← Thinking Fellows
Loading summary
Transcript74 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:19]
B
Hello and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast, part of the 15:17 podcast network of shows. You can go to 15:17.org to see all of the shows and other things that 1517 is doing. You can subscribe to the Thinking in your favorite podcasting apps or on YouTube and you can also subscribe to 1517 on YouTube where we are investing in and posting a lot of new video there. You should check it out. There's links in the show notes below. My name is Caleb Keith and today I am joined by Scott Keith and Magnus Person. Magnus has been on the show before. You were on the live show at Here we still stand this fall for the wait or. Yeah, I think so. Right, dad, Was he on this fall for the Bondage Will?
- [01:04]
C
I remember, but we did a show with him a while ago on I think the studio.
- [01:09]
A
I think it was a year ago. A year ago.
- [01:11]
B
Yeah.
- [01:11]
C
Yeah. Oh, okay.
- [01:12]
B
Yes.
- [01:12]
C
And then we did one on state of Christianity in America a while ago.
- [01:16]
B
That's good.
- [01:17]
C
Yeah, sorry. Christianity in Europe.
- [01:19]
B
Yeah, Christianity in Europe.
- [01:20]
C
From Europe.
- [01:21]
B
Yeah. That was a great. Actually that was a great episode. We recorded that one in San Clemente. All the years blend together.
- [01:27]
C
Yeah.
- [01:28]
B
So aggressively now. But you're back. You're in the United States right now.
- [01:34]
A
I am. You've been in California.
- [01:36]
B
Oh, yeah. Beautiful. You've been here for like the hottest winter in 30 years in California.
- [01:41]
A
What the American do for the poor Swedes that come frozen chosen? They just put the best weather on display possible in January and February.
- [01:52]
B
That's so good.
- [01:54]
A
My boss told me do not post any more pictures of beaches and palms.
- [02:02]
B
It's bad for morale back at home. Huh?
- [02:04]
A
It's bad for giving to our movement. Oh.
- [02:08]
B
Oh, that's funny. Yes. Well, we're glad to have you in California for now and today you're on the show and we're going to talk about kind of adjacent to what we did back then, which was state of Christianity in Europe. But today maybe focus a little more on Lutheranism and instead of the state of kind of look at your experience in the Church of Sweden, historically Lutheran state church, and sort of the trends that have happened there. And also then kind of touch on stuff we've talked about on thinking fellows recently. We did an episode, I think back in December, maybe late November, asking the question, has Lutheranism failed in. In that episode and we talked about sort of confessional Lutheranism, demographics and things like that. And so I think that's our goal again today is maybe to ask the question, what is a confessional Lutheran. How can one be confessionally Lutheran? Is just, for instance in America is just being in a Missouri Synod church. How you be a confessional Lutheran? Or how do you. How can you. Or what are confessional Lutherans abroad? What is it like to be a confessional Lutheran in maybe a church body that is not confessionally Lutheran or something like that? So maybe that's how we start and we can define it. Dad, maybe you can chime in too. We can define what is confessional Lutheranism and maybe talk about some of the problems with that title over the years too, or the hangups with that. Because for some people, hearing that means you're in a certain camp of people. And so it's mostly a sort of an anti or an against statement. So what does that mean?
