High Church Lutheranism
I consider myself a High Church Lutheran or basically a Norwegian Anglo-Catholic (i.e. I am to Lutherans in general what Anglo-Catholics are to Anglicans in general). For years, I was a member of the Norwegian equivalent of the Church Union, called Kyrkjeleg Fornying or Kirkelig Fornyelse (‘Ecclesial renewal’). And when I lived in Durham, doing my PhD, I was a member of an Anglo-Catholic congregation.
But what does it mean to be high church? Many will probably associate this term with a touch of high culture – red wine, cigars, classical music, etc. And in many cases this is a completely correct observation. But that is not what ‘high church’ means. In short, I would like to say that being a high church person is about what ecclesiology you have (what you think about the nature of the Church), what view you have of the pastoral office, and how you view the liturgy. Here I will briefly look at the last two.
As a starting point, I will consider a quote from the German (then Lutheran, now Roman Catholic) theologian Reinhard Hütter: “Faith is to be understood rather as vita passiva, as a bios grounded in God’s salvific activity, a bios that rather than appearing in an abstract sense is grounded in and bound to specific activities of actualization.”1 Here we see two central points; that faith, although conscious and free, is in its essence passive and receptive. As Johann A. Steiger puts it: “[Faith] is not only an abstract affirmation but a tangible matter. As a drowning person grasps for the hand of the rescuer who grips him or her, so believers grip the hand of God gripping them. Thus, faith grips its being gripped.”2 Faith is not abstract, ‘heartfelt’ or exclusively intellectual, but rooted in “specific activities of actualization.” This is where we find the core of a high church Lutheranism.
To consider the pastoral office, we must first ask why we have such an office. As good Lutherans, we therefore go to Confessio Augustana V, and there we read that the office exists so that people will receive the means of grace – the Word and the Sacraments: “So that we may obtain this faith, the ministry of teaching the gospel and administering the sacraments was instituted. For through the Word and the sacraments as through instruments the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith where and when it pleases God in those who hear the gospel.”3
God, therefore, works faith in us through the means of grace, administered by those who are instituted to do so, as we see, for example, in Romans 10:14-17. We need the means of grace and this is connected with a completely fundamental point, that faith is given to us outside of ourselves, and that faith is passive and receptive. This requires a well-thought-out theology of the pastoral office, precisely because the fact that preaching comes from outside, from people who have received an external call, is linked to the passive character of faith.
The Gospel expresses something given, not something we have achieved by our own efforts, and it is managed and given by someone who has not taken responsibility based on their own authority, but through an external calling and ordination, cf. Confessio Augustana XIV: “Concerning church order they teach that no one should teach publicly in the church or administer the sacraments unless properly called.”
This “high” view of the office is not about clericalism or abuse of power, but about the external character of the gospel. There are of course cases of clericalism and abuse of power in history, and in our time, but that means that the priest must constantly be reminded that he is ordained to ministry, not self-aggrandisement. While the German version of Confessio Augustana V uses Amt, ‘office,’ the Latin text uses ministerium, ‘service.’ But this is equally true in secular matters. In England and the USA, for example, those in public office are called civil servants. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that the office cannot be reduced to preaching only. It must include the liturgy (especially the prayers) and the psalms, as well as the sacraments, which we will get into now.
When it comes to the liturgy, it should be said that there is often a certain touch of high culture, that the liturgy must be of high quality, for example, but it is actually quite possible to advocate for high quality in the liturgy, and to be fond of so-called high church expressions, but still have an essential low-church liturgical view. The point is not the cultural quality but that faith, which comes to us through the means of grace, is “grounded in and bound to specific activities of actualization,” to use Hütter’s words.4 Notice the important word ‘specific.’ In a high church view of liturgy, it is not only central and important that we have a liturgy, or that this is beautiful, but that it is a specific one, one that has been given to us. Such a liturgy is not rooted in ourselves and our creativity – even though God of course uses us and our abilities – but in Christ himself and what he concretely gives us through the Church. Again, this is connected with the passive and receptive character of faith. What we do as Christians is something given to us. When we pray, it is because Holy Spirit prays in us. When we do good deeds, it is because “we are what [God] has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10). And when we sing praises, it is because God has “put a new song in [our mouths], a song of praise to our God” (Psalm 40:3).
This view of liturgy is also special in that we must say that it makes impossible a sharp distinction between doctrine and life, especially between doctrine and liturgy, and that it insists that it is to a large extent the practice, especially the liturgy, which is most important.5 The Church is a tradition-bound community of practice where doctrine is subject to practice, especially worship and confession. The Church is first and foremost “the assembly of saints in which the gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly” (Confessio Augustana VII). But it is important to note that these practices are given. They are “specific activities of actualization” and they have God as their principal subject.
This is the essence of a Lutheran high church theology; that faith is given to us outside of ourselves, in concrete means of grace that are administered by someone who has not taken responsibility based on their own authority, but through a service given to them by external call and ordination, and that the liturgy is something that is given to us, something that is rooted not in us and our creativity, but in God and His work.
Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 37, cf. Bård Norheim, Practicing Baptism: Christian Practices and the Presence of Christ (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014), 65.
Johann Anselm Steiger, “The communicatio idiomatum as the Axle and Motor of Luther’s Theology” (Lutheran Quarterly 14, 2000): 125-158 (here: 130, cf. 130-133). Also see Knut Alfsvåg’s lecture (in Norwegian); “Theosis og eucharisti: Om tonatur-kristologien som fundament for menneskesyn og sakramentforståelse.”
For the English translation of the Lutheran confessions, see The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, eds., Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2000). For a critical edition of the Latin and German texts, see Die Bekenntnisschriften der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche, vollständige neuedition, ed., Irene Dingel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014). If not otherwise noted, all quotations of Confessio Augustana follow the translation of the Latin text.
Hütter, Suffering Divine Things, 37.
For some treatments of this, some in Norwegian and Danish, see Knut Alfsvåg, “Luthersk spiritualitet: Om lære og liv i den éne, kristne kirke” (Dansk Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke 40:1, 2013), 42-56; Niels Henrik Gregersen, “Dogmatik som samtidsteologi” (Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 71, 2008): 290-310; John T. Pless, “Toward a Confessional Lutheran Understanding of Liturgy” (Logia 2:2, 1993): 9-12.