Mainline Lutheranism's Utter Apostasy and its Historical Roots

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/09/995271758/megan-rohrer-elected-as-1st-openly-transgender-bishop-in-u-s-lutheran-church

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has been apostate for many years but the recent full inclusion of every extreme form of sodomy seems shocking to some – but it shouldn't be.

The pundits and theologians will opine and analyze this move by the ELCA but I can almost guarantee that few if any will peel back the layers and lay their finger on the root cause of this defection from Biblical Christianity.

Is it acculturation? Certainly. Is it theological liberalism? Obviously. But these are merely symptoms of a deeper problem. Lutheranism was part of the Magisterial Reformation and as such it resulted in forms of state and state-sponsored Christianity. Theological Liberalism arose in the Renaissance-Age of Reason and Pre-Enlightenment milieu in which the epistemological consensus was shattered and as Sola Scriptura meant different things to different groups it provided no basis for the organisation of society. The Church (like society as a whole) turned to philosophy to solve this problem. And here's another key point, the Church was also inclusive in that it sought to cast its identity as co-extensive with political and cultural entities and domains. This would prove disastrous in the years to come. It's an error that's still playing out today in both mainstream and Evangelical circles.

It was this Protestant form of Constantinianism that opened the floodgates – and the world came sweeping in. Rather than the Church maintaining its pilgrim identity, one divorced from power and mammon, the Church succumbed to these elements and became indistinguishable from them. Politics, the Academy, and with it philosophy and the rising forms of science and pseudo-science (for that's what much of Biblical and Textual Criticism entails) became intertwined with and inseparable from the Church. This is why the mainstream Protestant bodies have all fallen into apostasy. We see it in the denial of Scripture, in the rejection of historic Christian beliefs and in the embrace of evil cultural tides and all types of ethical perversion. The same forces were already at work in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries.

During the Reformation period and particularly during the period of Protestant Scholasticism various confessions were drafted and elaborated upon. These were attempts to freeze the social and epistemological dynamic unleashed by the Magisterial Reformation and yet these movements largely failed. They were paid lip service to and yet by the Nineteenth Century these bodies were in a state of crisis. The conservatives attempted to re-appropriate the confessions and re-cast the narratives surrounding them and as their denominations slipped into apostasy during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. They employed these tools to create new denominations and narratives to go with them. In many cases the narratives were not entirely historically honest but they proved convenient and at times compelling.

Since then these groups have laboured to hold the line – not so much the line of New Testament (or apostolic) authority but the line of their Confessional heritage. Some have failed miserably, others have resisted to some extent but no one, no group has emerged unscathed from the past 150 years of strife. The Constantinian cancer still lives among them.

In the meantime the mainstream bodies that largely control the historical sites and legacies of their Reformation forebears have simply applied their inclusive ecclesiology in the realm of theology and ethics. They have followed the culture and have allowed it and its ideas to shape and continually re-shape their thinking. They functionally denied the gospel long ago, long before they formally denied it. And now not only do they deny the gospel and the message of Christ – contained in His Person and Work, they are now in open rebellion and have fully given themselves over to the Pseudo-Christ, the counterfeit they have created, an entity that affirms sin and celebrates abomination. They are under severe judgment and exhibit clear signs of reprobate thinking. On this point I hope we can all agree.

But the Evangelical and Confessional analysts will in virtually every case fall short of identifying the core problems, the point of compromise and the dangers of bad turns and bad commitments made centuries ago. They are still committed to the same errors and ultimately at some future date they'll be fighting and largely losing the same battles. You can count on it.