- [03:54]
C
Yeah, I think to say that you're confessional Lutheran pretty simply means that you subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions as outlined in the Book of Concord. That's going to be the three ecumenical Creeds, the Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Small and Large Catechism, the small called articles. A couple weird names. The articles on the power and primacy of the Pope. It's my favorite one because it flows right off the lips. Power and primacy of the Pope. Lots of alliteration. The Formula of Concord, which is broken down into two kind of, you wouldn't really say separate confessions, but maybe overlapping confessions in the epitome and the solid declaration. So if you say, hey, I look at this Book of Concord and I subscribe to it, this is my confession, you're. You're technically a confessional Lutheran. On the flip side of that, specifically in America, and this is probably gone. I don't really know. It'd be a great question for Magnus that gets broken down between sort of the church bodies that are more conservative and less conservative. To take the Confessions to two types, we'll say that there's a quia confessional subscription and a quotinus confessional subscription. So the first one is the quia. This is going to be historically like the LCMS and I believe probably the Wisconsin Synod and maybe ELS that would say, hey, we subscribe to these confessions because they are in alignment with Scripture, point for point. We don't see a distinction here. When Scripture teaches something and the Confessions teach something, they're teaching the same thing. And the Confessions are because they're getting. It's all from Scripture, period. The end. The other one is a quotinus confessional subscription. And that's simply another Latin phrase. It just means a Latin word. That means insofar as. So this will be like the elca, honestly, a lot of the sort of formerly Scandinavian immigrant churches in America, they would say, hey, we subscribe to these confessions insofar as they are in agreement with Scripture. Now, that's all fine and good. The conservative response to that has always been, well, I could subscribe to the Book of Mormon insofar as it's in alignment with Scripture. Right. And so we would say it leaves a lot of wiggle room to say, hey, I don't actually believe most of what's in the Lutheran Confessions because I'm going to say that they're not in alignment with Scripture. Now, what you'll find, I think. And again, I'll shut up and let Magnus talk. What I think you'll find is there are fewer churches out there that teach something that we would say is not confessional and say it's because it's not scriptural. They might teach something that's not confessional. And it's just because there's some other reason, some sort of cultural reason or a justice reason or something like that to say, hey. In other words, you don't very often get somebody say, hey, I'm going to defend, say, the ordination of gay people. And then somebody goes, well, it seems like that would be against the Lutheran Confessions. And they go, yeah, but it's with scripture, you know, you don't, you don't get that a lot. And it's just sort of. There's other reasons. And even sort of when they make the argument for ordaining gay people, it's not really a scriptural argument that's being made unless it's sort of like a higher critical. You can't really trust portions of Scripture either. So that's my experience, Magnus, correct me there.
- [07:12]
A
No, no. But I guess the question you have to ask is, why do you have a confession? You can be biblicist then and say, well, we go straight to the Bible and we don't need confessions. The whole point of having a confession is like, we subscribe to this confessional writings interpretation of the Bible. This is the teaching. So I guess that is the whole point of being a confessional Lutheran. It's absolutely about scripture, but this is the way we interpret scripture and this is the kind of confessional church we are. So this is good. A good way to start defining this is first asking the question, what does it mean to be confessional and why is that needed? And then whatever you're confessional about, what does it mean to Be confessional Lutheran, which you described. What kind of confessions? That is foundational for all Lutherans. And for me, traveling around in the world, meeting Lutherans, you know, in Africa, meeting Lutherans in Europe, and now being around in many different Lutheran church bodies here in America, I still have. Maybe the question mark is even bigger. What exactly makes you Lutheran? It doesn't mean you're bad. It's just, you know, beautiful Christian brothers and sisters, great pastors, but there's a. The name Lutheran comes up in your church name or in your movement. And I'm intrigued. And I ask, wow, this is interesting. Why have you chosen to call yourself Lutheran?
- [08:48]
C
Yeah, that is interesting. Because in Sweden, you could be a Lutheran church because you're part of the state church. And you know, whether or not you agree with their theology, once you get in the door, you know why they're calling themselves Lutheran, Right? Because it's a. It's part of the state church. I'm so with you. You'll go into some churches that say Lutheran on the door here, and you'll walk in and what you're hearing and seeing and everything happened just doesn't seem very Lutheran. And you go, so why did we stick with this name? I think there is an answer to that, but I'll let Caleb talk.
