No. 7 Prof. Ziegler, my name is Josh. You know, we talk about �Scripture alone� but there are so many traditions that are not in the Bible in the Lutheran Church. How do we reconcile these two things? Are we really that different from the Catholics and the Orthodox on this point? >>PROFESSOR ROLAND ZIEGLER: Well, Josh, good question. And some people when they come from a different background, they come into a Lutheran Church, especially if it's an old church from the 19th Century, they kind of -- they are kind of stunned. They think that Lutherans are just Protestants. And then the wife of one student who grew up a Baptist and then she came to Zion Lutheran Church downtown, which is this big neo gothic building with a huge carved altar, statue of Christ in the middle and then the four evangelists side by side so you have graven images in the church and then you have the liturgy and the pastor is dressed up in strange clothes and you chant and you do all of these things and it seemed to be pretty Catholic. And she said: Where is that in the Bible? In the Bible isn't that kind of traditions of men? What does ***solas katur mean for Lutherans, Scripture alone? What authority does Scripture actually have in the Lutheran church? For that again we have to look at the authority of Scripture. And part of that is also that we look at the sufficiency of Scripture. And then we will look at the role of tradition in Lutheranism. The authority of Scripture, again, is a consequence of what we said about verbal inspiration. If Scripture is the Word of God and the Scripture is the primary Word of God and there is no ongoing revolution, then Scripture has to have authority and has to have a definitive place in the church. I mean, afterall, the church is about listening to God and obeying God and believing God. And Lutherans affirm that Scripture is the definitive Word of God. That there is no ongoing revelation either by prophets or by some form of a church authority that adds to Scripture. So in that sense, the canon of Scripture is closed. So we have the Bible. But we don't have then yearly additions, new revelations by God. One church that actually in a way does that, a church if you want to call it a church, it's the Mormons. They supposedly get new revelations. And I've especially found humorous the one that they got in the '70s when suddenly African-Americans were allowed to the priesthood after more than a century where they could not do that. But they got a new revelation. So that's okay now. So you have the Bible and the Book of Mormon and doctrines and covenants and then the latest from the authorities in Salt Lake City. Scripture in the church now is the final authority because it is the Word of God. We have to remember, though, that not all of Scripture is set to us. Some of the things in Scripture are set for example to the people of Israel alone. Many of us eat pork, for example, which we shouldn't do if the Levitical laws were still enforced for us. We also do not keep the Sabbath. We do not have laws that anybody who cuts his law on Sunday will be stoned because he will break the Sabbath. So we have to realize that in the Old Testament, for example, the ceremonial part of the mosaic law is set to Israel and it's not set to us. It doesn't mean it is useless for us. We can still learn something from it. But you can't simply say: Oh, it's in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus and therefore we have to have the death penalty for adulterers. We don't. Which is probably good for the people of the United States and other countries. Not to discriminate. It's not that here it is more of a vice than let's say where I come from in western Europe. On the other hand, there is always the temptation that the church tries to emancipate itself from the clear words of Christ -- of God. And then you just follow the Spirit, whatever that means. Basically again, not to obey Scripture, not to follow Scripture, means that you disobey God and you put some human opinion in the place of God's Word. We have to remember that. There is no void place. If you ditch God, something else will come into its place. As we said before with the conscience, if the conscience is not formed by God's Word, it will be formed by something else. If the life and the church is not governed by God's Word, it will be governed by something else. This authority has two aspects. One is that the Scripture is the only source from which all Christian doctrine is drawn. And the second is that Scripture is the only norm with which judges all teachers and teachings in the church. So the first is when I tell you what you should believe or "This is what you should do," the question "Where is that in Scripture?" is very appropriate because otherwise we establish the rule of man. And again, we dethrone God. We establish the rule of man in church. And that's the final insult really. It's breaking the First Commandment. Secondly, questions come up that have to be evaluated in the light of Scripture. If there is a dispute in doctrine, where do we look to? Well, we look to Scripture. We also look to tradition, if you want to call it that. That is to other teachers of the church. They might help us. It's like if I have a problem in a theological question, I ask my colleagues. That does not mean that I say, "Oh, whatever Dr. Scare says is right," even though he would like to hear that. But it's because I say that he has expertise. He is very knowledgeable. And I can learn something from him. He can point me to Scripture. The same thing happens when we read Luther or Walther or some other great theologians. They help us to understand Scripture. But they cannot settle an issue. They can't. Okay? Not by themselves. Lutherans are generally rather conservative. At least the LCMS Lutherans are generally conservative. So they have a high esteem of tradition. And