[1] There can be little question that doctrinal theology, not to mention “dogmatics,” has become disreputable, not only in the eyes of hostile critics of Christianity, but also to the consciences of many Christians. For ELCA Lutherans in particular, doctrinal theology connotes ecclesiastical policing, conjuring up medieval inquisitions, rancorous disputation, hairsplitting scholasticism, witch hunts, heresy trials and cruel executions. More subtly, there is the worry that doctrinal claims burden consciences by demanding assent to implausible beliefs, undermining the freedom of faith with a subtle but pernicious regime of intellectual works righteousness. For many ELCA Lutherans, then, doctrinal theology is what the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod does as a pretext to erect exclusionary boundaries. By contrast, what we do is open wide the gates to declare that all are welcome. It is about belonging, not believing. Doctrine divides but action unites.
[2] The irony of course is that in just this way we also indulge in a “contrastive identity” mechanism,[i] which proves to be just as exclusionary as that of the dogmatic “other” whom we disdain and reject. We have not escaped the trap of religious exclusion but perpetuated it with a new dogmatism of anti-dogmatism, so to speak. Indeed, we have not escaped “dogmatics” at all, but only replaced the traditional form of it with new regimes of language-and-behavior policing. Tacitly, if not explicitly, this new exclusivism presupposes its own definite even if unspoken set of ELCA beliefs: that Jesus means freedom, that freedom does not submit to heteronomous claims, that faith alone apart from religious works puts us in right relationship with the divine, that we, not the alternative, are the true heirs of Luther’s better legacy. But why should the meaning of Jesus, or for that matter the legacy of Luther, count for us? What difference do these references make?
[3] I want to build a case for a renewed doctrinal theology, as this side of the eschaton the Church of Christ cannot escape the need to “test the spirits” (1 John 4:1-3) and through creed and confession to draw such boundaries that organize life as body of Christ, i.e., as a particular organism in the world with generous but definite portals. How is the community of faith to self-identify through trial and adversity such that the open door of welcome is sustained in the face of indifference or hostility? How does faith knowingly operate in generous love? How do we identify the generous works of love that intend justice? How is the burden of a past of intolerance, even religious war, to be repented and overcome? And, at the center of all such questions is one about the divine: who and what is God such that the community of faith may speak truthfully about God, critically discerning in this light that our hands are actually doing God’s work? In a world awash with propaganda, especially religious propaganda, must we not in a humble act of self-discipline test our own speech for its integrity and purchase on reality? Such would be the task of critical dogmatics.
[4] We get surprising help in answering these questions from the most progressive pope in modern Roman Catholic history. Pope Francis met with a Lutheran delegation from Finland on January 17, 2022. In the meeting he pointed both to the upcoming 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 2025 and to the approaching 500th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in 2030 as occasions to renew the doctrinal quest for unity between Christians. More specifically and (perhaps surprisingly for us), he lifted up creed and confession as resources for overcoming the past on the way to renewed Christian unity.
[5] He began by proclaiming the divine obligation to seek Christian unity. “Dear friends, we have set out on a journey led by God’s kindly light that dissipates the darkness of division and directs our journey towards unity. We have set out, as brothers and sisters, on the journey towards ever fuller communion.”[ii] Concretely, the pope then pointed to the upcoming anniversaries as opportunities to envision the goal of Christian unity more clearly and pursue it more intelligently.