- [09:22]
B
Thank you very much for that. Yeah, I wanted to hit one kind of point here, which about, like, why be confessional or why have confessions? And as Magnus said, you outline this doctrine and you make assertions about how the Bible teaches. And in a lot of ways, what you're saying is summarizing. And I've been describing this because I've been talking to and teaching people who are not from confessional backgrounds, just sort of, you know, evangelical Christian backgrounds, and explaining this. You kind of go, and you look at the Bible. First is how I'll do it. And I'll say, you know, the Bible is a huge book. It's a collection of many books written across a vast time period. And every Christian agrees about something, even if they don't outline these, which is that this whole book, from Genesis to Revelation, written by several different, you know, numerous authors over massive time periods of history, is in fact speaking about one unified thing or unified things. That across all those, it doesn't contradict itself. It's not teaching 10 different schools of thought or 10 different ways to salvation or 10 different things about God. It is speaking in a unified way. And then we have to say a unified way about what? About who God is, about humanity, what humanity is. The Condition of humanity, about salvation, about life, about death, about this huge list of things. And when we say that, all of that speaks in one way. One of the reasons it's difficult to be a biblicist, or maybe easy, is you're then hopping around and proof texting and all of a sudden maybe you accidentally start contradicting yourself. The Bible says one thing here and another thing here. What confessions do is att to pull out the unity of all of those questions and answers and topics from Scripture and say, this is what we believe the Scripture has said. And so the goal of a confession is in a lot of ways unity, which is why our Confessions are called the Book of Concord. Concord, meaning unity, being united in this confession. And so what you're attempting to do is gather the people who believe these things together so that they can worship together, teach together, and preserve something together that is God's word of law and gospel, to preserve the proclamation of the Gospel to the world. So being confessional has a positive goal in mind, which is unity and the preservation and proclamation of the Gospel. The problem I think that people run into, and I think what we're talking about here with this question of what makes somebody a Lutheran, is that goal of preservation and proclamation and the outlining of the doctrines in a precise manner also then has a negative aspect, which is there are people then identified as not teaching or preaching in this way. And they are out, right? They are not Lutheran or not Evangelical in the sense of our Confessions or whatever. And so, and there's degrees to which people are out. You could be so far out that you're a heretic, and that would be out of the general universal Christian confession of the creeds or something like that. Or you could be minorly out in that we disagree in how to interpret the Confessions even, or something like that, which might explain all your different Lutheran synods or whatever. But that is the negative part, and I think from that is where people sort of get a negative impression of Confessions or say, what's the point? Because we all have to. It's so many people in and out of this. Or minor disagreements cause fractions within Lutheranism. Why not just be your own independent churches anyways or whatever? Why you be united in this confession if you're all going to agree or disagree to certain degrees about what all of this says? And so I think that's where that happens. And because of that, because adherence to the Confessions is sort of difficult in the sense that it takes time to study both the Confessions and primarily the Word of God and to teach that and to preach that, you end up with people who keep the name for historical reasons or social reasons or whatever it may be. So you have Lutheran.
- [13:35]
C
There's one more reason I always think of. Well, when people say, why don't you just ditch Lutheran, right? I think of all of the Lutheran churches I've encountered over the years that for church growth reasons did ditch the name Lutheran. And the flack they got for doing it, too, they get. You get pretty raz. In fact, I kind of famously. Not famously, infamously. I don't know. When I was coming up, I thought I was going to be a camp director. That's from my experience of working at Arrowhead Lutheran Camp. I left, and when I came back, I got a job there as their director for a few years. But in the meantime, they had changed their name to Camp Arrowhead for that reason. Right? To broader appeal to broader number of churches down the hill for more business. And boy, was that like, oh, baby, are you guys not. Is this not a Lutheran camp anymore? Is this not supported by the Pacific Southwest District? Why would you take Lutheran out of the name? Lutherans built this thing. And I'm like, dude, I wasn't even here when they did it. So I just, you know, I was, I was. I was at Irvine at the time. So it's. I get that too. And that's probably sort of on the cultural side. Why not? Has nothing to do with it. It's just kind of anecdotal. I think it's funny that there are, I think, churches out there that for church growth reasons or whatever, would take specifically in the lcms, Lutheran out of their name. But they know sort of the trouble.
