in Good Conscience

Care in the use of words, and the role of conscience in discerning what we may say with the approval of God, is of particular significance when it comes to the confession of faith that we make before God and the world. When we confess our faith we are not speaking words lightly. Instead we are taking on our lips declarations of faith that are made, or at least should be made, soberly and with awareness of our accountability to God. The quotation from the psalms that forms the superscription to the Augsburg Confession sums up this attitude: ‘I will also speak of your decrees before kings, and shall not be put to shame’ (Psalm 119:46). That is: our public confession before the world does not bring us shame before God, because it is made of the basis of His Word and in good conscience.

Confessing the Faith and Salvation

Scripture brings out the good news of our accountability to God; St Paul in Romans teaches that God works His salvation in us by giving us both the belief in our hearts and the confession of our lips –by bringing together the spiritual belief and the bodily confession (Romans 10:9-10; c.f. 2 Corinthians 5:10; Romans 2:6-11). In fact we can say that when our outward actions conform to our inward beliefs in Christ Jesus, we have a foretaste of what the Apostles’ Creed means when it speaks of the ‘resurrection of the body’: our bodies are joined to the supernatural confession of faith, and so become bearers of God’s blessing to ourselves and the world (Matthew 16:13-20; 1 Corinthians 12:3; Luke 1:26-56). We are not only forgiven sinners, we are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that [we] may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light’ (1 Peter 2:9).

Bodily Confession of Spiritual Truth

In this paper I will be taking up the Scriptural teaching that what we do with our bodies has spiritual significance, and that we make our bodily confession of faith primarily in the presence of God. In other words I will be working with the understanding that what we speak in our bodies in the temporal world is in fact loaded with eschatological significance, and that this fact is the stimulus for the great joy that we can take in confessing the church’s faith.

In this paper I will also be dealing with the reality of dissent –with the fact that situations may arise in which we may not be able to confess the public teaching of our church in good conscience. We will see that from a Christian point of view dissent does not focus on how an individual asserts their rights, or on how they effect their independence from the power structure of the group. Rather we will see that it focuses on the rupture that is caused when the dissenter refuses to confess that teaching which is the basis for fellowship of pulpit and altar.

From this we will see how dissent from public teaching is linked with the unity of the church, and we will deal with the question of what to do when someone cannot in good conscience confess the unifying public teaching of their church. This is a particularly significant question for pastors, who are required to make public vows regarding their fidelity to the public teaching of the church, and who are held especially accountable by God for false teaching or corrupt practice (James 3:1). In our context one clear practical question becomes: Can a pastor who is in dissent from the publica doctrina of the LCA remain in fellowship with the LCA? But before that question is addressed, we need to examine the relationship of the individual believer to the church in the act of confessing the faith.

The Church’s Publica Doctrina

As pastors we are called by the church publicly to teach and confess not our own opinions or our own particular exegeses of biblical texts, but the publica doctrina of the church as it is confessed in the Book of Concord, and as it is explicated in the Theses of Agreement and Doctrinal Statements and Theological Opinions of the LCA. Not all the issues dealt with in the church’s publica doctrina are of equal weight, and, as we shall see below, in principle our doctrinal and theological statements and opinions are patient of reform on the basis of Scripture. But, until such a time as our doctrinal statements and theological opinions are changed by general pastors’ conference together with general convention, we are bound, at least in our capacity as pastors of the LCA, to teach and act in accordance with them. Practically speaking, although we may have questions concerning aspects of the publica doctrina, when it comes to what we proclaim from the pulpit or teach the congregations in our care we are bound in conscience and by our ordination and installation vows to submit our private judgments concerning the publica doctrina to the judgment of the church.

