Bachmann's apostasy is official

It's official: Michele Bachmann has left the Lutheran church in order to become a Reformed "Evangelical." Rumors to that effect have been circulating for some time, and a Lutheran pastor I know was told that they were true some months ago by a Bachmann staffer who is a member of his church,.

It is doubtful, from the remarks about her spirituality Bachmann has made down through the years, that she was ever theologically a Lutheran in the first place. Doubtless she will be much more at home in the world of pop "evangelicalism." But apparently the final straw was the flack Bachmann took during her last congressional campaign over the claim by the Lutheran Confessions that the papacy is the biblical Antichrist.

I'm a little amused by the comparison by the Catholic journalist in the article of confessional Lutherans to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Obama's anti-American former pastor.  I'll apologize for the Confessions the moment the Catholic church officially withdraws the anathamas pronounced by the Council of Trent against the biblical doctrine of justification and those who believe it.

And before anybody even says it, no, the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification does not do that. The Catholic theologians involved lack the authority to overrule a supposedly "infallible" church council, or even to restrict the application of its anathemas. The statement in the JDDJ that the condemnations of Trent "do not apply" to today's Lutherans simply has no official sanction. Nor is the JDDJ actually an agreement on the doctrine of justification- a term which, like "grace" and "faith," Lutheranism and Catholicism define differently. It is simply a piece of rhetorical slight-of-hand whereby a common formula is agreed upon whose words mean different things in each tradition.

Whatever may be true rhetorically, the JDDJ represents no theological convergence on the doctrine of justification at all.


HT: Real Clear Religion

ADDENDUM: A hit piece on Bachmann and the confessional Lutheran church from The Atlantic can be found here.

ADDENDUM II: A piece on the JDDJ by an honest Roman Catholic, and another by an honest Lutheran, can be found here.