sometimes there's some division. Well, if Luther says it or if people says it, that settles the question. That is the easy route. But it is the wrong route. Especially as a pastor. You have to be able to show from Scripture the basis of what you believe. Because afterall, that's also what only gives you the strength to keep your beliefs. Do you want to suffer because people said something and you think you will stick with it? "What the heck." People is just a man. And Luther is just a man. The only reason why we stick to something, even if it's unpopular, even though people might not like it, is because we say that's what God said. Okay? "I'm hear to tell you what God said. You might not like it. But that's just how it is. And it's too bad for you. And I cannot dispense you of the Word of God. And I cannot budge here." We can negotiate the color of the carpet. But we cannot negotiate that hatred is sinful. Even if you think you have all the reasons of the world to hate somebody. So that's the authority of Scripture, the final authority that judges everything and also the source of all what we believe. Now, this view of the authority of Scripture is not the same as you have in Roman Catholicism or in eastern Orthodoxy. Roman Catholicism and eastern Orthodoxy believe that there is Scripture and tradition in a sense in that God's revelation is not only contained in Scripture but there is also the oral tradition that was handed down in the church. So you have what the apostles have said and what Christ has said in the New Testament plus in these additional doctrines. And the classical formulation of that you find in the Council of Trent, at the very beginning of the Council of Trent in 1546. That's the Council that was convened to combat Lutheranism or the Reformation in general. It was decreed: The most holy, ecumenical and general Senate of Trent lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit with three legates of the Apostolic See presiding over it making this always its preeminent aim that after the removal of all errors, the purity of the Gospel might be preserved in the church which promised beforehand in the Holy Scriptures through the prophets, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first proclaimed with his own mouth thereafter commanded to be preached to every creature through his apostles as the fountain of all saving truth and instruction of morals perceiving that this truth and instruction is contained in the written books and in the unwritten traditions, which after they had been received by the apostles from the mouth of Christ himself or from the apostles themselves, the Holy Spirit dictating, have come down to us, transmitted as it were from the hand to hand. And following the example of the Orthodox fathers, it receives and venerates with equal devotion and reverence all of the books both of the Old and of the New Testament, since God is the author of both, and also sets traditions, both those pertaining to faith and those pertaining to morals as dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Spirit and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church. Okay. That was a very long sentence. But I think you got the gist of it. It's the point that Christ and the apostles speak both through scriptures and through the tradition. And that these traditions are accepted and venerated with equal devotion and reverence as the written books are. And that they are handed down by this continuous succession of the Catholic Church. Because that's the catch of it. If you say tradition, you have the next problem: What are the authentic traditions? Hmmm -- because there are many traditions. I mean, for example look at the addition of the fathers, the anti-Nyacyne and the Nyacyne fathers, in English translation. That's a 30-volume collection. And you have quite a lot of opinions there. And then you have all of these guys that are heretics which are even included. So how do you distinguish between authentic tradition and unauthentic tradition? Well, how do you do that? The Roman Catholic theology ultimately came down it's the authority of the councils and the Pope. Ultimately it's the authority of the Pope. So you have to have some kind of institution in the church that tells you what the authentic traditions are. So there the question of authority then shifts from Scripture really to some authority in the church. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, it's the bishops and the councils. Still it's a little bit more vague there. In Rome it is very definitely the authority of the Pope. The Pope decides ultimately what is an authentic tradition or not. And so you come up with dogmas like the assumption of Mary which was made into a dogma in 1950 by Pope Pius the XII that has no basis in Scripture and very little evidence in the church fathers before the Fifth Century. But the Pope can say: Well, the consciousness of the church has accepted it. And therefore, I, by virtue being infallible decree this is a dogma, everybody has to believe it now. And if not, you suffer shipwreck of your faith. That's pretty strong language. Your faith is cast to the cliffs and you are now -- it's dead. It's broken if you do not believe what the Pope has said. And we have to be mindful of that when we talk about tradition. Tradition always has a tendency to really replace Scripture. And tradition is impractical as long as there is -- there isn't anybody that tells you what's the right tradition. So again, tradition is another way to really establish a rule of man instead of the rule of God in the church. And that's why Lutherans reject it. Besides the fact that well, again, who can really judge what comes from the apostles or not? Another way to look at it you can say is the church accepted the Canon of Scripture. The church did not make the Canon of Scripture. But the church