Haughty Spirits and Adiaphora
The Common Service and stability through trying times.
“The haughty spirits, Lord, restrain who o’er Thy Church with might would reign, and always set forth something new, devised to change Thy doctrine true,” TLH 292:6.
Haughty spirits imagine that what is new, and of their own making, is better, or at least more useful, than what has come before. And because doctrine and practice are always linked, we cannot be surprised that a haughty spirit, devised to change God’s doctrine, would set forth something new in the church’s public worship in order to do so. Perhaps in many cases they have not purposed to do so and earnestly desire to remain with the old doctrine but set forth something new in the church’s public worship. This will still inevitably change, “God’s doctrine true,” within a few generations. After all, this is the point of all our ceremonies in the church, namely, to teach the people what they need to know of Christ (AC 24:3-4). Consider Jeroboam, who changed the worship of Israel, creating two new Golden calves at Dan and Bethel, but claiming that the doctrine had not changed (1 Kings 12:26-30). Haughty spirits might have better motives or intentions than Jeroboam, but when these motives and intentions are turned against the Church’s public worship, then, “something new,” still threatens to bring confusion and disunity.
What does this have to do with Adiaphora?
Adiaphora means those things which are neither commanded nor forbidden in Holy Scripture. The Lutheran Church affirms that there are things which God has left free in the church, things which cannot be the source of our righteousness before Him.
As long as this term has been used by Lutherans, it has been surrounded with controversy.
Philipp Melanchthon and others after the death of Martin Luther used the term Adiaphora in order to compromise with the Roman Church. He did so by reintroducing practices and ceremonies which the Reformation had already rejected in many places. His rationale was that although these ceremonies had perhaps in the past reinforced false doctrine, they were not inherently evil. They were in themselves adiaphora, free things, and argued that the Lutheran church should be allowed to make use of them.
Others disagreed.
Most notably, Matthias Flacius disagreed. Flacius participated in this controversy and said, “So also now the adiaphora have set the people free and loose from the commandment of God, fear of Him, and obedience to Him. Each one can now do, accept, and change in the church however and whenever he wishes whatever he would like.”1 Flacius contended that in the time where there was theological disagreement, and ceremonies were introduced for the sake of avoiding a clear confession of the truth, then such things were no longer indifferent, no longer adiaphora.2
Enter in the haughty spirits.
The haughty spirits latch onto the term adiaphora and use it in order to set forth something new. “Adiaphora,” and their own, “unique context,” are bulwarks set up to shield them from critique or disagreement. Rarely is the term, “adiaphora,” used to assure frightened consciences that there is legitimate freedom in ceremonial matters. Rarely is it used to assure those who are worried that they didn’t light the candles in the proper order that the gates of hell will not thereby prevail against Christ’s church. So often, the term is not used to secure freedom from a guilty conscience but as a convenient cypher for chopping up, rearranging, or discarding the historic order of service and Lutheran hymnody. All of this serves the end that the public worship of the church might be less intimidating, less difficult, and more amenable to those outside the church, especially citing sociological studies or demographics of growth in non-denominational churches. They will point to the fact that we live in unstable times as the justification for changing the church’s worship.
This is nothing new.
Haughty spirits in the 1960s, an unstable time like our own, filled as it was with societal unrest, a breakdown of the family, and many other ills, saw massive changes in the church’s worship. The Roman Catholic church put out the New Mass in 1969. The LCMS, for its part, added a new worship item of their own in 1969. This was a supplement to the Lutheran Hymnal (1941) called Worship Supplement. The Worship Supplement states in its forward the reason for its creation,
“More than a generation has passed since The Lutheran Hymnal first appeared in 1941. The intervening years have brought many changes in Christian living that have led to new worship needs. New concerns for social structures, colleges, armed forces, missions, the inner city, and racially or culturally conscious groups have raised a need for updating liturgical and hymnodic materials both as to language and form.”3
All of the concerns listed above, and also the justification, reads like it could have been written yesterday. Many claim that Historic Lutheran Liturgy simply doesn’t work in certain geographical contexts, or on the mission field, or in some other unique context. Worship Supplement ‘69 proudly declares, “Much of the language of the liturgies and the hymns was found to be in need of revision to make it meaningful to the man of today.”4
What made the man of 1969 so different that the Lutheran Hymnal was no longer meaningful to him? Philip Pfatteicher explains in his Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship,
By mid-century a deep alienation was becoming evident in parts of North American society, an alienation from systems of order, authority, and value. By the beginning of the final third of the century, this had developed into an emphasis on the subjective experience of the moment, on what was thought to be immediately and obviously relevant. Innovation gained a new respectability. Sexual morality, cultivated manners, and standards of dress for a time reflected a youthful, often indeed an adolescent rejection of the social, political, and moral values of the old generation. Tradition was cast aside; the present moment was what mattered…Worship was of course affected by these rapid and widespread changes, and therefore it did not seem too soon to begin work again on the revision of the liturgy.5
Haughty spirits in the culture had cast aside the traditions of their fathers. They, in adolescence, cast aside tradition in favor of the present moment. In response, those who should have held fast and shown how these traditions provide stability in tumultuous times gave in. Like Jehoash, who panicked at the approach of Hazael, and was willing to give away all the holy things his fathers had dedicated to the temple (2 Kings 12:18), we are all too willing to part with our inheritance and birthright as Lutherans. The challenges that face the church today are similar to those of the 1960s. In fact, our society faces the end result and consequence of the sexual and cultural revolutions of the 1960s.
