Rome, Geneva and the "Geneva"

(This longer reply to a recent comment made by Pastor Marc Frey touches on several key points, so it's been promoted to continue the discussion here.)

Thank you for your comment, Pastor Frey. You bring up a valid point with the vestments, and it certainly merits more discussion and study, not for the sake of justifying the use of this or that vestment, but to understand how our Lutheran forefathers dealt with these matters of adiaphora. They didn’t just say, “Hey, it doesn’t matter whether we wear white or black or purple, since Scripture doesn’t tell us to wear one or the other!” They correctly applied the doctrine of adiaphora to their situation during the Leipzig Interim, and as a confessional statement against the false doctrines being foisted upon them by the Roman Catholics, they chose black over the white priestly vestments. What had once been free to them (to wear the priestly vestments) was no longer free, not because a specific Bible passage commanded it, but because the proper application of Scriptural principles demanded it. Somehow I doubt that every parish in southern Germany “did its own thing” in this regard, but that will require further study.

I don’t think there exists any single, pure, historical form that must be found and used. What does it teach? What does it communicate? Why is one or the other being used or discarded? How would a change in practice affect God’s people? Those are the questions that need to be answered.

I really can’t speak for those who have enunciated problems with the black gown per se. It teaches the dignity of the preaching office far better than the Hawaiian shirt, and it covers the man and reminds the congregation that they are not to hear the man now, but Christ. These are the purposes of vestments, as far as I am aware. The fact that it is called, in our circles, a black “Geneva,” does at least hint at a Reformed origin, regardless of pure Lutheran historic usage of a similar gown in some places. Something tells me that few men in recent years have worn a black gown because of the historic Lutheran origins Kretzmann wrote about. Neither do I think that black gowns have been used in WELS with the intention of trying to look more Reformed. My sense is that more often than not, we do what we do because that’s what we do. I think Prof. Tiefel at the seminary has been doing a good job over the past many years helping us to understand the “why,” leading many to put aside the Geneva in favor of the alb.

I hear and agree with your warning against going back to Rome in the process of fleeing from Geneva (and other places, of course). I just don’t see much Romanizing in WELS, compared, for example, to the LCMS. I don’t hear anyone in WELS insisting that a church must have a crucifix to be confessional Lutheran. However, it is not consistent with confessional Lutheranism to denigrate the crucifix or remove the one that was there because it’s too offensive to people, or because the Lutheran Church supposedly prefers the symbol of the empty cross, which is not historically accurate or theologically defensible.

As for every-Sunday Communion, I’ve heard no one in WELS speak of this as if it were a law we must obey. But I do find the confessional Lutheran practice, described in the Confessions, to offer the Sacrament every Lord’s Day for the consolation of souls. I hear the Confessions exhorting and exhorting God’s people to see their great need for the Sacrament and to seek it often, and that’s the reason given in the Confessions for why the Sacrament was offered every Sunday to all who desired it. The Confessions do not lump the celebration of the Sacrament together with the human traditions and manmade rites that surround it. They treat it as one of the twin towers of Gospel administration that makes the Mass/Divine Service what it is, together with the Gospel preached. Hardly a “high church” anomaly.

We’ll be doing our best on this blog to direct people to the narrow Lutheran middle road between Rome and the sects. It’s just that we see Arminianism/Evangelicalism as a greater threat than Papistic practices to confessional Lutheranism in the WELS, a threat that is so thoroughly ingrained in our own culture that it can rather easily slip through the door unnoticed until it’s too late.