Full Text for Pastoral Theology and Practice- Volume 19 - History of Confirmation (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY LUTHERAN PASTORAL THEOLOGY & PRACTICE LPTP-19 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. P.O. Box 1924 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 www.captionfirst.com *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> NICK: Eric's mention of instruction brought to mind confirmation for me. Do you mind if I begin to ask questions about that topic? I suppose I'm curious to know the history of the practice of confirmation. Does the meaning of confirmation in former times help us to develop our own confirmation practices? >> DR. WARNECK: Well, Nick, confirmation practice today is about as diverse as the 32 flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, if you have Baskin Robbins in your part of the country. There are so many curriculums and ways of approaching the instruction that we have historically known as confirmation instruction for children and adults that a pastor is somewhat on the horns of a dilemma in selecting what particular program is helpful for his children and the adults in his parish and his community. Helpful in sorting things out is a review of some of the salient parts of instruction as the church has comprehended those through the years. You may approached by persons today who want to change the pattern of confirmation instruction and some of the content of it. I think of some of these intense mothers of children in the preteen years who want the pastor to reframe confirmation in such a way that we address principally such issues as dating, sexuality, getting along with other people, the relational issues and the like. But, when we review the practice as the church has understood confirmation instruction through the years, we arrive at the conclusion that this instruction is a special opportunity, Nick, for your boys and girls and your adults as well to discover the Christian faith for what it is as God has delivered His teachings and doctrines to us in His holy word. That's an opportunity which children and adults in our churches should not miss. And it's a real opportunity for pastors to focus their instruction in such a way that we can be reasonably sure that children and adults going through the program have a good grasp of what the important teachings of God's word are from creation to the last times and everything in between. So let's review briefly, if you will, if you may indulge a little attention to some of those historic patterns of confirmation from which we can learn some good things as well as some practices to avoid as we attempt to formulate our own approach to confirmation instruction today. The early church had a pretty fair grasp on this whole matter. Their practice in confirmation was rooted in baptism. And that's where things begin. The candidates for confirmation were baptized on Easter eve. They were confirmed with chrism, prayers, and the signs of the cross and the laying on of hands, very rudimentary aspects of what later developed into more formal confirmation practices. These were persons who, for as long as two or three years, had gathered with the community of faith and worshipped, were properly instructed and taught. And then it all came to a head, so to speak, on that Easter eve when they were baptized. And baptism has been pivotal for confirmation ever since. Scrolling forward to the Reformation era, Dr.�Martin Luther practiced something of a very informal confirmation because he had some sensitivities about the formalized rite in the Roman church, particularly the notion in Roman Catholic theology at that time that confirmation in a way completes baptism. That notion was absolutely repugnant to Luther for the reason that baptism itself needs no complement. It is the means of grace. And baptized into Christ Jesus, a Christian comes forth as a believer and as one who is headed toward the Christian life. So baptism needed no complement, and Luther was very sensitive on that issue. And, of course, when the Council of Florence in 1439 established confirmation in the Roman Catholic regimen of the sacraments, confirmation becoming a sacrament in the church which conferred in their view a certain indelible sign, neither was that palatable to Luther. Well. What was the real strength of confirmation in Luther's practice? It was instruction in Christian doctrine following baptism and then looking toward the Lord's Supper and helping to prepare the catechumen for taking the Lord's Supper. And this type of confirmation in the Reformation era came to be known as the catechetical type. Now, there were some types of confirmation that followed the Reformation time and era. And a fine source for review of this whole story of confirmation in the Lutheran church is a book by that very title authored by Dr.�Arthur Repp. And we would commend that volume to you for further study into the background of confirmation practices as we know them today. But for now let's just light on those various types of confirmation as they developed in the post-Reformation and premodern eras. In Luther's time, as we said, the accent was on instruction. And his catechisms were used in the home. And in the church catechetical sermons were preached. And, with respect to children, there was no real formal rite. When a child was instructed, the parents brought the child to the pastor who examined the child briefly. And, subsequently, he or she was permitted to come to the Lord's table with his or her family. The first elements of a public rite of confirmation were a confession of faith associated with that examination and then added prayers of the church for the catechumen. But the public nature of the rite first began to appear in what Dr.�Repp calls the hierarchical type of confirmation developed principally by the -- by Martin Bucer in the late 16th century, middle to late 16th century. And two elements were added here�-- a surrender to Christ in the form of a confession of faith and willing submission to the discipline of the church. And confirmands were required to make these affirmations publicly. Further emphasis then was placed upon a surrender to the church and its discipline rather than daily repentance and forgiveness of sins growing out of one's baptism and the remembrance of one's baptism, as Dr.