Written by Carl R. Trueman |
Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Lutheranism has much to offer the church catholic at this moment in time. Like all confessional Christianity, it is anchored in realities that transcend the political particularities of our day; and it also reminds us of the church’s true task and realistic expectations in a time such as this.

This week I had the privilege of speaking at a seminar for the Collegium Fellows of Doxology, a group of Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastors committed to spiritual care and counsel. There are serious theological differences between the Lutheran tradition and my own Reformed tradition, most obviously in the area of the Lord’s Supper. But there is an ethos that binds confessional Protestants together in a world where Catholics are in frequent turmoil over the actions of the present pope and where evangelicals are tearing themselves apart over attitudes to the current political malaise that has enveloped American public life.
Toward the end of the seminar, one pastor asked what I thought confessional Lutheranism could offer to the church catholic at this moment in time. My answer was threefold.
First, confessional Protestantism in general, when faithful to its defining documents, focuses the minds of believers upon the great truths of the Christian faith that take no account of the vicissitudes of the age. God, Trinity, Fall, Incarnation, redemption, and grace: These are truths that feed the mind and the soul, regardless of which side wins and which side loses elections. And they are the central concerns of the great confessional documents of Protestantism. Whether the Book of Concord for Lutherans; the Westminster Standards for Presbyterians; the Three Forms of Unity for the Reformed; or the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Homilies for Anglicans—all speak of the eternal weight of glory that is to come and thereby relativize the slings and arrows of this world as so many light, momentary afflictions. The implications of this are liturgical: The church goes about its ordinary work of proclaiming Christ in Word and Sacrament even as earthly regimes come and go. Thus it was in the time of Nero. So it is today.
I went on to say that confessional Lutheranism, more specifically, has two particularly important contributions for the church catholic today. First, the Lutheran distinction (echoing Augustine), between the heavenly kingdom and the earthly kingdom. This distinction is vital, especially in a time of deep political division and seductive political temptation. Much has been made of Christian nationalism as an “existential threat” to the nation and to democracy. Setting aside the rather fluid definitions of Christian nationalism, even in its most extreme form it is unlikely to pose a significant threat to society at large. But it may well prove to be a threat in the much smaller world of our congregations and denominations, where a confusion between church and world and between the power of the Word and the power of the sword would devastate the gospel.
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Prosperity preachers treat material prosperity as the definitive sign of faith and spiritual growth. Even a glancing look at the Old Testament tells us that one can be well off and far from God; healthy and on their way to hell.

The prosperity gospel teaches that God wants his people to be wealthy and healthy. At its core is often the idea that in Christ God has restored to us the blessings of the covenant made with Abraham. These blessings are understood in a primarily material way, including good health, economic prosperity, and an all-round victory in most areas of life. Prosperity gospel preachers rely heavily on the Old Testament to make this case, arguing that God promises his people abundant wealth and abounding health.
The threat of the prosperity gospel has been well-documented, from the devastating revelations concerning the late T.B. Joshua to the undeniable ways it distorts both an individual’s faith and the church’s corporate witness. In this article I want to show how having a better understanding of the Bible’s overarching redemptive story—and covenants—is an important corrective to the prosperity gospel.
Meet the God Who Lacks for Nothing
The Bible’s creation account teaches that God created the world and everything in it. At every stage of the creation, God calls what he has made “good” (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). This is a testament to the all-surpassing wealth and abundance of our God. The work of creation isn’t merely functional but bountiful. We don’t only see God’s power, but also that he lacks nothing.
There’s an implication here. God is self-sufficient. His working in this world is not incentivised by our giving or sacrifices. The same is true of how he treats us. Importantly, this understanding of God guards against the temptation to treat God as a kind of talisman, who is motivated to give us wealth because of what we do for him.
Meet the People Who Lost Everything
Having met the Creator God, let’s consider the zenith of his creation: people (Genesis 1:31). These opening chapters of Genesis teach that God grants man dominion over the rest of the world (Genesis 1:28-30; 2:15). Why? Well, just like everything else God made, humankind exists to bring God glory. Our ruling over the world, this dominion, was meant to display God’s splendour; to give him honour. As God’s representative, those who image God (Genesis 1:27), man was entrusted with the blessings of God’s rule and power.