- [14:59]
A
It's interesting, you know, in Sweden, we never used the word Lutheran. We always used the word evangelical because we don't have the same, you know, cultural garbage as you may have in America when you speak about the evangelical Christians. But I'm thinking of another thing about the Confessions because it can sound very controlling, saying, okay, you have to subscribe to the Confessions. Well, my view of the Lutheran Confession is it's straight to the heart of the matter. That's Concordia, concord, the heart of the matter. It's protecting what is really important to us. In many ways, I would say the Confession, the Lutheran Confession, especially Augsburg Confession, is super generous. It's very aimed at the very center and preserving the article. We believe everything hangs on the article of justification. How we are justified and how the goods of justification is delivered to you. Everything is circled around that so, you know, if you, for example, compare with other traditions, it's very much nitpicking and lots of, you know, you got to be inside that and inside that and inside so and so. Whereas, you know, bottom line in the Lutheran Confession is where the Gospel is purely and clearly proclaimed and that sacraments is rightly administered. There's the people of God. And the Lutheran Confessions doesn't present itself like, hey, here's a new religion or here's a new form of Christianity. In fact, we do the humble confession saying, this is the Catholic creedal faith. We stand in continuity with the Church Fathers. So not just quoting, you know, the Bible, but the Confessions are full of quotes from the Church Fathers and the early church councils just to prove, especially the book of Sorry, Confessio Augustan is basically written to show we have preserved the Catholic faith.
- [17:02]
C
Yeah. Precisely to communicate we're not doing something new here. This is what the Church has taught and should have been teaching all along. What we're doing here is making a carve out for where the Church has gone wrong and just bringing it back to these correct practices that it has in, in the past taught and preached and practiced.
- [17:27]
A
And therefore, I like, we have a long, long line of bishops in the Church of Sweden back in the old good times that said, why we don't call ourselves Lutherans, you know, they were not ashamed of Luther. They just tried to follow what he said himself. Like, he said, I beg you, don't call yourself Lutherans. Because actually that name came up as a bad nickname or whatever you call it from the pejorative. Yeah, saying you're not Christians. You don't follow Christ. You follow a man, a monk, Luther. And he said, it's not my teaching. I didn't hang on the cross. You know, it's Christ's teaching. It's the teaching of the church. So back to our bishop, they usually said, there are three kinds of Christians and we all belong together. You have the Greek Catholics, you have the Roman Catholics, and you have the Evangelical Catholics, and we are the Catholic Christians that have brought back the evangel to the Catholic faith. Because according to them as good Lutherans, they said the problem in the Roman Catholic Church was they were, you know, obscuring the gospel of Jesus Christ, the evangel. And we have brought back the evangel to the Catholic faith. You know, shortly, saying that I just
- [18:45]
C
think before all of our evangelical listeners pass out, it just means universal. It just means universal. So when you hear Roman Catholic, that's the universal church of Rome. When you hear Sort of Greek Catholic as the universal church, the teachings of which are coming out of the Greek Orthodox Church. And then when he says universal evangelical, this is just that the universal church on earth of God is an evangelical or a church of the God Gospel.
- [19:16]
B
And the church is supposed to be universal in the sense of Christians. You know, the goal or the aim would ideally be unity of confession and worship amongst Christians, that the fragmentation and division is a result of sin, not a result of, you know, the Bible teaching different things that are confusing or hard to understand or something like that of human desire and sinfulness or whatever getting in the way of the Gospel being, you know, purely taught and preached and received for the forgiveness of sins.
