May 22, 2024 Show with Hans Fiene on “Responding to Roman Catholic Claims on Lutheran Solidarity with Rome”

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Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod

Today, I am so excited to have a returning guest on the program. The first time we had my guest Hans Feeney on the show was, wow, I can't believe it was nearly five years ago. September 25th, 2019, we had Hans Feeney on the program to discuss an appropriate Christian use of humor.

And Hans Feeney, if you don't already recognize that name, he is pastor of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, which is a congregation in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod in Crestwood, Missouri, and he is creator of Lutheran satire.

If you're not familiar with Lutheran satire, you've got to become familiar with it because it is truly one of the most hilarious things I have ever experienced. And today, Hans and I are going to be addressing a little bit more serious subject, responding to Roman Catholic claims of Martin Luther's and modern Lutheranism's solidarity with Rome on justification, the Marian dogmas, and other issues.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trap and Zion Radio, Pastor Hans Feeney. Good to be here. Why don't you tell us about Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Crestwood, Missouri. As you may have discovered, many people outside of Lutheranism, when they hear about a Lutheran Church, you bring it up in conversation, they have a knee-jerk reaction.

They automatically may think that you are referring to an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation, also known as ELCA, which is really inappropriately named because they are typically neither Evangelical nor Lutheran, but the very leftist congregations.

In fact, there is one near me that has just decided to perform same-sex marriages. So you have these people who automatically, erroneously, think that you're referring to one of these kinds of churches because they are so dominant numerically, at least here in the United States.

So why don't you tell us about not only the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, but the specific congregation where you pastor.

Sure, so I'm at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Crestwood, Missouri. Crestwood is a suburb of St. Louis. We are kind of in the hub of Lutheran Church, Missouri Synodism. So our church body has its headquarters here.

One of our two seminaries is here. The other one's in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So I have a wonderful congregation there that I've been serving for about four years, a great group of folks. They would tell you we're a small congregation.

We're really not in the grand scheme of things. We're kind of more of a mid-sized congregation, but we're kind of in between two rather large other LCMS congregations. So we kind of have the appearance of being smaller, but it's a very nice manageable size.

I know everybody. Wonderful group of saints that I'm blessed to serve there. So our church body, the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, admittedly does not have a great name. That's because the folks back in the 1800s weren't really thinking about marketing too much.

Our full name, our legal name, is even worse than the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Our legal name is, the full name is the Lutheran Church of Missouri, Ohio, and other states. Or something of that nature.

I forget exactly what it is. So if you're leading with Missouri and Ohio, that's not a terribly thrilling name. Nevertheless, so yeah, one of the, you know, one of the downsides of the First Amendment, I guess, is that in the United States of America, people are free to call themselves anything that they so desire.

So throughout much of the country's history, there have been basically people from different immigrant groups that have come in from various different countries that had Lutheran presence, had a Lutheran presence.

So you have German Lutherans, you have Scandinavian Lutherans, you have some Lutherans from from the Baltic areas. Essentially, if you wanted to say, all right, well, what exactly is a Lutheran? Really the best answer to that question is there's a collection of writings known as the Book of Concord, which is written over the course of two generations.

The first generation is Martin Luther's generation, and that's stuff that they are writing primarily having theological disputes with the Roman Catholic Church. So that's, you'll find documents in there from that era that are Martin Luther's small catechism, his large catechism, the Augsburg Confession, the Apology to the Augsburg Confession.

So the Augsburg Confession is a document that they present to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which is basically their way of saying, hey, there's a lot of rumors about what it is that we're teaching, some of those rumors are true, some of them are not, here's what we believe.

So they write that, the Augsburg Confession. The Roman Catholics respond with a document called the Computation, which tells them where they're wrong, where they think that they're wrong, and the Lutherans write back with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, which is essentially a defense of the Augsburg Confession.

