Dave H. goes Anglican
Dave H. of Here We Stand is leaving the LCMS for Anglicanism.
Note especially his comments on the Law/Gospel hermaneutic. He had a post or two on that subject previously, and I always wanted to get into it with him on this topic in some depth, but I just never had the time.
I think it was he who once dismissed my illustration of the judgment one experiences when one violates the law of gravity by walking out of a fourth story window as an example of the way in which the Law and judgment are built into the very structure of Creation as "silly." He seems not to understand that God's decrees as to the laws of physics and other matters of divinely- ordained fact are as much Law as "Thou shalt not kill." Yes, Dave, the Law/Gospel hermaneutic does serve as an interpretive principle for all of Scripture; it's just that it's a hermaneutical principle you don't understand as well as you think you do!
He also thinks that Walther's dictum that Law and Gospel are not properly distinguised in a sermon if, taken as a whole, the Gospel does not predominate "can mean anything." Actually, it means one fairly obvious and straightforward thing: that the sermon should be about primarily about what Jesus has done for me, and not about what I am supposed to do! That isn't hard- and it would seem to me to be a rather minimal requirement for anything which might be accurately described as even a truly Christian sermon!
All of this makes me wonder how Lutheran Dave ever was. He has, I fear, a different spirit from ours- and as much as I hate to see him leave even the watered-down Lutheranism of the current Missouri Synod for the theological wasteland of Anglicanism, I wonder whether he really was "of" the Lutheran church even while he was in it.
Note especially his comments on the Law/Gospel hermaneutic. He had a post or two on that subject previously, and I always wanted to get into it with him on this topic in some depth, but I just never had the time.
I think it was he who once dismissed my illustration of the judgment one experiences when one violates the law of gravity by walking out of a fourth story window as an example of the way in which the Law and judgment are built into the very structure of Creation as "silly." He seems not to understand that God's decrees as to the laws of physics and other matters of divinely- ordained fact are as much Law as "Thou shalt not kill." Yes, Dave, the Law/Gospel hermaneutic does serve as an interpretive principle for all of Scripture; it's just that it's a hermaneutical principle you don't understand as well as you think you do!
He also thinks that Walther's dictum that Law and Gospel are not properly distinguised in a sermon if, taken as a whole, the Gospel does not predominate "can mean anything." Actually, it means one fairly obvious and straightforward thing: that the sermon should be about primarily about what Jesus has done for me, and not about what I am supposed to do! That isn't hard- and it would seem to me to be a rather minimal requirement for anything which might be accurately described as even a truly Christian sermon!
All of this makes me wonder how Lutheran Dave ever was. He has, I fear, a different spirit from ours- and as much as I hate to see him leave even the watered-down Lutheranism of the current Missouri Synod for the theological wasteland of Anglicanism, I wonder whether he really was "of" the Lutheran church even while he was in it.
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