Okay, a nit-picky note before I get started. In titles, capitalize verbs. Some titles in this book have not capitalized the being verb, which remains a verb. In titles, don't capitalize prepositions or articles unless they are the first word of the title.
Now, moving along . . .
Marquart asks a very important question. What does it mean for a particular church body to survive? We know that God has promised that the Church will always survive. Until the return of our Lord in judgment there will be a people called by his name, gathering around Word and Sacraments. That isn't in question. The question Marquart asks, though, is a little different. Will the Lutheran church survive? To answer that question he needs to define both survival and the Lutheran church.
What makes the Lutheran church Lutheran is its confession. We are people who have bound ourselves in accordance with the historic creeds of the Church. We have gathered around the specific body of writing in the Book of Concord. This is what defines a Lutheran body. If people cast off this historic set of confessions they are no longer Lutheran in any real sense. We have been seeing that kind of a move for several hundred years. People are embracing anything but the truths articulated in the Book of Concord and continue to call themselves Lutheran. Marquart would argue that the name "Lutheran" on the sign in front of the church building does not make one Lutheran. We can retain the sign and cease to be what the sign indicates. This is not survival, even if the pews are full.
Marquart spends the bulk of his article analyzing ideas which have passed muster within various Lutheran groups in recent history. He also observes the neglect of rigorous teaching in the historic creeds. His conclusion is that much of what is called Lutheran is, in fact, not Lutheran. It has already started to pass away, to be replaced by broad evangelicalism which does not have a distinctively Lutheran flavor, which is not founded on historic creeds but rather on feelings and pragmatism.
So what are you seeing? Are churches departing from their historic foundations? Maybe your church has done so already. Maybe it's happened so thoroughly and so long ago you aren't sure what the historic foundations are. Do we have something to return to? I sure hope so.
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Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com and http://alex-kirk.blogspot.com
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