Confessional Subscription
Via “Confessional Subscription: What Does It Mean for Lutherans Today?”
What is the language supposed to mean? To what does it commit us?
Confessionalists, and particularly Lutherans in this country, have had and continue to have considerable difficulty with such questions. Such difficulty arises mainly because of a failure to apply what the confessors confess to the interpretation and use of the onfessional
documents themselves. The confessors confess the liberating and life-giving power of the gospel over against all law and demonic power which enslaves and kills—wherever it may be found, even (or perhaps especially!) if that be in the church itself.In the first instance, therefore, the question for subscription is not whether one is bound enough to teach and preach in accordance with these confessions, but whether one is actually going to be free enough to do so. The fundamental question is not whether we will feel legalistically constrained by the confession, but whether we will actually be so liberated by what they confess that we will dare to be so bold as they, and thus con-fess, i.e., speak with one voice together with them. The confession, that is to say, was an act of daring, a declaration of the liberating power of the gospel over against enslavement. To subscribe to the confession cannot be less than that. When one comes to understand the confessions in that light they are a source of strength and comfort for pastoral ministry, and not a strait-jacket or a burden.
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