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A Response to Jack Kilcrease

A Response to Jack Kilcrease Saturday, 09 May 2009 00:00 The following is a response to Jack Kilcrease's article: Evangelical and Catholic?: The Conservative' Reformation's Scriptural Principle and the Catholicity of the Gospel Response by Paul R. Hinlicky, Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies, Roanoke College, Salem VA I should be flattered by the extravagant attention Dr. Kilcrease has paid to my article from 1999.[1] It is in any case interesting for me to be criticized from the theological Right-an uncommon experience for me in the ELCA. Thanks to the editor's gracious invitation to respond, I have a precious opportunity to offer amplifications and clarifications on my theological project to friends in Lutheranism outside my own troubled denomination.

Since Kilcrease makes such a big to-do about my supposed affiliations, readers deserve to hear straight from the horse's mouth. First, I don't know if the theologians around Pro Ecclesia would so confidently count me as one of their fellow travelers, as does Kilcrease. Truth be told, I have found myself less inclined in recent years to use the party slogan, "evangelical catholic," even though I do not renounce it. As for "gospel-reductionism," that accusation takes me back thirty years-though I would be lying to say it fills me with nostalgia for my youth when my church imploded. I suspect that certain Elertians and Fordeans today-who really are guilty of this reductive movewould likewise not be happy to regard me as one of their own. I hold in distinction from them the primacy of the gospel narrative concerning Jesus Christ, not the primacy of an existentially moving contemporary word of liberation. For what it is worth, in short, I don't have any other purpose in my theological thinking than to be a catholic or ecumenical theologian in the tradition of Luther, let the chips fall as they may. Personally speaking, the unkindest cut of all is Kilcrease's allegation of my "ignorance" of the theological tradition of Lutheran Orthodoxy. I have just published with Dennis Bielfeldt and Mickey Mattox a book on Luther's late disputations on the Trinity,[2] and before that a major study under the editorship of Oswald Bayer on Luther's Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi.[3] I am about to publish a major study, Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz.[4] I trust that upon a careful study of these more recent efforts Kilcrease's premature judgment about my "ignorance" (not to be confused with my critical reception) of Lutheran Orthodoxy will be rectified. In any event, the "perplexity" Kilcrease experiences in interpreting my 1999 article results from his own polemical procedure, as we shall see, not
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my alleged "ignorance." I want to get to the heart of the matter Kilcrease has raised-my proposed revision of the Lutheran doctrine of Holy Scripture away from the general Protestant teaching of "Bible alone." Kilcrease gets the gist of this: sola scriptura, understood as an unmediated Word from God (thus operating monergistically) yet expressed through the many human words of the biblical authors. This all self-destructs in the sense that it generates multiple, contradictory readings; thus rendering Scripture itself incoherent and producing the corresponding Protestant sectarianism. What is controversial about that? It was, I recall, Hermann Sasse who noted that for Lutherans it is not the Bible, but the Bible rightly interpreted which bears authority in the Church, as the norm by which fidelity to Jesus Christ and his gospel is tested. If one grants the latter, it is not "Bible alone," but the Bible with the tradition of its right interpretation to which the Lutheran Confessions make claim. I agree with this. What I propose (prima Scriptura) is professedly an innovation within the tradition of Lutheran theology, which had come in the course of anti-Catholic polemics to speak like the Reformed of sola Scriptura. This happened by extending the "exclusive particle" from soteriology to epistemology, that is, from the original use to modify grace, faith and Christ in the doctrine of justification to the Bible as the written Word of God in a general doctrine of revelation or inspiration. With this move the Bible became the sole and miraculous source of information about all sorts of things, such that the gospel cannot be discussed, let alone set the agenda for discussion, until the credibility of the Bible is first determined. Couple this move with further borrowing of the correct teaching of monergism in regard to salvation, and the credibility of the Bible has to be gained by sheer fiat: The Bible is true because God says it is true. End of discussion. This question-begging move skewers everything. Kilcrease, as it seems to me, comes perilously close to the logic of Protestant fundamentalism: "God said it; I believe it; that settles it." He simply jettisons the entire problem of hermeneutics in dogmatic theology: "Yes, God has said it, but do you understand it? Why has God said it? To whom has God said it? What kind of literature is this? How can you understand it to be God's Word when it is manifestly the human words of Peter, John or Paul, etc. handed on in the church?" My proposed revision, then, is a needed and legitimate one, not only because it retrieves Luther's more original conception of the authority of the Scriptures in the church as the Spirit-designated canon of the gospel, but also because it requires under the conditions of our times renewal of the theological task of interpretation of the Bible in the church in dogmatic theology. I cannot in passing do other than protest Kilcrease's caricature of my 1999 article and the method by which he comes to it. It ought to discomfit readers to learn that I simply do not recognize what I wrote ten years ago in the portrait Kilcrease provides them. I urge readers to study the article for themselves. They will learn that its goal-admittedly Quixotic in hindsight-was for the Lutheran World Federation to adopt an ecclesiology of communion. They will also discover that the eventual unity with Rome which I envisioned in 1999 would have to come at the cost of Rome's renunciation of Obermann's Tradition II-a cost that has hardly escaped the notice of Roman Catholic readers of the article! But one would never know such things from Kilcrease's account, with the result that my statements are torn out of context and interpreted apart from the guiding light of express authorial intention. In spite of his announced desire "to give a fair exposition of the perspective of our opponents," we are instead treated to an exercise in the Procrustean Bed Method of polemical theology: a preconceived framework (the "Conservative Reformation's Scripture Principle") is deployed to weigh and find wanting statements ripped out of context. So a straw man is erected and slain, but the real target is missed.