The answer for us is not to make worship unstable or tumultuous, or to look to the Liturgical movement as we did in the 60s. It is to begin with Scripture and what we have received from our forefathers. It is to draw water from our own cisterns (Proverbs 5:15).
It is truly remarkable how much of the order of service is actually laid out in Holy Scripture.
The following elements are present:
Psalms (Ephesians 5:19)
Readings from the Bible (1 Timothy 4:13, 1 Thessalonians 5:27)
Profession of faith (1 Timothy 6:12)
Sermons on what has been read (1 Corinthians 14:26, Acts 20:7)
Hymns (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16)
Prayers (Acts 2:42)
Almsgiving (1 Corinthians 16:1-2)
Lord’s Prayer (Luke 11:2-4)
The Consecration and Distribution as Christ has instituted it (1 Corinthians 10:16, Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24).
The people prayed standing with uplifted hands (Philippians 1:27). The men were bareheaded, the women covered their heads (1 Corinthians 11:6-7).
There is even more than this that is directly drawn from Holy Scripture. While the New Testament does not prescribe a specific order of service, it does describe the order in more detail than what we typically think.
The Common Service, what we know as page 15 of the Lutheran Hymnal or Divine Service Setting Three in Lutheran Service Book, is the English-speaking Lutheran inheritance of the western order of service. Luther’s German service as it was practiced in Saxony was largely the foundation for the Missouri Synod’s German Hymnal (Kirchengesangbuch 1847). It was the German and Latin Lutheran church orders throughout Germany that would go into the making of the Common Service. This Service utilizes English translations from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer because they are beautiful English translations and themselves were taken from Lutheran sources.
The Common Service (through Evangelical Lutheran-Hymn Book, The Lutheran Hymnal, and Lutheran Service Book) has formed the piety of generations of Lutherans and continues to do so. It is stable. Of course, there is a learning curve. But so it is with anything of value. Furthermore, it allows the Christian to die with confidence in the forgiveness of sins.
Consider only here the Nunc dimittis. Following the reception of Holy Communion, we sing the song of St. Simeon. Simeon was promised that he would not die until he saw the Lord’s Christ (Luke 2:26). After he had held the child, Simeon could pray, “Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people,” (Luke 2:29-31). This addition to the Liturgy is uniquely Lutheran, and it is brilliant. After we receive the body and blood of Christ, we sing what Simeon said. Now that we have received the Lord Christ is His body and blood, we tell God that we can die now. The Nunc dimittis is also a part of the Commendation of the Dying, a service that is done when someone is drawing close to death. The dying Christian who has sung this song for his entire life doesn’t even need to think to know the words. And when he hears them, they bring to mind every single time in his life that he has ever received the Holy Communion and been told, “Depart in peace.” This quenches any fiery darts from the devil or the flesh at the fear of death or of past sins. Here the Word of God in the Liturgy carries us when we are weak, and God’s power is thus made perfect.
You can’t have beauty like this without stability, consistency, and work. The haughty spirits do not structure worship so that it is friendly toward the Christian who will die one day and need the Word of God to be treasured deeply in the heart. Tumultuous and unstable times do not call for a less traditional or stable approach to the church’s worship, but rather more stability. Someone must provide the anchor and stability that our culture so desperately needs. The Common Service does this for the church’s worship.
We must always allow tradition to be corrected by the word of God. There is Christian freedom in ceremonies and public worship. Disagreement in fasting does not destroy agreement in the faith. There are times in which things in the Service of the Church must be gently adapted to suit local customs and historical circumstances. The error of the haughty spirits is not simply that they have a different order of worship, but that in many cases they pursue, “useless, foolish displays,” which, “are profitable neither for good order nor Christian discipline, nor evangelical propriety in the Church,” and, “are not genuine adiaphora, or matters of indifference,” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declarations X: 7).
Using the Common Service is not the only measure against cultural decay or the loss of faith among us, but it provides cohesion among generations of Christians, cohesion between congregations, and cohesion between pastors. During difficult or tumultuous times, it remains consistent. In this way, is not the product of a certain generation the way that Worship Supplement ‘69 or the other products of the haughty spirits are doomed to become. Rather, there is truly something historic yet timeless that characterizes this Service. May God preserve and increase its usage among us in these gray and latter days.
Adiaphora and Tyranny: Matthias Flacius Illyricus on Christian Resistance and Confession in the Adiaphoristic Controversy, edited by Wade Johnston, trans. Herbert Kuske and Wade Johnston, (Saginaw: Magdeburg Press, 2011), 6.
Ibid. 8.
LCMS Commission on Worship, “Worship Supplement,” (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1969), 9.
Ibid.
Philip Pfatteicher, Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress), 1990.
Thank you for your insight.