It is a hallmark of Lutheran theology that care is taken in formulating and defining the publica doctrina so as only to bind consciences on issues that have clear divine commands or prohibitions. It is true that when it comes to the ecumenical creeds and Confessions of our church, we are called to make a quia rather than quatenus confession. That is, we are called to commit ourselves before God and the world to the contents of the Book of Concord because they are true expositions of the Word of God. We bind ourselves in conscience to this confession of faith; that is, we submit in conscience to the teaching contained in these confessions, and rely on the doctrinal content of the confessions to set the boundaries for the proper conduct of our worship and life. On issues that are dealt with in the Theses of Agreement and the Doctrinal Statements and Theological Opinions of the Lutheran Church of Australia, however, there is possibility for reform. In our current context, when we are facing the possibility of change in the publica doctrina of the LCA, it is helpful to look again at the ‘Status on the Theses of Agreement and Other Doctrinal Statements’[1]:

I. In the exercise of their teaching function, whether dealing with a group or a congregation or with individuals, pastors of the LCA should not run counter to the letter and the spirit of the Theses of Agreement.
2. The Theses of Agreement, the fruit of prayerful labours extending over many years, have been adopted in all seriousness and in good faith by both the former UELCA and ELCA as a unifying document. They should be respected and treated accordingly. Should amendments become desirable in the course of time, such amendments would have to be submitted to the entire Church after thorough theological examination and discussion. Meanwhile, a deliberate disregard of the Theses in teaching and preaching would appear as evidence of bad faith, and would constitute a serious threat to the unity of the Church. There may, of course, be inadvertent disregard of the Theses due to ignorance of their content.
3. It is clearly the right and the duty of the Church, in the face of current challenges, to define how it understands the Scriptures and the Confessions. Therefore, explanations and amendments of the Theses, as well as any other statements of a doctrinal nature, submitted to the entire Church after thorough theological examination and discussion and adopted by it, must be accorded the same authority in the Church as the Theses themselves (see l and 2 above).

The process of debate in the church regarding women’s ordination over the past decade and more, including prolonged discussions at pastors conferences and synods, have been ways the LCA has attempted to live according to its own teaching. This debate has been, as we well know, the cause of much heartache for many of our members, and much confusion on the part of pastors and the laity. Many people have spent time agonizing over how they can reconcile their consciences to the publica doctrina as it does exist, or as it might exist in the future.

Conscience and Publica Doctrina

One temptation that we face when we experience difficulties in accepting the publica doctrina is to pit conscience against the publica doctrina of the church, and to assert that the claims of conscience are superior to the confession that we pastors are called to make. In this model the voice of conscience and the publica doctrina are seen as competing authorities, with conscience being the final court of appeal. At first glance this model seems not simply to be attractive when we face difficulties with the publica doctrina, but to be an accurate reflection of reality. After all, it is true that God calls us always to obey conscience, and that to go against conscience is in all cases to risk spiritual harm (more on this below). It is also true that the content of the church’s publica doctrina is patient of reform, and that at times fidelity to the Word of God may mean agitating for change in the publica doctrina. Then why is this model unhelpful? Why is it misleading to see conscience as a superior authority to the publica doctrina? To respond to these questions we need to consider the nature of conscience.

Conscience

The reality of conscience as experienced by all human beings is the cross-cultural and trans-historical context into which the Apostolic proclamation of repentance and forgiveness in Christ Jesus is made. Although the Scriptures never give a definition of the term ‘conscience’, the writings of St Paul in particular give us a clear picture of the role of conscience, especially as it is informed by the Word of God, in leading us in the life of faith and love (e.g. Romans 2:14-16; 1 Timothy 4:2; 1 Corinthians 8:7-13). On the basis of the Scriptural witness, the Lutheran Confessions assume knowledge of the role of conscience in human life as being crucial in determining a right understanding of the distinction between the Law and the Gospel. In fact the Confessions go so far to say that without obedience to conscience, there can be no faith in Christ.[2]

What is Conscience?