In addition to that, you'll later on have in the second generation when there are some disputes with Calvinist groups and various Reformed groups that have come up in their midst. In the second generation, you have Lutherans clarifying and distinguishing themselves against a variety of Reformed doctrines.

So basically, historically speaking, to be a Lutheran is to confess the Book of Concord. For a church body to be Lutheran is to confess the Book of Concord. But in the United States of America, you can call yourself anything that you want.

So the various groups that made up what eventually became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America really embraced a lot of poor theology, poor hermeneutics, poor methods of interpreting the Bible, and eventually led to them going the same direction as many mainline denominations in the country.

So same kind of direction as the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the same direction we're seeing the Methodist Church going now. And they ended up kind of driving away, especially in the last 10 years or so, driving away a lot of their faithful.

So they've really gone gung-ho in favor of the LGBTQ stuff, in favor of the transgender movements, having, you know, all of them racing to see which can be the first one to have, you know, the first double backwards trans-binary bishop of their church body or whatever it might be.

But my church body, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, still very much holds to the foundational Lutheran documents, the Book of Concord. While these terms are not necessarily always helpful, we are, so we would very much be considered a conservative church body in the sense of, theologically speaking, we have a strong belief in the inerrancy of the Scriptures.

We have a strong belief in, you know, so things we confess the divinity of Jesus, obviously the virgin birth, six-day creation, kind of all of that stuff. So that's basically the distinguishing factors between those two church bodies.

Well, I'm actually very happy to hear that you included a literal six-day creation. I didn't know that that was an official stance of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and I'm delighted to hear it.

Yes, sir. And so, in other words, a minister cannot be a minister in good standing with the LCMS if he was an old earther? So,.

Here's one thing I would say about the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, is that we have rather anemic doctrinal oversight. So, on the one hand, we do have a statement called the brief statement, which is not the most well-known of our doctrinal statements.

But yes, it is one that our pastors sign on to when they are ordained, which holds to the position of a younger six-day creationism. Most of our pastors do. I'm sure there are some that don't, but unless they're quite obnoxious about it, probably nothing will happen.

Okay, that's the best answer I could give to you on that. Sure, and I'm assuming that one of the ways in which Lutherans and Baptists have a commonality as far as divisions amongst our own people is that you are, I'm assuming, have confessional Lutherans and non-confessional Lutherans, just as we have among Baptists.

Yeah, that would be correct. So, there are certain, not just in our own country, but throughout the world, there are church bodies that have a kind of historical connection to the Lutheran movement that will call themselves Lutheran, but don't actually confess all of the documents of the Book of Concord.

And from my perspective, we would simply say, well, then you are deficiently Lutheran. This is just simply what the definition of the thing is.

Well, I want to make sure our listeners have the website for the church where you pastor. It's PrinceofPeaceCrestwood .com PrinceofPeaceCrestwood .com, and God willing, we will be announcing that later on in the program.

And, of course, there is also a website for Lutheran Satire. You've got to view as many of these hilarious videos as you possibly can. LutheranSatire .org. LutheranSatire .org. I always highly recommend the video, which I'm, I believe by now it's videos plural, but on St. Patrick's, bad analogies for the Trinity.

I think that was the very first time I was introduced to your videos, was with that. Sure, yeah. And nearly died of a coronary arrest laughing at that, and have watched and listened to it many times, and every St. Patrick's Day, I always post that.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the high praise. And I know I've done my job if I kill someone with laughter.

And in light of today's topic, I would highly recommend that you look up the number of videos on Frank the Hippie Pope. Have you gotten any negative feedback from those videos on Frank the Hippie Pope, or any of your videos for that matter?

Oh, yeah, I'll always get some negative feedback. Typically, what you kind of have is you'll have folks who think everything's funny until you, until I make a video taking aim at some doctrine that they hold to be true.

That Frank the Hippie Pope, when I haven't gotten a lot, I think there's a sense in which Roman Catholics are, they're more annoyed with him than they are with me. So that, which is kind of part of the joke.

