The Contemplative Lutheran

The following questions came from a sincere Evangelical inquirer into the Protestant Catholic faith. Having been exposed to the claims of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and other Christian denominations, they were hoping to clarify certain foundational questions regarding the larger Protestant tradition within which they happily identify. The questions themselves were well put and properly fundamental. Answering as a Confessional Lutheran Pastor, what follows will hopefully be helpful to others as they also may be thinking through these same issues. It does not pretend to be exhaustive. The answers are thus simple and not encumbered by excessive references, though for all that hopefully not simplistic.  1. Who has the right Canon?  The Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox cannot agree between each other as to what the right Canon of Scripture is. They each boast exclusively that their own “magisterial authorities” settle the issue “infallibly...

Contrary to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions, Eastern Orthodox sacramentology affirms the Sacrifice of the Mass.  For example, Decree 17 of what is for them the universally authoritative Jerusalem Council of 1672 states of the Eucharist: "Further, that it is a true and propitiatory Sacrifice offered for all Orthodox, living and dead." They also affirm transubstantiation, again in Decree 17: "But [he is present] truly and really, so that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, the bread is transmuted, transubstantiated, converted and transformed into the true Body Itself of the Lord... and the wine is converted and transubstantiated into the true Blood Itself of the Lord..." And:  "Further [we believe] that after the consecration of the bread and of the wine, there no longer remains the substance of the bread and of the wine, but the Body Itself and the Blood of the Lord, under the species and form of bread and wine; that is to say, under the ...

Regarding infant baptism, one of the key things that bears witness to the rightness of the practice is its historical catholicity. For example...  From as far East as one could go to as far West, and as far North and as far South, Christians could be found baptizing their infants. It would be an amazing conspiracy if all of the whole Church in disparate places somehow concurrently came to universally practice infant baptism if it was not apostolic.  To assert such a conspiracy has quite the burden of proof, especially since there were no controversies over the practice of infant baptism, nor a centralized authority urging such a practice on protesting churches. But someone may point out that not every single Christian practiced infant baptism, and some even suggested delaying it until later, for example, Tertullian.  This objection to infant baptism struggles, however, because it does not prove as much as it perhaps hopes to. It is important to note that those promoting t...

  Introduction The historical argument for Infant Baptism is not merely: “Everyone did it, therefore it must be right.” For the historical argument is, in reality, an historical-ecclesiological argument rooted in Christ's Promise that the Church will never fail. This we will unpack in contrast to the Credobaptist argument that, in overall effect, the Church did fail and therefore Christ's Promise failed. Now, the historical-ecclesiological argument observes that infant baptism has been practiced from the most ancient times of the Church both inside and outside of the territories of the Roman Empire. This issue of territory is actually significant because it shows that it was not a Roman imperial conspiracy, much less a Constantinian one. In other words, whether as far west as Spain, as remote as the British Isles, as far east as India and China, as far south as Ethiopia, and as far north as the kingdoms of Scandinavia, infant baptism was an undisputed practice. Christians in th...