Hallesby, whose writing on conscience is familiar to many Lutherans, defines conscience as ‘that knowledge or consciousness by which man knows that he is conforming to moral law or the will of God’ (Hallesby 8). In this definition Hallesby simply clarifies that, when it comes to determining a right or wrong course of action, conscience by its very nature must be informed by something other than itself. Conscience does not and cannot establish teaching or rules to which any human being is accountable to him or herself, or to others, or to God. Koehler[3] puts it this way: ‘Conscience never sets up a moral rule or code for its own guidance, it does not establish ethical principles for our conduct, it merely prompts us to observe what we believe to be right and to eschew what we believe to be wrong’ (Koehler 346-347). This understanding of conscience is not peculiar to Koehler or Hallesby or even the Lutheran church as a whole. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, explicating the tradition regarding conscience common to the universal church puts it this way: ‘Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments…It is by the judgment of conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law’ (CCC 1777, 1778). Again, in this definition, conscience receives rather than establishes knowledge of what is good and evil; it is by means of the conscience that human beings recognize and apply the precepts of God’s law, accessed either by reason through creation, or by faith through revelation.

In this traditional (and indeed Scriptural) understanding of conscience it should be noted that conscience is not simply reliant for its knowledge of good and evil on what is handed down in different human communities, whether Christian or other. Following the lead given by St Paul in Romans 2:15 (‘The Gentiles show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness’), the Confessions acknowledge the role of natural law in informing the conscience. The Apology (Ap. 4,7), the Large Catechism (LC II,67), and the Formula (FC SD VI, 5) all refer to the reality of natural law, known through reason, and received by the conscience (although received ‘to some extent’ (Ap. IV,7) because only divine revelation shows us the full meaning of the law). All human beings, by using their reason, can know the natural law at least to some extent, although different human traditions can darken this knowledge, while the Word of God confirms, clarifies, and deepens this knowledge as it is received by the conscience.

Why is Obeying Conscience Important?

It is on the basis of such an understanding of conscience that the significance of obedience to conscience is most clearly seen. Because conscience is the means by which we apply our knowledge of good and evil to the moral issues that we face, when we listen to conscience we are (whether we are Christians or not) actually putting ourselves before Christ Jesus, the judge of the living and the dead. Obeying conscience, of course, does not in itself justify us (1 Corinthians 4:4 ‘I am not aware of anything against myself [i.e. my conscience is clear], but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me’). But it is the way in which we come from darkness into light, and so receive the mercy of the One who is the light of the world (1 John 1:5-7; John 8:12; cf 1 John 3:19-20). We will deal with this in more detail below.

This teaching regarding obedience to conscience, on the other hand, also shows us that when we suppress the voice of conscience, or when we act contrary to the dictates of conscience, we are sinning not just against conscience but against God. Koehler puts it strongly: `To act against conscience is sin…It is a sin when we act contrary to the First and Second or any other Commandment, but it is just as much a sin when in any matter that involves a moral issue we act contrary to the dictates of our conscience’ (Koehler 356-357). This is why it is possible, in St Paul’s evaluation, for someone to defile their conscience and to fall even when their actions are not objectively opposed to God’s commands or prohibitions, as is the case with a person of weak conscience eating food sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8). In fact in his teaching on this issue St Paul uses the categories of holiness to describe the impact of acting against conscience. To act against conscience is to defile it, and so to render the Christian holding such conscience incapable of participating with blessing in the holiness of God. An example of the consequences of participating in bad conscience in the holiness of God is spelled out in St Paul’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 (‘For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. [And note how he goes on:] But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged’ –cf. 4:4).

An analogy may be helpful to clarify what has been said so far regarding conscience. A traveler might use a compass to get their bearings. But without a map displaying the traveler’s true location, the compass is of limited use and the traveler will be at no advantage in reaching their destination. Likewise in determining a course of action conscience on its own is of limited use. It needs true doctrine about right and wrong, it needs true teaching about the purpose of human existence. Now, our conscience, like a good compass, will always and infallibly orient us to what we have been taught is good, and will always point us away from what we have been taught is wrong[4]. But our conscience, like a good compass, cannot give us the location of our destination as human beings or knowledge of the right way to reach it. It is true that just as a traveler errs from the path if they disregard the promptings of their compass, so we err from the path of righteousness if we disobey the voice of conscience. But it is also true that just as obeying the promptings of a compass is no guarantee of a successful journey to someone with the wrong map, so obeying conscience is no guarantee of holy living for someone who has received false or heretical teaching.[5]