[6] He chiefly lifted the Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. as a source of this clarity. “In 2025, we will celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. The Trinitarian and Christological confession of that Council, which acknowledges Jesus to be ‘true God from true God’ and ‘consubstantial with the Father,’ unites us with all those who are baptized.”[iii] The underlying logic of the pope’s statement is Johannine: all who are in Christ by believing him are therewith united with all others believing Christ just because Christ is one with the Father. Indeed, Christ prayed that all may be one just as he and the Father are one. Consequently, Francis continued: “In view of this great anniversary, let us renew our enthusiasm for journeying together in the way of Christ, in the way that is Christ. For we need him and the newness and incomparable joy that he brings. Only by clinging to him will we reach the end of the path leading to full unity.”[iv]
[7] Surprisingly, perhaps, the Pope next turned his attention to the Augsburg Confession. Although the Lutheran confession was officially rejected by the Roman Catholic Church in 1530, Francis noted the ecumenical intention of the Augsburg Confession: “At a time when Christians were about to set out on different paths, that Confession attempted to preserve unity. We know that it did not succeed in preventing division, but the forthcoming anniversary can serve as a fruitful occasion to encourage and confirm us on our journey of communion, so that we can become more docile to God’s will, and less to human strategies, more disposed to prefer to earthly aims the route pointed out by Heaven.”[v]
[8] Note well! The Pope is recommending a critical dogmatics (not self-serving ecclesiastical propaganda strategically calculated), facing difficulties, ecumenically intended and mutually joined, as the “the route pointed out by Heaven”! Attention to the historic Creed and Confession as resources for overcoming the past on the way to renewed unity under the tacit assumption that each in its own way critiques the alienated and fractured churches of divided Christianity! Such theological work entails the overcoming of entrenched misreadings, no doubt an arduous undertaking in doctrinal theology.
[9] But an objection may sound: Is this summons not too inward looking? Concerned only for the well-being of ecumenical Christianity at the expense of attention to the urgent problems of our human world?
[10] It need not be. Let me turn here to the work of another theologian, like Francis, not denominationally an ELCA Lutheran, my teacher, the late Paul Lehmann (and his interpreter the Aberdeen Reformed theologian, Philip Ziegler). Lehmann was the American friend of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his life’s work could well be construed as fulfilling the program outlined in Bonhoeffer’s posthumous Ethics. His famous book was titled, Ethics in a Christian Context.[vi] The critical dogmatic task he spelled out there is to discern what God is doing in this world “to make and to keep human life human.” Such theology is not ecclesio-centric but rather interested in the body of Christ at work in the world doing the work which reflects its incarnational faith. This is theology as the discernment of “God’s work for our hands!”
[11] Lehmann’s model of doctrinal theology connects with the Augsburg Confession basics of Lutheran theology. As Ziegler points out,
“Lehmann’s account of the dynamism of God’s philanthropy has a decidedly Protestant complexion. Grace seeks and finds human beings in their sin and, binding them to Christ by way of his rectifying work, reconciles them to God and impels them toward their neighbours in the freedom of their new reality. The dynamism of divine love becomes concrete in the saving work of election, incarnation, justification and redemption: sin having become our ‘second nature’, natural life in the usurped creation is inescapably and manifoldly misanthropic; grace supervenes upon our inhumanity, the advent of the new that creates faithful and humane possibilities ex contrario within the world of sin. Justifying grace finds us, on Lehmann’s account, firmly in the ‘still yet unredeemed world’ of which Barmen V speaks.”[vii]
[12] Ziegler’s purpose in interpreting Lehmann is to emphasize the work of critical dogmatics as the intellectual resource which funds and informs enlightened Christian cooperation with the God of the gospel at work in the world to make and to keep human life human. This education by way of critical dogmatics has several interesting implications. First, it is disruptive because grace comes disruptively into our inhumane world. Theology therefore cannot seek and find some basis for Christian ethics that is in continuity with a world perverted by the self-seeking of sin, solidified in structures of malice and injustice. Christian ethics are funded by the disruptive intervention of the self-donating Christ who inaugurates a new creation on the paradigm of Paul knocked off his high horse by the vision of the risen but still persecuted Jesus. It is the task of critical dogmatics ever to identify this Christ and make his presence recognizable.
[13] Second, and this is important in clarifying further the nature of the disruption just mentioned, the grace of God in Jesus Christ seeks and finds us just as we are in this world and precisely there makes us into disciples. The gospel word of God is thus concrete in its actuality so that the Christian ethic following in this way is always contextually articulated. The Christian asks not primarily about ethical principles or general schemes of morality or reformatory political programs but, “What am I, as a believer in Jesus Christ, called to do here and now?”