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It would be tedious to itemize all Kilcrease's misrepresentations, so let these few stand for the whole: I am said to argue: "the rejection of the scriptural principle" (not the revision of it) to regard "the canon [as] a mere invention of the church" (not the Spirit-guided reception of the apostolic and prophetic books) to follow "the meta-narrative of Neo-orthodoxy...that Luther's principle of gospel authority' was betrayed by the Lutheran scholastics" (not that the "Bible alone" doctrine proved incapable of sustaining Luther's gospel authority in the passage to modernity) to hold that "the Word...is an inert object" (not that the Incarnate, proclaimed and written Word is vulnerable to abuse and misinterpretation-the very reason why we need dogmatic theology!). In sum I am found guilty of a "rather exaggerated attempt to make up for [a] low view of Scripture" (not trying, in good faith, to resolve a paralyzing confusion in Lutheran theology of the Word, who is the second person of Trinity, incarnate for us and for our salvation and proclaimed in the church through the gospel, with the text of the Bible taken by itself as a miraculous statement of God's opinion about all sorts of things). I could go on. It ought to come as a relief when Kilcrease acknowledges that "not all that Hinlicky has said is necessarily wrong," but alas, since I have not said and do not hold most of the things which Kilcrease imputes to me, instead of relief I sense only waves of confusion on top of confusion. I teach my students this principle: "You are not allowed to criticize the opinion of an opponent until you can state the opinion with such clarity, insight and sympathy that your opponent, upon reading your account, would exclaim, That's it! I couldn't have said it better myself!' Then and only then may criticism begin, because then and only then are you engaged with the real opponent and not a convenient fiction of your own imagination." I submit this principle to Dr. Kilcrease for his earnest consideration. At the same time, I am grateful to my opponent for provoking me to defend the doctrine of Holy Scripture, the "prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments, as...the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which alone is the one true guiding principle, according to which all teachers and teachings are to be judged and evaluated."[5] The metaphor of the fountain here is the telling one. Christians do not, or should not, hold an Islamic theology of inspiration, in which the angel instructs Mohammed to set aside all human thoughts and simply recite the divine words. Instead, the actual human, historical testimony of prophets and apostles engaged in the history of their own times in speaking the word of the Lord are written down, preserved, collected, and tested against other writings claiming similar revelation or inspiration in a process of holy paradosis. It is "holy" in that, as a better doctrine of inspiration would rightly teach, the work of the Spirit is to be discerned in, and not apart from, this canonical process of handing on the word of the Lord from one generation to the next amid the claims of false prophets and false messiahs (Mk 13:22). So understood, everything depends on grasping the criteria by which the Spirit rules one writing in and another out. In this light we would see that the particular books of the New Testament together form a Christological decision against Docetism; that the union of the New and Old Testaments together form a monotheistic decision against Gnostic dualism; that the perception of the one divine economy of salvation engendered by the emerging Genesis-to-Revelation canon form a Trinitarian decision against Arian Unitarianism; that the cross of the Incarnate Son at the center of the canonical narrative therefore teaches against Nestorianism the unity of the Person of Christ such that "one of the Trinity suffered" (that is the teaching of the 5th Ecumenical Council).