�Repp notes here in his observation. The accents were first the Holy Spirit as given through the laying on of hands�-- this is the hierarchical nature�-- completing baptism, and now confirmation confers new and full membership in the church with all its rites and privileges. And we're already sensing how some of that phraseology still prevails and lingers and hangs on in our current rites. So we have spoken about the catechetical type, the hierarchical type�-- and my comments just previously actually described a third type, the sacramental type�-- all at the time of the Reformation era in the 16th century. Before we speak about two more rites that developed later, we ought to summarize here that in the 16th century for Lutheran confirmation, there were some accents that are worth noting. First, the Lutherans rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of confirmation as a sacrament. That was set aside. Secondly, Lutherans specified Christian instruction before the catechumen was presented for confirmation or first communion. Thirdly, for Lutherans confirmation was associated with both sacraments�-- baptism and a the Lord's Supper. And, fourthly, the catechumen taking first communion was rarely over the age of 12 years. Some may have been as young as 7 or 8 years. No one chronological age was recognized, according to Dr.�Repp's studies of this subject. Now, with those accents emphasized, once again, by way of review in the Reformation era and the early post-Reformation era, two other types of confirmation developed in Europe following the 16th century. And the first is the pietistic type developed as a reaction to orthodoxy and meaningful instruction. And two characteristics are first a suggestive element was introduced and attributed to Jacob Philip Spener in the early 18th century. The candidate was to renew his or her baptismal vow in their own experience. Now, this is a change. And this versus remembrance of baptism and the unilateral covenant which God makes through Holy Baptism. Expectedly, there was a deemphasis in the pietistic type, a deemphasis on baptism all together. Much more focus was on the catechumen, the confirmand, and his or her experience of the faith versus confession of the faith. And this nuance is going to be apparent later on when we come to our very modern era, the early 21st century. I'm going to point out some models of confirmation in the ELCA particularly and models that are used by some Missouri synod pastors for better or for worse. But this is to be noted at this time, this experiential component. Secondly, the catechumen ratifies his or her baptismal covenant, Gives witness of personal faith or conversion, and personally accepts obligation to the Christian life. Once again, the focus is very somewhat man-centered, if you will. And this versus the earlier accents upon the working of the Holy Spirit and the unilateral covenant of God's grace in Holy Baptism. So we see some digression from those Lutheran accents we reviewed just a moment ago. The second post-Reformation type was known as the rationalistic type of confirmation in which some of those sacramental features we referred to a moment ago kind of developed in full bloom. Congregational rights and privileges are bestowed on the child. Celebrations of youth, coming of age and so on. Customs evolved particularly in the 18th and 19th century, some of which continue in our present time. Some of them good, some of them less than salutary. Such things as the wearing of white gowns, the confirmation certificate, the special scripture passage assigned to each of the children in the class, confirmation sermons, the focus of the laying on of hands in the rite by the ringing of the bell in the church tower, the earnest confirmation vow to be faithful, focus on Palm Sunday, which we've moved away from in our more contemporary times. But for many decades it was understood that confirmation just happened on Palm Sunday. And many other local customs developed surrounding confirmation. The most significant thing about the rationalistic type, however, is that versus the pietistic emphasis on the catechumen's experience, the rationalistic type emphasized in mental comprehension of the doctrines in a cognitive intellectual way. Now, that's not all bad. But, if it is overemphasized to the neglect of the affective domain, it can be a distortion. In some parts of Germany in the 19th century, children were required to almost master what is comparable to our dogmatics instruction today. So thorough was the intellect and the mind involved in the study of the doctrines of the faith. As I say, that's not all bad in itself. But carried to an extreme it could be deleterious. Well, these are a few descriptive comments on five paradigms or patterns of confirmation that developed through church history and principally in the Reformation and the centuries thereafter until our present day. Now, today we are dealing with very much visibility given to a shift in confirmation instruction particularly emanating from the ELCA. And this is documented by a man like Kent Johnson in their own camp, if you may. And the shift goes like this: In the place of so much emphasis on doctrine, we now move toward an emphasis on the children and their relationships beginning with self-understanding and then their relationships with others. And the programs of confirmation, the curriculum activities and the like, are very much relational-oriented versus a focus on Christian doctrine. It seems that maybe we have overreacted to the rationalistic excesses. And now the question is in many of these programs of children's confirmation at least where is the doctrine and how are Christians firmed up in those things which we surely believe as Christians? *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***