[14] To ask and answer this question well, of course, the believer needs to be equipped theologically, knowing who she now is as baptized into Christ; who in turn Jesus Christ is and what he is doing in the world; and what finally, according to the best lights of sanctified reason interpreting experience, are the contours and fissures of her own world. In essence, this is a summons to a renewed catechesis of lifelong Christian learning, i.e. discipleship, stewarded by pastors well educated in critical dogmatics, critically aware, then, both of their own place in the tradition of the gospel and its place in the ongoing drama of humanity on the earth. Both reality poles of this disruptive-God-and-concrete-human-world correlation are necessary according to Lehmann especially because the broader cultural context of our church today is post-Christendom in the West.
[15] Ziegler points out that Lehmann’s point of departure for this correlation is Bonhoeffer’s observation from his Nazi prison cell that the antecedent Christendom synthesis in Western culture is dissolved into its two parts: the communion of Christ and “this world.” Postwar American triumphalism and exceptionalism obscured the relevance of this acute observation for us, but today the status of the church as the bygone center of culture is manifest, even as distorted and perverted forms of American Christianity still aspire to cultural dominance. The future existence of the body of Christ is “sectarian” in the sense that it is no longer the dominant teacher of public morality, but one voice among many. It cannot flourish by drowning out other voices but only by hearing and obeying the ever-renewing gospel word of God. As it walks as it talks, and as its talk is actually the gospel word of God, the communion faith but will draw other voices into fellowship or friendship according to the sovereign election of God. Its “walking the talk” includes hearing other voices with patient love and critical discernment. Through the patience of dialogue, others may enter the wide portals firmly and clearly placed on the border of the Christian community or mutually discover possibilities of friendly partnership meeting in the common world for the care of creation.
[16] Lehmann’s spelling out from Bonhoeffer our post-Christendom context suggests adding a Lutheran voice in this summons to a renewed but critical dogmatics. The late George Lindbeck contributed a significant work, The Nature of Doctrine, in which argued that the future church will be, as Stanley Hauerwas explained, sectarian sociologically but catholic in its self-understanding. This formulation connects the summons of Pope Francis with the legacy of Paul Lehmann in just the way one would expect an evangelical catholic Lutheran to do.
[17] Lindbeck’s much discussed analysis of the nature of doctrine did yeoman’s work in clarifying and resolving many of the problems and objections raised against the discipline of dogmatics mentioned at the beginning of this article. First, doctrine is ancillary to faith. One does not believe in doctrine, but by way of (with the help of) doctrine. Take the litmus test example of the creedal statement, “born of the Virgin Mary.” This is neither a proposition according to Lindbeck nor is it a symbol of religious experience. Rather it is a grammar-like rule for speaking Christ correctly as the gospel word of God, namely, as truly born human, particularly of an exemplary Jewish mother so that his coming into the world is from the beginning a saving act of God. Doctrine in this way guides speaking Christianly about Jesus, spelling out who he is for us and for all.
[18] Helpful as this understanding of doctrine is, for many it begs the question of truth. “Well,” such a one might say, “yes, but was Jesus really born of a virgin?” Such an objection is about the truth value of doctrinal statements, about their adequate connection with “reality.” Although Lindbeck was reticent to entertain such propositionalist objections, and indeed hesitated in making any ontological claims in theology, he allowed that others using his model could do so. Indeed, this very objection, for example, might be fruitfully taken up in congruity with Lindbeck’s proposal to discover and articulate a better understanding of the theological claims put forth in Matthew and Luke about the Nativity.
[19] Dominated as the theological tradition has been by questions of sexual purity in this connection, dogmatics might critically explore whether what is really being proclaimed here is Mary as representative of the faithful Israel whom the Lord has sought through the centuries. Mary/Israel thus gives birth to Luther’s “true son of David,” who comes into the world to slay the Goliath of sin, death and the devil, “casting down the mighty from their thrones and exalted them of low degree.” In this way critical dogmatics can move forward long-standing problems within the tradition of Christian doctrine without defaulting to the literalism of a woodenly propositionalist interpretation of doctrine – or the mere denial of the same.