So it's kind, it's a little bit hard to to dispute that.

Well, I'm gonna have to listen to the 12 Days of Christmas special, Day 7 Calvinist Christmas.

I haven't listened to it or watched it yet. Oh, that's an old one. Yeah, that was back in the day when I was just using the pre-made characters with robo voices.

Well, I do not have a thin skin and I make fun of Calvinists, even though I am one. The only thing that annoys me is the frequent bombardment and social media of people who get everything about Calvinism wrong and seek to mock it.

When it's, something is not funny unless it resembles the truth in some way, even if it's hyperbole, even if it's an exaggeration. It could be funny. It could be funny even if you embrace the ideology or theology being mocked, but when it's just totally foreign to your own knowledge of what it is, it's just not funny.

I agree. Yeah, that it's to me, if you guys remember a few years ago when before the whole legal issues, his whole legal issues when Alec Baldwin was doing the Trump impressions on Saturday Night Live.

Right. And I thought it was the worst impression I had ever seen. Yes. Because it had it had no air of truth to it. Yes. It was just a guy who clearly hated Donald Trump, vaguely speaking like him in a way that just dripped with disdain.

And it wasn't even his personality. It was Ebenezer Scrooge. It was. Right. Yeah.

So it had no air of truth to it, whereas the guy who does it now, who's on SNL, James Austin Johnson or something like that, really does a great one, as does the comedian Shane Gillis, because they really get into the, you can tell that there's enough affection for him to actually understand what makes him appealing and why and why.

That's funny.

Right. Oh, and by the way, in case our listeners are unaware of this and I'm not sure how many of my listeners are even aware of your Calvinist podcast with my friend Keith Foskey. I'm sure many of you are, however, because I am assuming that most of my listeners are theologically Reformed and perhaps even more specifically Reformed Baptists, which Keith is one.

But my guest today, Hans Feeney, actually recorded the the new theme music, which is utterly hilarious. Oh, thank you for your Calvinist podcast.

That was a lot of that was a lot of fun to do. Yeah. Yeah. I could tell you I was offering my services. And Keith said that he'd love to love to do an 80s style theme song. And my wife had had recently my wife will kind of put on she'd stay at home, mom.

So she'll put on stuff that is, you know, not a problem if the kids are walking in to the room. And so she was watching Who's the Boss reruns. And that theme song was just stuck in my head all the time.

And it reminded me just of that used to be a thing. You know, that was that was the first two minutes of every sitcom was just the insanely catchy, always very corny jingle. And I have a very strong love for those.

Yeah, the day of the jingle has died. You don't hear jingles. I know. Typically in commercials or any jingles make everybody happier.

I don't know why why this has happened.

And also jingles, just like music in general, which is why when we remember our alphabet growing up to a song, music helps us remember, which is why I could rattle off a whole bunch of jingle slogans from decades ago, like Winston tastes good like a cigarette should.

I know. I know that's upset a lot of Baptists listening to me. But and we could go on and on and on with those. But today, as I've already mentioned, we are discussing responding to Roman Catholic claims on Martin Luther's and modern Lutheran isms, solidarity with Rome on justification, the Marian dogmas and other issues.

The reason why this, I think, is a very important topic is because, as you are likely aware yourself, Pastor Hans, the Church of Rome, even in its most aggressive element, apologetically, they are nonetheless what I'm what they is a kind of a overly specific phrase.

But the Church of Rome is is not a monolith. There are ultra right traditionalist Roman Catholics that have no use for humanism or anything involving Vatican two. But the much larger percentage of Catholics, even if they would claim to be conservative, are trying to hold on to an ecumenical position with Protestants.

And they are more frequently than ever before, I think, that I've experienced, especially when you're talking about conservatives. They are trying to actually diminish the differences that they have with evangelicals rather than highlight them.

And anybody who saw recently Dr. James R. White, my dear friend, going back to the 1990s, his two debates that he had with Jimmy Akin, who is a Roman Catholic apologist for Catholic answers. I witnessed a Jimmy Akin that I had not seen before.