- [19:52]
C
Well, and what's more than that is when you start having these discussions about why would you hold to this book and not just the Bible, the answer is pretty easy in a sense. For 2,000 years, when the Bible uses a word like justification or grace or faith, or even when it talks about something like baptism or the Lord's Supper, things that are central to the life of belief and practice of being a Christian, there has been disagreement basically on what these words mean and what the sort of outcome of their preaching is and what power God has assigned to one over the other. So thus, anytime anyone, throughout all of church history has spoken about a Bible verse, your pastor, my pastor, anytime anyone has done that, they're essentially giving you what you could call their confession. If you're not part of a confessional church, when your pastor explicates a passage of Scripture, your pastor is telling you what their confession regarding those concepts in that passage and that passage itself are. This is my confession regarding this. I'm interpreting it, I'm explicating it it, I'm expositing it, I'm preaching it, and thus I'm giving you what I think about it and more than that, what I feel about it and what I think the Spirit has moved me to say about it. And so confession is part of being a Christian, and it just is. I mean, Paul does this. He lays this out for everybody. So at the end of the day, all we're doing, when we say, hey, we're confessionally Lutheran, I'm going to go with that. Magnus, we're confessionally. Confessionally in the historic sense is saying, this is what we think right here. If you had a question, this should clear it up for you. If I wasn't clear today, I actually think this, or if in our conversation it got heated and I didn't represent myself well, this is actually what I think. And the good thing about the Book of Concord is you can kind of give people stages of it, right? Like Magnus brought up the Augsburg Confession, which I, you know, the quote, unquote, Lutheran Church was known for the most part as the church of the Augsburg Confession for the longest time as it was establishing its roots. That's how it established its roots as the Church of the Augsburg Confession. But there are shorter ones in here, too, that you could hand to somebody and say, hey, just starting out, here's a small catechism in basic parts. This is what we think about the big things that Christians have learned through the centuries. The Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer. This is what we think about baptism and the Lord's Supper, and this is what we think about the forgiveness of sins. And you can hand it to somebody if you're not well spoken or even if you are well spoken. And this is just not the thing that you've studied for all of your life. But you want to talk to somebody about your faith, you can say, hey, let's go through this together. It's pretty simple. We do it with children and let's go through it together. And that's a helpful thing to have.
- [23:02]
B
I also think of sort of God in Genesis and his proclamation that it is not good for a man to be alone. And all of the sort of vocational entanglements that God has placed in our lives, that other people serve each other, live together, work with one another to deliver God's gifts to one another, both in life, both in things like house and home and food and drink and clothing. But also, then this is the same model that God has used, used for the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of his gifts of grace and love and forgiveness. And all of this, they're not sort of abstract or singular or alone. And because of that, you know, no Christian really does try to be alone. People gather together in churches, and one of the questions, I think, especially for people who want to get away from sort of confessional models, even if they believe confessional truths. So, for instance, I think one of the best examples is that a lot of American evangelical churches will push away from using the creeds, the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed. And the reason why is not because they explicitly reject any of the content of the creeds. A lot of the time, especially the Apostles Creeds. Most evangelical churches in America would in one way or another teach what those creeds teach, but it is pushing away from some sort of man made imposition on Scripture or something like that. And so they have sort of a backwards view of confessions that they confessions interpret scripture instead of being an interpretation or a proclamation of the truths that come out of scripture, just like they do on Sunday. Similar to preaching, for instance, which is, if done correctly, preaching is not supposed to be an interpretation or imposition onto scripture, but is supposed to be breathed out of and proclaimed truths from the scripture to the audience. And there's something I think we should say, which is that why would you desire to, every time you go to worship, start from scratch figuring out what somebody believes or teaches or have no standard to which you can hold them accountable to what their teaching and preaching ought to be. And one of the things with a confession is when a church or a people and everybody has a confession, as my dad said, everybody has a confession. Anybody who has ever said the words I believe X, Y and Z thing has made a confession. Which means especially these sort of free will churches where you surrender your life to Christ, those people make a confession when they say, I give my life to Christ or I believe in Christ, or I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, you are making a particular type of confession. So every person has a confession. Confessional churches are just being, and our culture really likes this today, are being extremely transparent about what that is and trying to tell you what that is about. Trying to tell you what that is about. As many things as possible and not just one or two things. And that's why when somebody asks, why are your confessions so long? Why couldn't this be shorter? Well, it's because we're trying to cover all the bases. In a lot of ways, we're trying to be very transparent with you. And it also means that I should know, even before I get to church what my pastor believes and teaches, what the congregation believes and teaches, and that I find it very weird to desire to go to a church where, you know, you're going to disagree with the teachings of your pastor, or even if it's just some of them. Oh, yeah, I really like what pastor so and so teaches about the Old Testament, but I just, you know, I just disagree with him on baptism. But that's okay, you know, that's, you know, it's only one.
- [26:42]
C
It's just about baptism.
- [26:43]
B
Yeah, it's only one of the most important things in the New Testament or something. Or it could be the exact opposite. Oh, he really teaches great about Christ.
- [26:50]
A
Sure.
- [26:50]
B
I don't agree with his dispensational view of things, but his advice and his exposition of the Christian life is just so useful or something like that.
