Yes, it is. And the fact that Lutherans and other Protestants do not distinguish Luther’s interpretation of Scripture from Scripture itself is one of the biggest historical problems with Protestantism.
What I mean is that we don’t believe this because Luther does, which is what you seem to be saying we do.
We believe it because we believe it is what the Bible says and we are grateful for Luther’s trenchant exposition of it to the degree that we associate him with it.
And of course Catholicism is seen by all as the epitome of everything accessible and modern
Perhaps not, but playing nice with people you disagree with to the point of compromising essential doctrine is seen as being “accessible and modern”.
The concord between the ELCA and the TEC would be another example of this except that here there really is no doctrinal difference because at the highest levels, there is no doctrine.
The JDDJ has provided Protestants and Catholics broadly with a way forward. You are free to reject it, but it has great significance beyond the boundaries of the LWF.
I don’t just reject it. I disagree that it means anything at all.
It’s a deliberately polemical interpretation, as is your description of “masses” as human works. I do have a real concern that the Augsburg Confession says something like that. I don’t think that a person’s belief that they are forgiven is particularly significant soteriologically, though it’s a great comfort to the person in question, of course. (In other words, one person might believe that they are forgiven and be wrong, while another person might be forgiven but fail to understand the fact.) I understand that for Lutherans the danger of actually falling into my interpretation is mitigated by the fact that faith is not seen as a thing to be relied on in itself, but as something that directly points us to Christ’s saving work. But the wording of the Confession does imply that saving faith is faith that we are forgiven. We personally. That is what Luther meant by salvation being “for me.” And I have some real problems with that. I think it can be a pastorally helpful approach, but I don’t think it’s *the *way to define saving faith.
Okay, and while the Augustana remains the most essential Lutheran confessional text it isn’t the only one and in order to get a more full understanding of what Lutherans actually believe we should take other confessional explanations into account.
Taken together it seems clear that the Lutheran position is not that saving faith is not merely “believing that we are saved”. This is why Luther speaks of alien righteousness, our faith is in Christ the Redeemer who bore our sins on the cross. Our faith is in that,
over there, not in something inside us.
So Christ offers us His Body and Blood as a means of grace, and if we despise the gift and prefer to do other things with our time this has no deleterious spiritual consequences?
Of course it does. Luther said that if one does not desire to receive communion he needs to check and see if he is still alive. But making it a law obscures the grace in it.
I’m aware that there are a lot of debates on the subject. I have dipped into them lightly. Of the critics of the New Perspective, I find Stephen Westerholm particularly interesting. I agree that the question is not closed–probably never will be. But that only strengthens the point that Luther’s view is *one *interpretation. It always has been. The New Perspective only confirms what Wesleyans and Catholics and Anabaptists and other Christians have always known–that Luther’s way of reading Paul is not the only possible way.
I don’t have a problem with this. I am not standing here banging the table, saying it’s Luther’s way or no way at all though it may seem that I am. I just perceived a dismissal of his presentation (which I believe to be the right and true and biblical one it goes without saying) that I find all too common among “Protestant” Christians these days.
If I unfairly brushed you, I beg your pardon.
I specifically mentioned mainline Protestantism, conservative confessional Protestantism, *and *free-church evangelicalism. Of the three, mainline Protestantism is the main alternative to Catholicism for me, because it at least has some vision of the Church and of Catholicity. Some forms of confessional Protestantism do as well–they are just a lot less convincing than the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox versions.
Edwin
Sad but true. There appears to be something in American evangelicalism which wants to run after things other than pure confession.
I blame Wesley.