From this we may go on to say that if disobeying conscience in matters that have no divine command or prohibition leads to a defiled conscience, disobeying conscience in matters that do have a divine command or prohibition (if you like, disobeying the compass when it conforms to a true map) is potentially devastating to the life of faith. Again Koehler: ‘The situation is worse when a man acts contrary to convictions that are in full agreement with the Word of God. He knows that God does not want him to steal, his conscience also warns him not to do it, and yet he steals. In this case he commits a double sin, one against the Seventh Commandment, the other against his conscience. This is a very serious matter, this kills faith. For Paul tells us 1 Tim. 1:19: “Holding faith and a good conscience; which some having put away concerning faith have made shipwreck.” He means to say that he who puts away a good conscience by acting contrary to its demands makes a shipwreck concerning his faith, i.e., loses faith’ (Koehler 359). Conscience is given by God as the guide to lead us to Christ Jesus the Saviour – to lead us to our destiny as bodily participants in the divine life of the Trinity (Ephesians 1:20-23; 2 Peter 1:4). Therefore to abandon conscience is to abandon the means by which God opens us to the revelation of the His Word made flesh; it is, ultimately, to abandon Christ Jesus.

The Relation of Conscience to the Word of God

From this the orientation of conscience to the Word of God may become clearer. It is not that Christian conscience is different in itself from non-Christian conscience, or that the conscience of a Christian person is in itself an ultimate and infallible guide to holy living. Rather, Christian conscience, when it is informed by the Word of God, has a true knowledge of good and evil. The Word, through conscience, judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart with devastating clarity (Hebrews 4:12). In addition to this, conscience, when it is informed by God’s Word, leads Christians to know that they are not simply answerable to themselves or the human community, but that they are ‘naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom [they] must render an account’ (Hebrews 4:13 cf. Romans 2:6-11).

How do we get a Good Conscience?

If this were the sum total of the relationship between conscience and the Word of God, then Christian people would be forced into a situation of perpetual ‘bad conscience’ –of living only with the ever-accusing power of God’s Law. (Ap IV, 167) However God’s Word also reveals to us Christ Jesus the Saviour, the one who gives us the gift of God’s mercy and forgiveness; the one who renews our will and gives us the strength to live according to the perfect law of love. Moreover the Holy Spirit leads people through Word-of-God-informed conscience into fellowship not only with God the Father through the Lord Jesus, but also into fellowship with all the baptized as they partake as one in the holy things of God: the Scriptures; the Sacraments; and the bodily confession of saving faith (SA VIII,10).

In all this it may be said that godly conscience orients the believer to Christ Jesus, and so is the means by which we submit to the liberating power of God’s Word. When our conscience rightly accuses us on the basis of God’s Law, we hunger and thirst for a righteousness which is not ours but which can only be given to us –the righteousness of God given in Christ Jesus (Romans 1:17). Good conscience is therefore Christ-informed conscience that results from and leads a person to placing their whole trust in Christ Jesus as Saviour. In fact the Holy Spirit leads Christians to receive all the promises and commands of Christ as words which liberate human beings from the bonds of sin and death, and lead the believer and the whole Church into the new human life that sprang into being at the resurrection of Christ.

Where does this happen?

What has been said in this last section can sound a little abstract or theoretical. In the life of the church, however, the reality of God informing conscience through His Word, and so leading people to saving faith in Christ, happens in concrete, specific, and even bodily ways. Of course in life there are a myriad of particular situations in which Christian people are led by the Holy Spirit to obey the promptings of conscience; but a key Christ-instituted way (perhaps the key Christ-instituted way) in which we listen to conscience is within the context of confession and absolution.

The Small Catechism gives the most straightforward teaching concerning what Christ has given us in conferring on the church the authority to forgive sins. Put simply, Christ has given us the freedom to look at our lives according to reality – according to the Law of God - and to make our confession of sin because God is love and forgives us our sins for Christ’s sake. When Luther poses the question: What are the sins of which we have knowledge and that trouble us? He answers: ‘Reflect on your condition in light of the Ten Commandments’ (SC V, 20) - that is, in light of the Law of God, which is both inscribed on the human heart in creation, and handed on clearly in revelation. Luther goes on to encourage the believer to make a further confession, that is that the forgiveness they receive from the confessor comes from God (SC V, 27). In this the conscience, open to the Word of God as it is received in Law and Gospel, leads the believer to place their trust in Christ alone, and so to receive the power of the risen Christ to live the life of Christian love (Philippians 3:10).