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The hermeneutical function of the Reformation doctrine of justification likewise makes sense in light of this continuing canonical process under the Spirit's promised guidance to lead to all truth by recalling the word of Jesus. The Reformation brings a new insight, not into what the gospel is, but rather how it is to be rightly used: to tell (or receive) Christ (as identified in the ecumenical dogmas' interpretation of Scripture) in such a way that self-entrusting faith suffices to have him with all his blessings.[6] The foregoing conception of the process of Scriptural tradition in the light of the gospel makes a definite correlation between the Spirit's first (prima) formation of the Holy Scriptures and the Spirit's on-going formation of God's holy people in the course of time: it is here in the church that the Scriptures are received and recognized.[7] This location of the Scripture in the church as formative of the church is hermeneutically decisive. This is how I mean prima. The canonical Scriptures are the primal fountain, but the fountain flows! Indeed, the flowing is the Spirit's point! Who then has a low view of Scripture or thinks the Word "inert"? I certainly do hope that the "church grows to become Church in a more full sense!" I don't mind invoking the Puritan divine who held "that God has yet more truth to break out of his Holy Word." None of us have arrived; we are all still on the way. Given this location of our theological work among the pilgrim people of God between the already and the not-yet, Kilcrease is forced to concede that I would hold that "the gospel' and the Scriptures which witness to it have a regulating effect on what can be regarded as legitimate." But Kilcrease dismisses this correlation of the Holy Scriptures with the Holy Church by the Holy Spirit, however, as a "circular argument." How, he asks, "would one be able to criticize the bishops and subsequent traditions of the visible Church on the basis of the gospel?" Good question! And he is right to infer that in one sense any such criticism would be "like sawing off the branch on which we are standing." I do think that the kinds of radical criticism of church tradition that have evolved into liberal Protestantism "saw off the branch." I do think that right kind of criticism of the bishops and subsequent traditions are pruning operations on a common root and tree and branch of faith, neither the radical reinvention of Christianity in liberalism, nor the radical repristination claimed by Kilcrease's sola scriptura conservativism. What matters is that the Scripture principle is not made into a blind appeal to arbitrary authority, but rather that one can and should give good reasons theologically why the particular books of the Bible are included in the canon and how they are accordingly to weigh in judging doctrine. For theology in Luther's tradition the reasons which count as good derive from canonical Scripture's chief content, the good news of Christ the Crucified's Easter victory. This is God's authoritative Word, which authorizes the Christian community, calling God's people out of the world and into the coming kingdom, making them by faith the ek-klesia. That this is Luther's teaching in the Latin Preface to his collected writings, to which the Formula appealed, seems to me undeniable. As such it specifies the sense of the claim that "God's Word alone ought to be and remain the only guiding principle and rule of all teaching," which, as the Solid Declaration immediately goes on to clarify, "does not mean that other good, useful, pure books that interpret Holy Scripture, refute errors and explain the articles of faith are to be rejected."[8] I hold this position, but I hold it critically at the beginning of the 21st century. That means that I have to hold it under certain conditions that did not obtain for the historical Luther or Lutheran Orthodoxy. Among these conditions are inescapable cultural facts, such as the rise of the scientific world-view, including the historical criticism of the Bible. I do not invest a lot theologically in this fact, as theological liberals do. Historical criticism is in fact under a lot of pressure today from post-modernist critiques of its pretensions to objectivity and neutrality. Yet it remains a fact that we cannot read the Bible after historical criticism (if
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ever we could have) like Muslims read the Holy Quran: as only, uniquely, miraculously a word directly from God without human mediation. Any such theory of "recitation" is impossible for us after historical criticism.[9] Instead we today have to read the books of the Bible first of all as Paul's, or Mark's, or John's historically specific words to their own communities, and only then with all the others together in the grand narrative constructed by the Spirit through the church of the world's course from Genesis to Revelation; that is, in the perspective of the divine economy of salvation, bearing unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ as the good reason for the church's existence. Other uses of the Bible, including putatively orthodox ones for arbitrary, authoritarian proof-texting of opinions about anything under the sun, are abuses of the Bible as the Spirit's book "from faith for faith" in the light of the gospel. Kilcrease takes offense when in this context I say that the word of Scripture is "vulnerable," even though after a lot of rhetoric, he concedes the substance of my point and then comments: "one can do very little about that." I very much beg to differ. Dogmatic theology is what we can do about that, the renewal of which as a contemporary task under contemporary conditions (not the repristination of some favored 17th century authors) is an urgent need in the confused world of American Christianity.