But man turned from, rather than to, God in search of satisfaction, significance, and security. We forsook the all-sufficient Creator and put our faith in the creation (Genesis 3:6; Romans 1:21-23). The worst result of this wasn’t poverty or poor health. In fact, the people we meet in Genesis after the fall live incredibly long lives and enjoy economic prosperity. The problem is, all of them die; all of them endure spiritual poverty, being kept from entering Eden and enjoying the presence of God that Adam and Eve had.
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In your reaction against others in the denomination you have given yourselves to a form of organization and methods that are not acceptable, and now the only way that you can you remove the offense of your unjustified secret political machinations is by openly repenting of them. Write a letter and post it at A Faithful PCA, ByFaith, or some such suitable place.

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The Practical Consequences of Secrecy
In your activism you have been very zealous; but “desire without knowledge is not good” (Prov. 19:2), and the knowledge that you lack is the knowledge that forming a secret organization offends your brothers, causes scandal, and is not an acceptable way of achieving your desired ends. You wish to see the PCA make inroads into previously underrepresented areas and groups, but in so doing you approach the matter wrongly and offend those who are already your brothers for the sake of unbelievers who may never repent. One should “give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God” (1 Cor. 10:32), but should labor carefully after the example of Paul (v. 32; comp. Acts 24:16) and others to “give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all” (Rom. 12:17) and to avoid giving offense insofar as it is possible (1 Tim. 3:15; 1Pet. 2:12-17).
This is not what you have done. You were under no obligation to form your organization at all, much less to do it in secret, and much less still to persist in this secrecy for years and in the face of much criticism. This is not striving to “live peaceably with all” (Rom. 12:18) or pursuing “what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (14:19). This is offending the brother and stirring up strife needlessly. Such secrecy gives a poor testimony: if one is right, it is cowardice and hiding one’s lamp (Matt. 5:14-16); and if others are wrong, it is failing to confront them appropriately in a suitably blunt, manful way.
A Further Objection Considered
Perhaps you will object and say that the reason for your secrecy is to avoid slander, because others are in the habit of publicly misrepresenting your character. In such a case you have two recourses. One, you can avail yourself of the process of reconciliation that our Lord has prescribed for us to deal with personal offenses (Matt. 18:15-20), appealing to the church courts if personal admonition proves insufficient. Two, you may elect to forbear the offense, knowing that the sufferance of slander is a mark of the believer’s life in this world, and that it is a gracious thing (1 Pet. 3:13-17) to endure it patiently. Scripture does not say that you are permitted to withdraw into secret enclaves to avoid slander, and as a practical question such secrecy rather gives more occasion to the suspicion of others than reduces it.
An Apology for this Letter
But perhaps all of this is too much. You little like such blunt public criticism of your secret doings. What offense has anyone done you in criticizing or opposing you? Have we not labored to faithfully reprove you for what we believe are your failings? Is such not our duty to you as fellow members of Christ’s church? Perhaps we are wrong to one degree or another, or as regards some matters, or in some of our methods. Perhaps some have even descended from just confrontation to something as heinous as slander, as you allege. I do not make excuses for that, if indeed it is true – I know nothing of such incidents to judge either way – but speak for the many who have disagreed with you whose intent and aims have been good. If you like not the plainness of our speech or its content may it be fairly asked whether the source of offense lies in the remonstrances or in the ones who receive them?
Test your hearts and consider whether there be any pride there that prejudices you in this matter and that closes your minds and hardens your hearts against reproof. You set yourselves up as the proponents of a ‘beautiful orthodoxy’ and ‘a faithful PCA,’ and you write public letters of disagreement defending yourselves, while at all levels of the church courts you work ceaselessly to fashion its polity as you will. Is it unthinkable this has made you blind to your own faults or to the justice of the criticisms that others level against you? It is hard, as a matter of practical human nature, to zealously work for a great scheme of reform without becoming proud, stubborn, and slow to listen. Have you considered whether this is the case with you? Have you tested yourselves and taken the logs out of your own eyes, or do you make haste in assailing others?
It is the latter. Your sincerity is not doubted, nor, for that matter, are some of your claims. The Presbyterian Church in America is a human institution, rife with weakness and sin. It has, as such, many grounds upon which it may be criticized and sundry points at which it needs to amend its deeds. It is not denied that we have often had a poor record in our dealings with various groups, nor that we are prone to complacency, pride, and sundry sins that involve how we conceive of ourselves and relate to others and to material things.
A Call to Repentance
But where some have fallen too far to the right into worldly respectability and have come perilously close to a dead orthodoxy that is but a veneer over a substance that is more of a piece with a WASP-ish country club than the church of Christ, your danger is to fall too far in the other direction. In your reaction against others in the denomination you have given yourselves to a form of organization and methods that are not acceptable, and now the only way that you can you remove the offense of your unjustified secret political machinations is by openly repenting of them. Write a letter and post it at A Faithful PCA, ByFaith, or some such suitable place. Sign it and declare yourselves openly, and as a part of it renounce secrecy and promise to surrender office forever if you are caught in it again and to faithfully reveal anyone whom you know that persists in or returns to it. Apologize also for the offense you have caused your brethren and extol others to not follow in the way of your wrongdoing. Such is the way of honor and honesty, and if you will not take it there are many who will think of you as guilty of impenitent contumacy against the peace and purity of the church.
Further Concerns
It is not only your secretive tendencies that are an occasion for concern. To be blunt – not in an effort to be rude, mind you, but in the interests of speaking the truth faithfully – you come across as rather arrogant and hypocritical. You are rather snidely dismissive of others that disagree with you: The Aquila Report is just a “gossip outlet,” a mere handful of writers against your own robust multitude of elders, while the concerns of others are repeatedly brushed aside as just so much social media outrage. The Nashville Statement is, not a faithful summary of historic teachings about sexuality, but rather “simply the latest stick being used to whack away the unclean,” and it stretches the bounds of credulity to think that anyone regards it as anything “more than empty words.” Any notion of the PCA sliding into liberalism is just a “myth” that you regard as an inconvenience, as it requires you to justify your deeds to others, while in discussing homosexual lust you sarcastically ask whether those that experience such lust should not be “allowed in the fellowship of half-blind [donkeys] looking for the Glory of the Lord?”
There is little charity in such statements, casting aspersions upon the motives and character of others as they do. If The Aquila Report and other sites are just “gossip outlets” aren’t you implicitly accusing their proprietors and contributors of sin? And as for calling your fellow Presbyterians “half-blind [donkeys],” you seem to have forgotten the testimony of Scripture on this point, that “if anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless” (Jas. 1:26), and, further, that you ought to “let your speech always be gracious” (Col. 4:6) and “let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up” (Eph. 4:29). It is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks (Lk. 6:45), and so, by extension, that the fingers type.
But perhaps the best example of arrogance can be seen in a tweet by your founder, in which he retweeted a video of a sheep perpetually running into a ditch and becoming stuck each time it was freed, a video whose original comment was a bit of foul language unacceptable in the eyes of many unbelievers, and which received the further comment from your founder that this was “the pastoral care process, explained.” God says that you are to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you . . . not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet. 5:2-3) and that you are to “show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned” (Tit. 2:7-8). He does not commend that you use bad language and make light of your holy calling and arrogantly belittle the sheep in the process. By your words here you sound rather like the shepherds of Israel whom God condemned for arrogance and selfishness (Eze. 34), for you have fun at the expense of those whose slaves you are (Mk. 10:42-45).
As for your hypocrisy, you speak with much emotion of our common brotherhood, with many pious phrases decrying division and extolling unity and peace in both public (e.g., “The Open Letter” at A Faithful PCA) and in your own midst, yet by your deeds and other internal statements – such as those mentioned above – you draw all of this into suspicion. Again, you want the PCA to be a big tent that includes within its midst every substrata of American society, but you seem little concerned that in your desire for expansion according to your tastes you are actively alienating many of our own members and churches even now, and in some cases inducing them to leave.
At the 2019 General Assembly one of your number stated, in effect, that we should be greatly concerned that the world thinks our foremost trait is hatred of homosexuals and that we should work to rehabilitate our image; and yet when fellow PCA elders attempt to remonstrate with you over your perceived failings you dismiss them pretty much categorically as engaged in so much fear mongering and alarmist nonsense. Thus do you say that we should listen to the wicked who are blinded by the lies of Satan, and yet you would also close your ears to the reproofs of the faithful. Do you believe that you may pay lip service to unity while acting in a dismissive way that makes it impossible, or that you may leave your ears open to culture, even unbelieving and wholly immoral culture, and yet close them to your fellow presbyters and not come to a bad end?
Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Simpsonville, S.C.