- [26:59]
A
But this angle you take up now, Caleb, I think makes this question especially urgent in our time because we live in a time where churches in general, but also Lutheran churches, reshapes their teaching and their practice because of cultural pressure. So they become culturally adapted Christian churches instead of confessional Christians and especially Lutherans. I will say back home in Europe, I don't know about America. I think it's the same in America. They use Luther as the alibi of changing things because they say our church father is Martin Luther. He was a guy that changed tradition and traditional faith. And in that line we continue, you know, semper reformanda. We continue to reform and to change and to reflect on the Christian faith, to adopt it. He changed the mass into the German mass, you know, away from Latin. Well, we. We make the faith even today, relevant to our culture, to our language. Maybe it meant something 500 years ago. We are now improving and updating our faith so it fits the culture we're living in. That's why I think it's very urgent in our time to discuss what does it mean to be a confessional Christian. First of all, as you said, Caleb, long before we have Augustana, we have the creeds, you know, that's the baseline that also our confession applied to and saying, well, here is the basic foundation for Christian faith, the belief in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and the work that he's done for man. And then comes on that, you know, interpretation, how we interpret that. So I think some people is really proud of being Lutherans, but for the total wrong reason, they use Luther as the alibi of changing the Christian faith.
- [29:03]
C
Oof. I think he's a bad alibi for that. In fact, the hallmark semper reformata or the always reforming, that was not ever a Lutheran slogan. That was something that Calvinists eventually sort of worked with even a little bit there too. To use Luther as somebody saying, hey, always change. We need to always be changing and always sort of pushing back against authority. That's just need to read a little bit more Luther, because he was pretty well against that kind of thing and was worried, always worried that his advocacy for the gospel of Christ Jesus and what that would do to the church would cause greater revolution throughout society and greater hope for sort of cultural adjustment within the church. And when it did happen, he spoke out against it pretty harshly. I mean, pretty harshly. Yeah.
- [30:00]
A
And that is also, you know, defining the word to be a reformer and what Reformation. Reformation doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't bring in something new. It's actually bring back to original shape and form.
- [30:15]
C
Yeah. Hey, if we could switch gears here a little bit, Caleb, if you'd allow me to do so. For sure.
- [30:21]
A
Go for it.
- [30:23]
C
I think it'd be interesting to have Magnus kind of tell us the story about his movement in Sweden that he works with and for. I don't know the right way to say that with your position in Sweden, but how it exists within the state church of Sweden, but is sort of its own thing too. I don't know. I don't want to get him in trouble by sort of outlining the issues with the state church of Sweden. We might just give him a pass on that. But sort of at least why his movement exists at all and then sort of its interaction with and sort of what it's trying to do within the church at Sweden.
- [30:56]
A
Yeah. You know, state church is a concept from Europe. It basically became, you know, early on in the. In the wars, the faith of the king or the faith of the prince became the faith of the people, if you ask.
- [31:09]
C
Eu rego, eus religio.
- [31:12]
A
Exactly. So basically what happened in Sweden is actually the Reformation that Martin Luther was looking for actually succeeded in Sweden. It is the Catholic Church that was reformed and bec. Evangelical Catholic in Sweden after the Reformation very early. Two of the students that was down in Wittenberg was called for by our king to help reform. And obviously there was strong political motives behind that. But the gospel was again central in Sweden and was preached and handed out in churches all over Sweden and it became a state church. You know, church and state hand in hand for a long time until 2016 ago, where there were kind of a separation between church and state formally. But functionally we are pretty much, you know, hand in hand still. 200 years ago, the Church of Sweden was, you know, going through some dark ages. Our whole nation was going through poverty, addictions. And you know, a third of Sweden left for the promised land, America for Minnesota. Yes. And right there and then in that darkness, there was actually with pietistic impulses and small. What do you call them, Convicticles, small groups.
- [32:46]
C
Okay, we'll go with you. We'll believe you.