[1]. I wrote this article on the basis of my Habilitation study on the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue while teaching in Bratislava and had it published there as Buducnost Cirkvi: Co by pre nas malo znamenat rimskokatolicky-evanjelicky dialog? ("The Future of the Church: What the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue Ought to Mean for Us," Tranoscius, 1999). [2]. Paul Hinlicky, Dennis Bielfeldt, Mickey L. Mattox, The Substance of the Faith: Luther's Doctrinal Theology for Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). [3]. Oswald Bayer, Creator est Creatura: Luthers Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation, Benjamin Gleede, ed., (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007). [4]. Paul Hinlicky, Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). [5]. Robert Kolb, Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 527. [6]. I am in negotiation now with Fortress Press for a new book, The Theo-logic of Creedal Christianity, which will make the argument sketched in this paragraph in detail. [7]. Thanks, in part, to the ministry of oversight which aims to teach in continuity with the prophets and apostles, that is the kind of "evangelical episcopacy" that Melanchthon envisioned in Augustana XXVIII. Kilcrease makes a big deal about my supposed embrace of apostolic succession, when I have repeatedly endorsed the highly qualified language of the Lutheran-Episcopal dialogue to speak of apostolic succession as a "sign, not a guarantee." I no more hold to a superstitious view of apostolic succession as a guarantee of doctrine than I hold a superstitious view of Scripture as a guarantee of doctrine-both for the same reason, namely, a blind appeal to arbitrary authority not theologically warranted by the evangelical criteria. [8]. The Book of Concord, 527 (emphasis added).
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[9]. In my view, notions of recitation or dictation were constructed during the Middle Ages in response to increasing knowledge of the Quran's criticism of Jewish and Christian Scripture for being corrupted by human additions to a pristine, original revelation.

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A Lost Generation written by Rev. Paul T. McCain, May 09, 2009 Paul Hinlicky's response is, as to be expected, thoughtful, thorough and an enjoyable reading experience, but yet...ultimately, a sad one. Elsewhere on the Internet, Dr. Hinlicky and I have had a bit of an exchange on Biblical authority issues, over at the Lutheran Forum blog site, not to be confused, mind you, with the morass that is "Lutheran Forum Online." What saddens me is that while Dr. Hinlicky is able properly to recognize the errors that have siezed the ELCA and all mainline/liberal Lutheranism, he fails ultimately to come to terms with the root cause: a crisis in understanding of Biblical authority. For Hinlicky, it is perfectly acceptable to doubt, question and deny the historicity of the Genesis of account of Adam and Eve. When questioned and pressed on this point, specifically, when asked to explain how he reconciles this view with the fact that Christ and the Apostle Paul both assume the historicity of the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, he lapsed into what can only be described as an odd wandering about in philosophical speculations about the assumed limitations of Christ's human nature. But, frankly, he avoids the key question: What Christ lying to us, or simply ignorant? The sad legacy of the Seminex era is that those who claimed to be champions of the Gospel were, in reality, planing the seeds for what now is coming to full flower in the theological meltdown we see in the ELCA.
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... written by Jason Loh, May 10, 2009 "First principles" such as the Bible alone is God's Word is always by its nature indemonstrable. Or else, these would not be *first* principles or axioms in the first place.
