 Here is a great quote from Hermann Sasse apropos of my previous post on confessional subscription.
For Luther the Lutheran Church is not the social form of one of the great forms of the Christian religion, which was stamped by the religious experience of a gifted reformer, just as Roman Catholicism for him is not a more and less justifiable form or manifestation of Christendom. Of course, one can also seek to understand the Christian faith in a religio-scientific manner. But in so doing one does not come upon the essence of this faith, the essence of the confession of faith and the essence of the Church in general. Churches are not plants. Therefore there is no morphology of confessions. Neither are churches families, between which one may fix similarities and dissimilarities. The confession, the confession of the faith is not the expression of religious sentiment. Dogmas are not, as Schleiermacher thought, "comprehensions of the pious Christian condition of the heart presented in language." The Lord Christ had no interest in the pious Christian heart of his apostles when he asked: "Who do you say that I am?"
From Hermann Sasse, Letters to Lutheran Pastors XXII (1952), translated by Matthew Harrison. |