- [32:49]
A
Small groups that there was meeting without a formal priest, which was against the law, to read the apostles of Luther and again discover the beautiful doctrines of grace. And it revived again the Lutheran confession. So all of a sudden it was the pietistic influenced group that was coming back to what we speak about to be what it means to be a confessional Lutheran. And the warmth of the gospel and the clear distinct between law and gospel came back to the church. So instead of being the state's arm to moral improvement, it became again candid or what do you say, the messenger of a clear gospel proclamation. And that brought new life to the Church of Sweden. And instead of being a free church, as we say it in Europe, you know, a non denominational or a different denomination, this group of people decided we gonna stay inside this Evangelical Church of Sweden and work for its renewal. And we have done so for 170 years. In May we celebrate 170 years.
- [34:04]
C
What's the name of the movement
- [34:09]
A
in Swedish? E F S It means Swedish Evangelical Move Mission.
- [34:14]
C
And what was the name of the founding theologian?
- [34:17]
A
Carl Olof Rosenius. And he has some of his scripture, some of his books translated into English and I highly recommend the reading of them.
- [34:30]
C
I got one as a gift at last year's here recently, I think.
- [34:33]
A
Yeah, that's right.
- [34:36]
B
Very good. Well, yeah, that is an interesting experience there. I mean, I know you've talked about it quite a bit. I hear we still stand and things like that too in your, in your talks. Just sort of, you, you bring the experience of being part of a small rebel movement within the church to those talks, which is very, it's good for Americans to hear because you know, theoretically confessional Lutheranism in America is actually quite large. I know it can feel small to people. I've been doing, you know, like a little demographic research and you know, even the Missouri Synod cracks the top five of by membership denominational churches in America by, by just sheer numbers. Even though we've shrunk and everybody else has shrunk and things like that, we have the benefit and the challenge of a lot of people in confessional Lutheranism in America, which means sometimes a lot of infighting. And I think you can lose sight of the central matter, as I don't want to say as like a point of preaching, but certainly in a point of interpersonal discussions and debates within Lutheranism simply because there are so many of us. That means there are other types of disagreements, social disagreements, practice disagreements and things like that. I kind of think talking to you and in Sweden there's a. There's a benefit, there's huge challenges, but the benefits of being in sort of a small group, it's kind of like being in a small church that's struggling to survive, which we experience here, where we're at, which is you kind of have to have an all Hands on deck kind of thing, that the infighting might sink the ship. And I think that would be a good perspective for Lutherans in America to have, too. Not that we shouldn't have disagreements or work out what the best way to move forward is, but that excessive infighting could. Could sink the ship.
- [36:18]
C
Boy, that's. That's a good lesson right there. Yeah. I think of all the time, sort of you would hear, since 2012 or 11, or whenever the ELCA kind of formally split and you got the LCMC and the NALC out of that, prior to that, you would always hear, you know, why, if there are faithful theologians in the elca, why don't they just leave? And a lot of times. And you could kind of say the same thing to Magnus, too. Right. Like, if you have some frustrating, I don't know that he does. Again, I'm not trying to get him in trouble, but theoretically, if he did have some issues with the Church of Sweden, you could easily say, hey, why don't you just leave? And why don't you become part of a free evangelical Lutheran movement in Sweden that always discounts that there are people within these churches that were once faithful, that are trying to bring these churches back through rigorous battle, oftentimes to faithfulness. And I feel like those of us who have kind of been in the LCMS a long time, or in my case, in your case, Caleb, our entire lives, you know, it's easy for us to look out at these people who have oftentimes, you know, just as long of a family, historical and cultural connection to another church body, and so say, hey, why don't you just leave? Obviously they're unfaithful. You know, oftentimes you say that to these people, they'll say, yeah, they are, but I'm fighting for their faithfulness and praying for it and battling it out every day. There's something to that that I think when you're like somebody like me, it's hard to see until you've really encountered it with people that you love that are still there in the fight.
- [38:08]
A
And I think, speaking of the Confessions, I think we have a good confessional ground, you know, to stay in a church that is backslidden, because the Confessions actually outline, you know, don't have too high expectations of what it. What a pure church is, because the church is full of hypocrites and it doesn't stop being the church. You know, the confession we all subscribe to actually says that even if you have the priest or the pastor who is a scumbag and you know, handing out out the sacraments. The sacraments works. They are in work.