My experience is listening to Jimmy Akin. He was far more caustic and far more clear that the Church of Rome had radically different positions on very vital issues to evangelicalism and the the sternness with which evangelical beliefs and practices were condemned was far more clear in days past, even, you know, not that long ago.

But it seems that the the Protestant apologist is being challenged to second guess. How strong the differences are between Rome and Geneva or Rome and Wittenberg, and that both sides of the Tiber River are a lot more alike than we dare to think.

And typically what you will witness in exchanges, apologetically in debate or even just conversations that I've had immediately, the the Roman Catholic apologist will bring up Martin Luther's devotion to Mary, the mother of Christ, and basically make claims that his devotion was identical to what Roman Catholics do and participate in today.

Now, I also realize that Martin Luther was a work in progress, like everybody is. And Martin Luther did not have a mountain of of reformers upon whose shoulders he could stand. He was, you know, one of the very first other than the proto reformers, which were largely martyred by Rome.

But, you know, he was in many senses starting from scratch here. Of course, working upon the the history of the patristic era and so on, which largely favored what he was what he was standing for. But where, in your opinion and in the opinion of most Lutherans and their understanding of history, did Luther, especially in his later years, wind up standing when it came to any kind of a devotion to Mary?

Martin Luther, Mary, and the Marian Dogmas

Yeah. So one of the challenges with with determining what Luther's position on something was, is sort of the question of, well, well, when are you talking about? At what point in his life are you talking about?

Right. So early Luther was is going to hold some positions that later Luther doesn't quite hold. And then I think there's also kind of an important question to consider in all of this, which is how high of a priority was the issue for Luther at that specific point in his life?

So I think in a general sense, what you can certainly say, Luther had a higher regard for Mary than you would typically find in the Protestant world today. And even certainly than you would find among certain Lutherans today in the sense that Luther.

So. All right. So a thing that's helpful to understand about Luther is that for Luther, the two chief issues are of the Reformation, our doctrine of justification and the role of the pope, the the papacy.

Those are the kind of the two main issues. And he'll certainly speak about other issues. And he'll talk quite a bit about in his debates with the subsequent reforming groups, subsequent reform groups.

He'll get into big fights with them over baptism, over the presence of Christ in the supper and things of that nature. But I think so, for an example, this would be that Luther always confessed a belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary, which is not something that most Lutherans today would confess.

There's sort of debate amongst Lutherans as to whether or not that's a statement in our confessions that we're bound to believe. The Lutheran confessions refer to Mary as the ever virgin. But there's kind of debate as to whether or not, you know, was that is that actually a doctrinal assertion or is that just simply the common title of respect?

Right. So in the same way that when you call, you know, if they call the the emperor his majesty or whatever the term is that they use for that, are they are they is that a doctrinal assertion about the the nature of the emperor's role or is it just simply a title?

So that's kind of the question that's up in the air. I think Luther continued to affirm the perpetual virginity of Mary in large part because I think there were so many big issues there going on at the time that sort of quibbling about that would seem like an odd thing to to put on your plate.

And and likewise, Luther has statements earlier on in his in his time where he holds to a view of Mary that would be more similar to kind of the the abuses that we would find in Rome today that we would speak of in Rome today.

So Mary is a mediatrix referring to Mary as the as the queen of heaven, you know, and things of that nature. So language that would make us a bit uncomfortable today. Luther will essentially backtrack from that later on in his career.

And I think, you know, a proper way to understand that is so Luther's not a radical reformer from from a Lutheran perspective. I would certainly say that one of my criticisms of the subsequent Protestant movements is that there's there's an impulse to develop your doctrinal positions by essentially starting off with a kind of gut or sort of a reflex reaction of saying, I want to be as un-Catholic as possible.

I want to look as little like the Roman Catholic Church as possible. What do I need to do in order to to be very comfortably not Roman Catholic looking and then kind of working a theological justification for it afterwards?