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A Response to the Response. written by jack kilcrease, May 11, 2009 After thinking through whether or not I should simply allow my initial article to stand, I have decided to leave a comment in order to clarify a few things regarding Dr. Hinlicky's characterization of
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my position and my interpretation of his work. 1. If one reads my article carefully, they will note that I never once claim that Dr. Hinlicky himself is a "gospel reductionist." What I say is that he characterizes Luther that way. I think it is probable that there are some elements of gospel reductionism in Dr. Hinlicky's thought, but I have not directly accused him of this heresy. 2. When I criticize Dr. Hinlicky's knowledge of Luther, I do so on the issues of Scripture and Tradition. I am well aware of Dr. Hinlicky's writings on Luther. Many of their characterizations of Luther are not ones that I agree with. Nevertheless, I was specifically unhappy with his claim regarding Luther's understanding of Scripture as being purely based on gospel authority. This is a claim that many in the Luther renaissance made about Luther. However, it is not true in the least as is demonstrated by the bibliography of works on the subject that are listed in the foot note. Also, Luther became increasingly suspicious of Church tradition and the Fathers as he became older (particularly after Marburg, for obvious reasons!!!). Chemnitz and most people in the period of early orthodoxy did not share this sentiment. Consequently to say that Luther had a high view of Church tradition and that Lutheran orthodoxy didn't, is entirely untrue. It is true that later dogmaticians of what Preus called the silver age were less interested in the Fathers, but that clarification was not made. 3. This is the main reason that I characterized Dr. Hinlicky as holding the Neo-orthodoxy meta-narrative. What I was referring to was the view held by a rather significant number of the neo-orthodox theologians that the Reformers were spiritual geniuses whose insights were destroyed by the age of orthodoxy. Since that's basically what Hinlicky claims about Luther by playing him off against the age of orthodoxy, I characterized this as his position. 4. Dr. Hinlicky entirely missed my point regarding the power of the Word. I have no doubt that he believes that the hypostatic Word is present in, under and with the written and preached Word. Part of the point of the article was to show contradictions in the general Evangelical-Catholic outlook. In other words, Dr. Hinlicky believes all these wonderful things about the Word of God, but then behaves as if the Word needs protecting. When I say "Protecting" I mean something different than "Preservation" (i.e. being purely taught). By protecting the Word, I mean that Hinlicky assumes that the Word is vulnerable and needs the Church tradition and the Bishops to make certain that people don't misinterpret it- rather than to be purely taught so that the Holy Spirit can do his work. It's correct that people can misinterpret the Word. When they do so, they do so in two ways: 1. They don't understand the grammatical meaning of the passage which they misinterpret. This would be an error regarding external clarity and can be fixed by understand Greek and Hebrew better. 2. They reject the gospel, because they are in bondage to sin and therefore read the Sciptures "with a veil over their hearts." Again this would be an error regarding internal clarity. This cannot be helped by anything other than the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace. These are essentially the options that Lutherans have in light of our commitment to the bondage of the will which is the natural corollary of solas Christus, solas Gracia. As the RCC demonstrates, if people are under sin, then they will simply automatically reject the truth even if an authoritative Bishop or the Church tradition claims that things are "such and such." This where I characterize Dr. Hinlicky as treating Scripture as an inert object. If humans are free to abuse it and not abuse it then we would need authorities like Bishops and the Church tradition to appeal to people's freedom and rationality so that they could make better decisions. This is basically what he proposes. If that's so, then it's not the Word of God, which determines people whom it addresses monergistically. In some ways, the Elephant in the room here is that Dr. Hinlicky did not shown how his position is consistent with Lutheran claims about bondage, law and gospel- internal and external clarity. These
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things all hang together. 5. I found it interesting that Dr. Hinlicky characterized my position as Fundamentalistic and invoked Sasse regarding the fact that Lutherans do not simply believe in the Bible, but in specific content. My claim throughout the piece was that the Bible is a delivery system for Christ. This means that verbal inspiration serves the gospel and is therefore a necessary corollary to sola gracia- a point often made by Franz Pieper.
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Further point of clarification. written by Jack Kilcrease, May 11, 2009 One more word of clarification. On 1. I suggested that I did not directly claim that Dr. Hinlicky is a gospel reductionist, but held elements of that position. I believe I need to emphasize that I am in no way backing down on my claim that I do find those elements in his thinking and believe that they have influenced his understanding of Scripture in inappropriate ways. What I merely attempting to clarify was that I never directly suggest that Dr. Hinlicky is a gospel-reductionist in the manner that for example Schultz, Schroeder or Bertram were. Also, I wrote "some elements" when I meant to write "strong elements." I apologize for being unclear.