[20] But the better objection to the rule understanding of doctrine is not its reticence regarding ostensive historical claims but rather it’s hesitation to make ontological claims about God. It is true that, in parallel to Lehmann, Lindbeck insisted that language of the Christian community is initiated from without, by the Verbum externum of the gospel. He offered no meta-account of this claim for the word of God but rather took it as granted. Here, then, another Lutheran theologian Christine Helmer, can come to our aid. In her fine book, The End of Doctrine,[viii] she makes a powerful correction to meet this chief objection and, in the process, executes an incisive critique of an inbred and fideistic tendency in one of Lindbeck’s prominent students, erstwhile Lutheran turned Roman Catholic, Bruce Marshall.
[21] Helmer specifies and accounts for the “external word” which inaugurates and sustains the community of faith as the present Christ and, correspondingly, faith as the “real” experience of him. Because faith is concretely experienced as Christ present in the reality of our world, Helmer articulates a kind of double reality test. Is the reference to the living and present Christ in recognizable continuity with the originating event and is the present experience of faith in him embodied in the historical and cultural particularities of this world? A critical dogmatics must pass muster with such reality tests to be credible in the post-Christendom situation. Affinities with the progressive Pope Francis and the Reformed theologian Lehmann are evident. So too is the need for a church dogmatics which is critically aware of both the reality of God acting to make and keep human life human and the realities of our suffering and conflicted human world.
[22] Since the collapse of Christiandom, the secular West at its best, (in its commitment to universal human rights, for example, and its real but faltering attempts at social welfare), lives off evaporating fumes from the empty bottle of the past Christian faith. It has wanted the ethics without the dogma because it has found the dogma incredible. It is doubtful that this cultural disbelief, however, can sustain such ethics, as the rise of authoritarianism at home and abroad indicate and as the pseudo-messianisms of fascism and communism reappear to fill the spiritual void. There are no certainties assuring the affirmation and redemption of the human in such a world. The ethic of Christian humanism stems from our incarnational faith which in turn cannot be projected forward any longer, as if on automatic. The body of Christ must learn again to stand on its own two feet without political patronage or cultural establishment, namely the gospel and the Scriptures as critically understood in the dogmatic tradition of the creeds and confessions.
[23] A critical dogmatics faces up to the prima fascia implausibility of the dogmatic claims but interprets them as the disruptive breakthroughs of life transforming grace. To that end I conclude by calling attention to the forthcoming series from Cascade Press, Reconstruction in Lutheran Doctrinal Theology. With 30 some contracted authors from across the Lutheran spectrum in America, Canada and Europe and covering a range of traditional and novel topics, the series in the course of the next years will undertake the new theological thinking proposed in this article.
[i] See my review essay: “On the Sacrifice of Conscience: Ephraim Radner’s A Brutal Unity” in Syndicate I/1 (May/June 2014) 11-17.
[ii] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250120/pope-francis-looks-ahead-to-the-1700th-anniversary-of-the-council-of-nicaea-in-2025
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Paul L. Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context (Louisville KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006).
[vii] https://theologiaborealis.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/pll-2023-essay.pdf
[viii] Christine Helmer, The End of Doctrine (Louisville KY: John Knox Westminster, 2014). See my review essay in Pro Ecclesia XXV/1 (Winter 2016) 105-111.
Paul R. Hinlicky is the emeritus Tise Professor of Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, a Docent of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava, and a Professor of Systematic Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology. He is the author of Paths Not Taken (2009), Luther and the Beloved Community (2010), Divine Complexity (2010), and with Brent Adkins, Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze (2013). He is the editor of a new series of books on Lutheran Dogmatics and Constructive Theology with Wipf and Stock Press: