COURTESY OF THE ELCA
“grace alone (sola),” “Scripture alone,” “faith alone.” The great 19th-century convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, John Henry Newman, could even say polemically that “to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.” It is all too common, then, to fall
into the trap of thinking that Luther- ans must be anti-tradition.
Spirit of openness But the good news, to return to the earlier analogy with “On the Free- dom of a Christian,” is that just as the radical freedom of the gospel frees us to be in a healthier relationship with good works, that same free- dom allows us to engage the various and fascinating strands of church tradition—from monastic orders to the lives of saints, from emper- ors to peacemakers, across centu- ries and continents—with a spirit of openness. Luther approached the Bible with
the expectation that its words would “bear” Christ and Christ’s gospel to the world in need of a saving mes- sage. He judged all church practices of his day by the stringent criterion of whether or not they also “bore” the gospel. And with that standard in place
(and to the chagrin of some other Protestant bodies of his time) this “sorting out” by Luther and the Reformers led to the Reformation churches carrying over many of the treasures of their Christian inheri- tance: infant baptism, belief in the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, much of the liturgy, etc. The gospel freedom that we have
to seek out whatever in our Chris- tian heritage conveys the good news of our salvation faithfully should, in this ecumenical age, embolden us as Lutherans to become even more open to the treasures of the past. The
contemporary discipline of church history (which mostly has shed the polemics, the aggressive attacks of opinions, of earlier centuries) can help us appreciate not only the world- views that led to the formation of dif- ferent theologies and church prac- tices, but also how different periods in history have shaped faithful wit- nesses to Christ. As with good works toward the neighbor, we do our best work in appreciating tradition when we approach it in a spirit not borne of obligation (“we must do this because it has always been done that way”) but of freedom. And in this spirit we can open
ourselves to new ecumenical and spiritual possibilities. This can hap- pen when we appropriate elements from the past, such as Lutherans praying with icons, investigating the profundities of theology around Mary, and taking on medieval spiri- tual disciplines. Because we confess that we as Lutherans are irrevoca- bly part of the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” we are free to encompass aspects of the tradi- tion that speak gospel in the 21st
century—not in arbitrary or uncriti- cal “cherry-picking” fashion but in thoughtful appreciation for how the Spirit has worked to sustain the church and its witness across centuries.
Look to future And this freedom applies also to the future. For centuries theologians have noted that the church (like all living things) grows, develops and incorpo- rates new truths into the truth of the gospel as the church moves forward through time. Today, as the natural sciences and study of global cultures opens up vistas of truth to us unprec- edented in past centuries, the same rootedness in the gospel that frees us to engage traditions of the past with openness similarly frees us to engage the future with courage. We expect that the Christian tra-
dition in all its variety will continue to develop and incorporate new insights, and that the Spirit will guide God’s people such that the word of God will not “come back empty” (Isa- iah 55:11) but will continue to enliven the church and its ministry.
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