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Brief Responses to McCain and Kilcrease written by Paul Hinlicky, May 18, 2009 To Paul McCain: Thank you for in spirit at least offering a charitable, if sad reflection on my response to Dr. Kilcrease's hatchet job. You are right. I do not regard it as a liability for my position that on the basis of the best available exegesis we today regard the stories of Genesis 1-10 as history-like but not actual history. I do regard it as a huge liablity for your position, since it entangles one in all sorts of desperate attempts to correct today's best science on theological grounds; in the process it diverts attention from the true scandals of the particularity of Jesus (a first century Jew) and His cross. Likewise, then, Christologically, the assumptio carnis et animae (we are not tacit Apollinarians, are we?) entails that the human psychology of the Incarnate Word in the state of humiliation was a limited one, like ours, and accomodated to its own times, like ours. All this, 'error' too (if you insist rationalistically on that notion) without sin. I do not regard such radicalism about 'God deep in the flesh' as some errant philosophical speculation; I got the idea from Luther. The Gospels' admitted (e.g., Mark 13: 32) limitation of Jesus' knowledge is no problem, if we are Trinitarians, who have as vital a doctrine of the Spirit as of the Incarnate Word, since it is the Spirit's ongoing work to lead us to all truth by recalling the Word of Jesus, the Word which He Himself is. But if you by contrast have to assume that everything reported in the New Testament as words of Jesus must be perfect revelation about anything under the sun, lest the whole house of cards collapse, well, I regard that also as a definite liablity in your position. Dr. Kilcrease: I have nothing to say to you, especially after reading this obstinate reiteration of your previous allegations, until you undertake a careful, I stress, careful reading of my works which I had previously referenced and demonstrate to the public your capacity to interpret charitably as well as critically, as I had previously admonished you. You should be ashamed of ever having submitted that thing for publication. This business of conducting serious arguments by capturing others in gross categories of one's own imagination is unworthy of Christian theology. Period. To the public: my rather strong views on divine monergism form the point of departure for forthcoming Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz (Eerdmans, July, 2009). Readers, hopefully including Dr. Kilcrease, will learn from it how deep the confusion about this matter is in Lutheran tradition, and how profound the corresponding correction will have to be. Nothing so trite as a magical Bible, working ex opere operato, will come to our rescue, if I am right, 'Lutheranism' is the unstable synthesis of monergistic and synergistic tendencies! But read it for yourselves, and decide.
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Ashamed? written by Jack Kilcrease, May 18, 2009 Dr. Hinlicky, I am gravely puzzled as to why I should be ashamed for having critiqued your position on Scripture and tradition. I guess I reiterated my points because your response to me was unsatisfying. You're really not answered any of my arguments against you. You mainly say that I get you wrong and then you seem to more or less admit that I did get you right and then, you charged me with being a a fundamentalist and dismissed me. I guess I don't find this to be much of real answer and I therefore I'm puzzled regarding whey I should feel ashamed about it. Again, the question remains. How does your position jive with Lutheran claims about bondage? How can I believe in God's law and promises if I doubt the history underlining them? How could a Lutheran who believes in bondage believe that the Scripture are vulnerable in the way you say they are? How does you position relate to external and internal clarity? You answer none of these questions (much of which my critique rest on) and so I again remain puzzled as to what I've done wrong or why I should be "ashamed."
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A Point on Kenosis written by Jack Kilcrease, May 19, 2009 Dr. Hinlicky, I would also note on the issue of the knowledge of Christ, the claim that Christ was in error because he was a person of his times is problematic. It is one thing to negatively have concealed the time of the last day in from himself in the state of humiliation, it is another thing to be positively in error (i.e. original of the the Pentateuch). If we claimed that he simply took on the beliefs of his times, then we could simply chalk up any theological or historical claimed (for example, his apocalypticism) to a feature of the times. The entire point of Christ's prophetic office is that he teaches us unadulterated and final truth.
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Why Ashamed? written by Bethany Tanis, May 19, 2009 I confess to being a bit unclear as to why Dr. Kilcrease should be "ashamed" of having submitted an article critical of the "Evangelical Catholic" tradition using a piece by Dr. Hinlicky as an example. The nature of scholarship is that once something has been publicly published it is available for comment, approval, and even critique. Additionally, I can assure Logia readers that Dr. Kilcrease, who I know (very well!), is very familiar with Dr. Hinlicky's work and was careful to "interpret charitably as well as critically." I am unsure as to where precisely Kilcrease attempted to conduct "serious arguments by capturing others in gross categories of one's own imagination [which] is unworthy of Christian theology." Even if Kilcrease did fall into this trap, I fear that Dr. Hinlicky may have also been guilty of the same fallacy when he accused Kilcrease of "Fundamentalism." I am confident that Dr. Hinlicky is familiar enough with the history and theology of American Fundamentalism to know that Kilcrease's view of the Bible is far from Fundamentalist. Really, it is unfortunate that in theology, especially, academic discussions tend to get so personal and heated. This is generally not the case in my field, history. Of course, the difference, I suppose, is that no one thinks getting history wrong is a matter of eternal life or death, whereas that could come into play in theological debates, making them immensely more personal and heated!