- [38:42]
C
You know, it's enough for unity that the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered. That's enough.
- [38:48]
A
Yeah, it's enough. So I think that is one of the benefits of. I don't, you know, for good and for bad we don't have the entrepreneurial DNA as you have in America. It seems like in America whenever you are a group that does that disagree with something, you start your own, you know, you rent the storefront, you buy a keyboard and you start your own choice church. And that keeps on and keeps on and keeps on and keeps on. Well, I believe if we are children of the Reformation, we work for reform until they throw us out. That's what the father of this branch of the Christianity did.
- [39:26]
C
Yeah, that's literally. I'm not wanting to bring him up but I think I always think of somebody that works for 15, 17 that I think is always waiting for that exact same thing. When people ask him, why don't you just leave? He's like, I'm waiting for them to throw me out.
- [39:39]
A
Well, I don't wait for them to throw me out. I wait for. Actually excuse me for saying this, the good, the good guys is gonna win. You know, they are always the good guys gonna jump the chip.
- [39:51]
C
You're not quite as cantankerous as the other guy I'm thinking about.
- [39:57]
B
So I. Magnostina. Do you know about redeemed Zoo
- [40:03]
A
Redeemed a zoomer?
- [40:05]
B
Yeah, he's a, like he's on YouTube and social media. He's like a, he's like a 22 year old. But this is kind of his. I think you would appreciate that he, he has a whole thing about taking back the mainline churches that left their confessions and that, that they might not have lost if all the conservatives didn't leave when they lost some of the initial battles and stuff like that.
- [40:25]
C
That's a good point.
- [40:26]
A
I'm a big follower of that. You know, I believe that we standing in a good line, you know, the people of God if we follow them through the who testament, oh my gosh, you know that is a backslidden rebellious people that don't want God. They want a human king. God is gracious to them. They want to be like the nations around them instead of being a set apart nation for God and on and on and they end up in captivity and exile and God is just gracious and send prophets to get them back on board in life, that is our history. And if we look at church history, well, it doesn't get better. It's the same. You know, the church are born and then we backslide or we go away from the confession. We forget about the scriptures and we want to become like the world. And I think we're in a time also when a lot of Lutherans want to be culturally accepted and that why I brought up this. So in the spirit of Luther, they say, I don't mean that is a right alibi, but. But Luther has been used as an alibi for that to be culturally relevant and be a folk church, a state church, not the church for the people, but the church of the people there. It connects very much with the shift we're in today. In today's culture where we have been going away from authority and promote authenticity. You know, the biggest sin you can do today is not be yourself. So the authority is not on the outside of yourself. It has moved inside yourself and you should know all this crap. Listen to your heart and are you true against yourself? And the Lutheran Church, sadly, has been a platform and a megaphone for this message.
- [42:23]
C
Every time somebody says, listen to your heart, I think you must have a different heart. Thank you. Mine, you don't want me to listen to my heart.
- [42:31]
B
That's pretty funny. Well, hey, Magnus, thank you very much for coming on the show. I think this was a very fun discussion. I hope it was useful for people. I think confessional Lutheranism is sort of assumed by those who are confessionally Lutheran and then often confusing for those who aren't because just a lot of traditions aren't as confessional. And so you get these questions about, well, do you have a second Bible or something like that? And so I think it is good to outline and talk about especially sort of the benefits and goal of that, again, being sort of transparency and unity and the ability to actually serve one another with the proclamation of the gospel in a consistent and open manner. So I think that's great and I thank you for coming on the show. If you enjoyed this episode, why don't you do us a favor and share it with a friend or a family member? Often we ask you to subscribe, but I know that many of you, in fact most of you listening to this when it comes out are subscribed already. But if you enjoyed the thinking, fellows, or this. Yeah.
- [43:35]
C
Share it with a family member or
- [43:37]
B
a friend who might enjoy this episode or might get some clarity from this episode, that would be a great help to us in growing the reach of the show and expanding the mission of 1517. So we appreciate your help with that. We thank you for listening, and we will catch you next week.
- [43:52]
A
Bye.