The theology that is at the basis of the practice of Private Confession and Absolution is spelled out most clearly in Article XII of the Apology (Penitence): ‘The power of the keys administers and offers the Gospel through absolution, which is the true voice of the Gospel...Hearing the Gospel and hearing absolution strengthens and consoles the conscience’ (AC Ap. XII, 39-43). Here we have a Christ-centered understanding of the role of conscience in relation to the Word of God, that upholds God’s law and Gospel in their purity, and that gives the believer real access to the saving presence of Christ in the church.

Luther had sharp words to say to those who refused to use the gift of Christ (the Keys) that we receive in the form of Private Confession and Absolution: ‘[I]f you despise it and proudly stay away from confession, then we must come to the conclusion that you are no Christian and that you ought not receive the sacrament. For you despise what no Christian ought to despise, and you show thereby that you can have no forgiveness of sin. And this is a sure sign that you also despise the Gospel’ (LC Brief Exhortation, 29). The index to the Book of Concord gives copious references to the evangelical interpretation of Private Confession and Absolution given throughout the Confessional documents. Given the significance of Private Confession and Absolution in both the writings of Luther and the theology of the Confessions, it would at the least be curious if a Lutheran pastor were to refuse to use such a gift while at the same time dissenting from the publica doctrina of the church. I am personally persuaded that a deeper appropriation of our Scripture-based tradition of Private Confession and Absolution would be a very helpful precondition for any real critical engagement with the publica doctrina that would not offend against conscience, either of the one dissenting, or of those receiving the theological argumentation that might form the basis of dissent.

What does conscience have to do with the confession of faith?

The way in which conscience is dealt with in the confessions, and which is reflected in the treatment on conscience in this paper, can make it seem as if conscience exists primarily in aiding us somehow to escape God’s commands and prohibitions. This apparent conclusion is far from the mark. While it is true that Christ Jesus frees us from the condemnation that comes from failing to live according to God’s Law, it is just as true that Christ Jesus frees us to live according to God’s commands and prohibitions. When Christ, through His church, liberates us from the power of sin, He gives us the Holy Spirit, who frees us to live in a God-pleasing way. What might this look like?

Let’s say that a pastor sins by knowingly making a false confession of faith – by using his mouth to confess what his heart does not believe, and to confess what he knows does not conform to the Word of God. That pastor has ‘doubly sinned’ and will experience bad conscience. If his bad conscience does not find rest in Christ, that pastor will be vulnerable to spiritual attack from Satan and so may be drawn further into sin and even into false belief in his heart. Left uncared for, the pastor may even end up rejecting conscience with its burdensome accusations, and so ‘shipwreck’ his faith (1 Timothy 1:19). But let’s say that the pastor is encouraged by a brother to confess his sins and receive absolution. When he avails himself of the opportunity, he will receive the gift of good conscience in Christ Jesus. This will give him the strength to seek God’s approval rather than that of human beings, and it will give him the freedom to do what he could not do by his own strength – make a true confession of faith with heart and mouth. The absolution, in giving good conscience, thus also gives freedom and power to live according to God’s will.

Perhaps more than any other part of Scripture, 1 John brings out this connection between confession of sin, forgiveness in Christ Jesus, and the new ability to love and keep God’s commands. In fact the Apostle teaches that God’s children have boldness before God through belief in Christ Jesus (1 John 4:18-24), a boldness that gives them a new reception of God’s commandments: ‘For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’ (1 John 5:3-5). The one who, when condemned in heart (that is, when experiencing bad conscience) places their trust in Christ Jesus the Saviour, receives God’s forgiveness, and is renewed by God to love all that He commands, and to do it by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If a right confession of faith were our own work – if by it we somehow established our status as sons of God - then we would always be defeated when assaulted by Satan. We would be forced back on to our own integrity or honesty or intellectual prowess or knowledge of history or theology; we would be forced to rely on ourselves and our own strength, and so would fall. The devil is more subtle in his temptations than we are sure in our convictions. But, thanks be to God, a right confession of faith is the work of the Holy Spirit, who gives us the very words by which we may rightly address God (Romans 8:15-17; 26-27), and who, in bringing us to Christ, teaches us that God is love.