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Really Nothing New to Say to Dr. Kilcrease written by Paul Hinlicky, May 19, 2009 I am sorry you are so gravely perplexed, and I am not at all reluctant to face the otherwise interesting questions you pose to me, but (to repeat myself): I teach my students this principle: "You are
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not allowed to criticize the opinion of an opponent until you can state the opinion with such clarity, insight and sympathy that your opponent, upon reading your account, would exclaim, That's it! I couldn't have said it better myself!' Then and only then may criticism begin, because then and only then are you engaged with the real opponent and not a convenient fiction of your own imagination." I (re-)submit this principle to Dr. Kilcrease for his earnest consideration. In my view, you have not earned the right to ask me a rational question and get a rational answer, because of the polemical method you employ, creating a caricature in which I do not recognize myself. I will not play that game. Period.
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Unfair? written by Jack Kilcrease, May 20, 2009 Dr. Hinlicky, I am unwilling to accept your claim that I have been unfair to you for a number of reasons. First, no one that I have had read the pieces believes that I have been unfair to you or made any false claims about you position. Secondly, you are unwilling to give a real response and explain where I have "caricatured" you argument. The written piece above states that I caricatured you, then admits that I did get you right and then dismisses me. I therefore must come to the conclusion that I have in fact found difficulties with your position which you are unwilling to admit to or engage in a real debate about. BTW, I was pleased to hear about your suggestion that Lutheranism is an "unstable mixture of syngergism and monergism." Part of my critique was that you position was inconsistent with the confessional Lutheran belief in monergism. In light of the fact that you have admitted that you position works from the assumption of synergism (or at least you say Lutheranism does, which I assume that you include yourself within), your actual position on Scripture and tradition makes a great deal more sense. Here I thought you were being inconsistent, when you are actually openly rejecting orthodox Lutheranism on this point (as well as the Scriptures I might add). Lastly, a note on defining of terms. You have a tendency to claim that you "believe in such and such" and then not meaning by "such and such" anything remotely like other people mean by the phrase. For example, you say that you do believe in the scriptural principle- of course you believe in "a" scriptural principle, but not one that orthodox Lutheranism has always believed in. I was reading something else by you as well and you claimed that you could accept the LCMS' statement on the authority of Scriptureyou just won't accept the meaning of the terms in precisely the way that we in the LCMS do. Herein lies I think the problem. I argued against you using the range of meaning people attached to certain words. Your response was to claim that I was wrong because the things that I claimed you didn't believe in, you could claim that you did on the basis of your redefined terms. On a certain level, I wish that you would simply admit that you didn't believe in "such and such" and not try to subscribe to traditional formulas that you do not invest with the same meaning. You at very least do this to a certain degree when you claim that we who live within the sphere of the old synodical convention believe in "magical" dictation theory.
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Also, a note on theological polemic. written by Jack Kilcrease, May 20, 2009 Dr. Hinlicky, I think I should also respond to your claim that I am being polemical. You correct in asserting this. The piece was intended to be as such. I guess I find it hard to believe that a Lutheran would have trouble with polemic. After all, as Eberhard Jungel points out, the theology of the cross is necessarily a polemical theology. Luther was very highly polemical in his writings. We should always be fair, but one can be fair and be polemical. I strongly endeavored to be fair to what you had written and everyone who has read my writing and yours (that I know) thinks that I was. The more and more we have this discussion, it appears that you mainly objected to the polemical nature of my piece and actually accepted my content as being accurate. Furthermore, since you have been unwilling to muster a real
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response (claiming that I must "earn" this- "earning" it by my merit seems very un-Lutheran, don't you think?), I have no basis for thinking anything other than this has been the whole problem from the beginning! Also, I would not agree that one must be sympathetic with one's opponent to fairly interpret them. Luther was not sympathetic with Zwingli nor with Erasmus, yet he capture their positions and the dangers of them very well. Perhaps in light of your acceptance of some "unstable elements of synergism" you think that Erasmus was ill treated by Luther- but my point stands. Similarly, I think that as a Christian I could give a fair minded exposition of the book of Mormon and not be very sympathetic with the position suggested therein. In light of this, it seems odd to me that you are willing to give a clear response.