accepted the Canon of Scripture. And by that it realized there has to be an authority outside of the church. Something that is critical. The great thing about the Bible is that it actually can criticize the church. You know, if -- if you are an institution that wants to be outside of all criticism, you never put down any rules. Because as soon as rules are there guidelines, supervisors can be criticized. You didn't follow the rules. No; no. You make the rules on the way. But the church in a way not made up the New Testament but recognized it as an authority to which it bows. And therefore, you can make the point that really also with -- the very early church did not have this view that you can make up traditions or that they evolve. But also the church needs that because otherwise it falls into enthusiasm. That is it falls into this kind of view that the Holy Spirit is in me and I can tell you what is true or what is not true. Okay. What about the sufficiency of Scripture? The sufficiency of Scripture is another point really of the question of the authority. It means that everything we need to know for salvation is contained in Scripture. It's really a basic statement about sufficiency. There are a lot of things we would like to know and they are not in Scripture. There are open questions in theology. Doing theology is not that you make up a neat system where there are no blanks. Oftentimes you kind of pause and say: Okay, we don't know here. I mean, you can guess. But you know, you can't make a dogma. That is something that is really taught by Scripture about that. But it is sufficient in what we need to know. And that's again important for the life of the church. That it realizes it. And that it also restrains itself to not go beyond Scripture nor diminish. Okay. As a pastor you have to preach the full counsel of God but you can preach more. So you have to check again yourself also in your preaching and teaching. "Is what I say really supported by what Scripture says? Or am I making up things and telling people that's what the Word of God says and it doesn't?" On the other hand, "Do I preach the full counsel of God or do I omit certain things that are embarrassing, unpopular or whatever?" Now, you have to proclaim the full counsel. That's your task as a pastor. So again, Roman Orthodoxy does think that Scripture is not sufficient but that you need tradition really for it. And then of course for their theology you do need tradition because it's not contained in Scripture. It goes beyond Scripture. That's of course the beef we have with them actually. What then is the role of tradition in Lutheranism? Lutheranism has a critical relationship to tradition. On the one hand it doesn't dismiss it. We are not some kind of fanatics that try to burn down everything and say: Well, we just started 33 AD Jerusalem the first congregation. We realize that there is a history of 2,000 years and that God has worked in that history and the many good things that were there. There were many bad things, many ugly and evil things. But there are many good things. And we value the good things. We also realize that all traditions have to be evaluated. They have to be evaluated by Scripture and by Scripture alone. So we have a ***sola Scripture, a Scripture alone. But it is not ***nula Scripture, a nude Scripture. But we realize that Scripture has a history after it. And that can be helpful. It can be also misleading but it can be helpful. So again that's why it's critical. The confessions in the Lutheran Church for some seem to have the place of tradition like in the Roman Catholic Church. But they don't. All they claim is that they are true expositions of Scripture. That's all they claim. True expositions of Scripture. And that what they say is covered by Scripture. And that's the claim we have. So we don't say that the scriptures have to be supplemented or that the confessions teach anything beyond the scriptures. But the scriptures are the pure fountain of Israel. They are the fountain out of which the life-giving Word flows. The traditions in the life of the church are, therefore, inevitable. I mean, even if you start your Bible church in some storefront, after a year you will have some traditions. And probably the minute you start. Because you are not a blank slate. Traditions are inevitable. So that's just a fact of life. Traditions are changeable. And they are changing. This is not the same church as it was in the 1840s. And this is not the same church and the Lutheran Church wasn't the same church in the 1840s than it was in say 1540 or then in 1140. Certain things do change. There are things that have a very long life in a church. Especially the liturgical life in the church. And things do change. And churches have to be evaluated if they are still beneficial for the life of the church, if they serve the overall mission of the church, that is to proclaim the Gospel to believers and unbelievers, or if they are misleading. It's like the serpent that was given to Israel to save them from the bite of those poisonous snakes. It was a good thing. But then it was turned into a means of idolatry. And what happened? Well, it was destroyed. Even though it was made on a command of God. So traditions can be misleading. And they have to be evaluated. But you don't have to throw out things just because they are old or just because they are traditions. On the other hand, you don't have to keep things just because they are old and just because they are traditions. So there's a flexible relationship here. Again, Lutherans are mostly conservative, though they give all the benefit of the doubt. And there's nothing really wrong with that, if it's a proven thing. But again, it can be a blind conservatism. We are neither blind conservatives nor are we blindly enamored with everything that's new. It must, therefore, be better (phonetic).