The example of St Peter (Matthew 16:13-28) reminds us that the right confession of faith is never our own possession. At all times we face the temptation to turn away from the cross to human glory. I believe that it is no coincidence that Jesus gives St Peter the Keys between the Apostle’s Spirit-inspired confession and his Devil-inspired rejection of Christ and his ministry. God gives the church authority to forgive so that Christians may make the true confession of faith in a penitential posture. When we pastors confess our sin we hear in absolution the very word that brings us to the true confession of Jesus the Lord, and that frees us to receive all his commands with joy and thanks.

Dissent

The issue of dissent is not a theoretical one for the LCA. At this coming General Pastors’ Conference and national Convention, we are facing anew deliberation concerning the LCA’s publica doctrina on the ordination of women. This is an issue that is potentially one of deep dissent, and that may even lead to separation of congregations from the LCA. It is worth looking again at the careful way in which our church’s teaching is worded, to see how it makes an appeal to conscience on the basis of the Scriptures.

Though women prophets were used by the Spirit of God in the Old as well as in the New Testament 1 Cor. 14:34,35 and I Tim. 2:11-14 prohibit a woman from being called into the office of the public ministry for the proclamation of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments. This apostolic rule is binding on all Christendom; hereby her rights as a member of the spiritual priesthood are in no wise impaired. (TA VI 11)

In the LCA most of the debate on the ordination of women has centered on the two texts cited in this public teaching, either by dealing with them exegetically, or by attending to the hermeneutical principles used in arriving at different interpretations. It seems to me that three basic positions have developed in response to the debate, corresponding to three different groups of people.

There are those who believe in conscience that God’s Word prohibits women from being called into the office of the public ministry. These people are thus conscience bound to the current publica doctrina of the LCA on this issue, and a change in the publica doctrina would lead them into a situation of dissent.

There are those who are unsure whether God’s Word prohibits or allows the ordination of women, and so who do not experience being bound in conscience one way or the other. For the sake of unity and peace in the church (Ephesians 4:3) these people are content to live and teach according to the publica doctrina on the issue, either as it stands now or as it might be changed in the future.

Then there are those who believe in conscience that God’s Word allows and even mandates the ordination of women, and who see the refusal to ordain women as a denial of the Gospel. Without a change in the current publica doctrina of the LCA such people are conscience bound to head into a situation of dissent.

The first and last of these positions are mutually exclusive; the middle position, although the least threatening to unity in the LCA, is spiritually safe only for those who can maintain uncertainty in good conscience. Insofar as the publica doctrina on women’s ordination in time leads to unavoidable consequences in practice, our church appears to be at a crossroads. What are our options? The Theses of Agreement, in dealing with those principles governing church fellowship state:

We believe that where differences in teaching and practice exist or arise between Churches uniting, these differences are to be removed by willingly submitting to the authority of the Word of God. Where a difference in teaching or practice is a departure from the doctrine of the Bible, such difference cannot be tolerated, but must be pointed out as an error, on the basis of clear passages of Holy Writ; and if the error is persisted in, in spite of instruction, warning, and earnest witness, it must at last lead to a separation (TA 4a).

Our church is now, even here, in the process of examining the ‘doctrine of the Bible’. What the future holds for the LCA is not ours to see. But our own future as God’s baptized people is ours to see, and is set before us in the word of absolution. What God will make of us, what confession of faith in heart and mouth He will give us, will only become apparent in this world when we place ourselves on our knees before Christ Jesus, when we let His Word inform our conscience, when we speak what our conscience commands us to say, and when we hear in trust His forgiveness.