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An Errant or Deceptive Jesus? written by Rev. Paul T. McCain, May 22, 2009 Try as I might, I simply do not hear the voice of the Church, catholic and evangelical, in Dr. Hinlicky's explanation of what amounts to either an errant Jesus or a deceptive Jesus. I have appreciated this vigorous dialogue back and forth, precisely what Dr. Hinlicky demanded, quite polemically, recently, over on the Lutheran Forum's blog site. I am surprised by Dr. Hinlicky's reticence here to engage in the same sort of vigorous debate. That seems quite unbecoming of Dr. Hinlicky and beneath his dignity. I suspect emotion simply got the better of him. As it does all of us, as Professor Tanis, wisely notes, when it comes to these issues none of us is engaged in a book-club conversation that we can leave at the end of the hour and think not much more about. I believe Dr. Hinlicky recognizes clearly the absolute dead-end to which the Seminex movement has brought the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but is having a hard time retracing his steps out of the vexing cul de sac in which the ELCA finds itself.
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On Polemical Theology written by Paul Hinlicky, May 24, 2009 I regret to see that Paul McCain has joined Dr. Kilcrease in resort to that bane of Missouri Synod existence: polemical theology, that is, not theology as faith seeking understanding, but theology as act of religious war. I wont have anything substantive to say to either theologian, because I wont be a part of a mud-slinging free-for-all. Attack! Attack! Attack! Trap an opponent in a few, uncomprehended words or phrases or ideas, and Voila! An Errant Christ! or, Aha! Synergism! Ugh. What childs play. But in adults such luxuriant self-indulgence in the Strawman fallacy is vulgar and mean-spirited; for the sake of Christian truth, one must treat it as beneath the dignity of a serious response. It does not deserve a serious response. It is fundamentally unserious. It is unserious in two senses. First, an impossible stance of repristinationism regards any change from some golden age in the past as deviation. This is not serious because is simply denies the difficulties which Christian theology faces today: the historical criticism of the Bible, for instance, or the massive expansion of contemporary cosmology in science. But this is our Fathers world. I therefore think these events can be absorbed into the biblical world, in George Lindbecks suggestive words, by a post-critical, robustly Trinitarian theology. It would also be possible to deny such absorption is possible. That would be a serious debate. What is not possible, what is fundamentally unserious like an ostrich poking its head in the sand, is denying the difficulties created for theology by contemporary thought. Second, according to the moral counsel of the Eighth Commandment, we are to adopt a hermeneutics of charity, rather than suspicion, i.e., to realize that understanding other minds is not easy, but the demanding task of love. More than any other, a loveless, Christless, Spiritless disease of theological polemicism was
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the reason why I left the Missouri Synod. In such a climate, one could never understand anything or anyone. Instead you got a gold star when you could learn a few pet phrases with which to smear ideas that you do not understand as well as the person who hold them. I dont mind being criticized at all for positions which I actually do hold, such as, that there is a real, historical, human soul in the person of Christ, with the apparent errors which either Christ commits (or the Evangelist attributes to Him, e.g., Mark 13:30), or that, while Genesis 3 refers in an epic way to an historical Fall at misty dawn of human consciousness, it does not give us the history of the Fall. Error is not sin, and theological truth does not have to be delivered in the form of historical facticity. Nor do I mind criticizing others for the positions which they actually hold. But achieving disagreement is a task which succeeds, when it succeeds, in advancing the argument, not in the gotcha games played by those who more imitate Luthers bombast than his insight.
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... written by Jason Loh, May 30, 2009 "Error is not sin, and theological truth does not have to be delivered in the form of historical facticity." Then who Jesus is matters little. Who cares if He was crucified 2000 years ago, or rose on the third day?
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On Banes and Blessings written by Rev. Paul T. McCain, June 04, 2009 I regret that Dr. Hinlicky can't seem to move past what strikes me as assertions that do not advance this conversation, but only strives to slip in a shot or two and then abandon the conversation. Ironic, given the accusations being levelled at Jack and me. It is sad to see a person of Dr. Hinlicky's ability indulge in this kind of emotionally oriented approach to these very serious issues. I think we will find the fundamental problems in Dr. Hinlicky's effort to criticize the ELCA's trends, while at the same time attempting to maintain the theological uncertainty and skepticism that was, and continues to be, the end result of the Seminex movement. I believe that a recently translated work by August Vilmar might be very useful: The Theology of Facts Versus the Theology of Rhetoric http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-theology-of-facts-versus-the-theology-ofrhetoric/4464052
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