Conclusion

In this paper we have looked at conscience, dissent, and unity in the church. The majority of the paper has been a treatment on conscience, because conscience under God’s Word is the true forum in which issues of dissent and unity in the church are rightly understood. Obedience to conscience under God’s Word is the right and effective means to lasting unity in the LCA, and is the only way that dissent can be dealt with in a healing manner. The nature of the ongoing debate at pastors’ conference and general convention is dependent on the extent to which the participants are willing to obey their conscience under the Word of God. If the participants are unwilling to obey conscience as it receives God’s Word, then no outcome, however harmonious it may outwardly appear, will be for the lasting benefit of the church. If the participants are willing to obey conscience under the Word of God, then the outcome, no matter how conflict-ridden it may seem, will be for true unity in and of the church.

This paper has primarily been a call to repentance; specifically, it has been a call to us as pastors of this district to obey the voice of conscience and to receive anew the Word of God as it informs conscience. It has been a call for us pastors to take the lead in submitting to Christ’s gift of the Keys as we receive it in the form of Private Confession and Absolution. It has been an exhortation for us to trust that in this gift of Christ we will experience the power of his resurrection as we are freed by the Holy Spirit to make a true confession of faith in our hearts and with our mouths, in spirit and body, before God and the world. It is my hope that in this we will lead as true shepherds of the flock entrusted into our care, and so experience God-given unity as one flock under one shepherd.

St Matthias, 14th of May, 2006
Bendigo, Bethlehem Lutheran Church
[1]Prepared by the Commission on Theology and Inter-Church Relations. Recommended for adoption by the General Pastors Conference. Adopted by the General Synod. 1975 Convention. *Reviewed July 2001, unedited

[2] In the Formula of Concord it is put this way: ‘[W]e should not imagine a kind of faith in this connection [justification] that could coexist and co-persist with a wicked intention to sin and to act contrary to one’s conscience’ (FC Ep. III, 11).
[3] E W A Koehler (1875-1951), was a Missouri Synod pastor and theologian. He was awarded his DD from Concordia Seminary in 1941. For reference to his writing on conscience see the bibliography.
[4] Koehler: ‘saying that conscience is infallible does not mean that it will inevitably function in every instance in which man is about to do what he knows to be wrong. For if one persistently disregards, and willfully acts contrary to, the promptings of conscience, these become weaker and weaker until they finally cease. This is what paul means when he speaks of a “conscience seared with a hot iron” 1 Tim. 4:2’. (Koehler 351)

[5] The fact that we are called by God always to obey conscience is consonant with the fact that conscience can be badly informed and so lead people into acts which are objectively sinful: ‘Knowledge and convictions in moral matters differ greatly among men…But there is no difference in the function of conscience; it acts alike in all men. While, therefore, the knowledge, according to which conscience acts, may be in error, conscience itself never errs in its unique function of urging man to comply with what he believes to be right –Our opinions and convictions as to what is morally right change…But conscience never changes; it never approves what for the time being we know to be wrong, nor does it ever warn us against doing what we know to be right’ (Koehler 340)
Bibliography

The Book of Concord Theodore G Tappert (ed) Fortress Press Philadelphia 1959

Catechism of the Catholic Church (second Edition) St Pauls Strathfied, 2003

Hallesby, O Conscience IVP Leicester 1995

Koehler, E W A ‘Conscience’ Concordia Theological Monthly Vol XII, No 5 May 1942

All biblical quotations are from the NRSV

The Smiling Girl

2006-09-16T15:18:00.000+10:00

Back on the 15th of July our dear friends Tom and Chelsea got married. One day, when I get the hang of how this site works, I'll link their blogs.

Anyhow, Tom and Chelsea asked our first daughter (and Tom's Goddaughter) Francesca (known as Cho Cho) to be one of their attendants. Was she happy about it? Well, this photo was taken on the day.

It captures the spirit of the Cho.

Note: That thing is the umbilical cord

2006-09-15T20:00:00.000+10:00

This is a picture of our darling little daughter. She will be baptised on the 24th of September. We'll be announcing her name as part of the baptism. Please join us in giving thanks to God for this little one!

One small step for man, one great leap for obscure men

2006-09-15T16:20:00.000+10:00

epistolae obscurorum virorum: letters of obscure men