Right. So so, for example, I've had this argument with with many people in the kind of reformed world about the presence of Christ in the supper. And so Lutherans, we don't hold to we don't exactly hold to transubstantiation in the sense that we don't we don't seek to explain the mystery of how Christ can be present in the sacrament.

So we so we don't hold to the position that we don't try to explain it from a kind of metaphysical standpoint by saying the so that, you know, the doctrine of predestined errors of concept of transubstantiation is the substance changes, but the accidents remain.

So it looks and tastes and smells and feels like bread and wine. But in its substance, it is the body and blood of Christ. That's not a philosophical way that we try to explain it. But we hold to the belief that Jesus is indeed present, that when we that when we eat and drink the sacrament, we receive upon our tongues the very body and blood of Jesus Christ.

I've had a lot of arguments with reformed folks throughout the years that have kind of eventually gotten to the point where it's basically that's just too close to Rome for comfort. And and so this was never the way that Luther approached the Reformation.

His approach was never. I want to hold a position that's contrary to the pope. His position was if if someone is asserting something that is contrary to the scriptures, then he'll speak up. Contrary to what he believes the scriptures teach, then he'll speak up.

If they don't, he won't. So so I think at the at the end of his life, what you can say is Luther has come from a world and still have remained quite comfortable with a level of devotion to Mary that that would be uncomfortable to a lot of folks in the Protestant world.

But he does not hold an idolatrous view of Mary by any stretch of the imagination. He doesn't doesn't is no longer confessing her to be the co-mediator. I don't even know how to say that word. The co-mediator, the co-lady mediator, female female mediator.

I don't. Mediatrix, I think, is the word. Yes. But I have to think really hard as I'm trying to say it to say it properly.

Yeah. Mediatrix and co-redemptrix. Right. Yeah. Co-redemptrix. Yeah, that this. There we go. We're going to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody has a question of your own for Hans Feeney on the differences between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism in light of the fact that Roman Catholic apologists frequently try to strongly diminish any differences, not only between them and Lutherans, but between them and the broader evangelical world.

If you have a question about that, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back.

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Go to RoyalDiadem .com today and mention Iron Shoppings Iron Radio. We're now back with my guest today, Hans Feeney, who is a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missionary Synod, and we are discussing a very important topic, I believe, especially in light of Roman Catholic apologetics.

This is responding to Roman Catholic claims on Martin Luther and modern Lutheranism's solidarity with Rome on justification, the Marian dogmas and other issues. If you have a question, send it to ChrisAronson at gmail .com.

ChrisAronson at gmail .com. And before I go to a listener question, Hans, you were talking about the Eucharist before the break and how your, your, the Lutheran view is not quite the same as the Romanist view declared to be essential at the Council of Trent that teaches transubstantiation, where the elements are literally transformed.

You do not believe that view. And I learned years ago never to tell a Lutheran pastor that he believes in consubstantiation either, because... Right. Yeah.

We don't even know where that term came from. There's never been a term that we, we ourselves have used. Right.

But you have a different view from the, the evangelical church at large, typically, in that it is more than a spiritual presence of Christ among the gathered people eating the supper and more than just a memorial.

But as far as your difference between the Lutheran view and the Roman view, and perhaps even Luther's view, in contrast with Rome, do you worship the elements as Roman Catholics do? I was raised Roman Catholic.

I was an altar boy. And I didn't even know until I was a Protestant that the reason why Catholics are supposed to genuflect when they enter into the sanctuary of a Roman Catholic church, and for those of our listeners who don't know what that means, it's kind of a half kneel where you don't go all the way down to the ground and you cross yourself.

I didn't even know why I was doing that as a Catholic, although I definitely knew that it was taught that the elements of the mass were the literal body and blood of Christ. I knew that. But what I didn't know is that I was supposed to be genuflecting because Jesus Christ was literally present on the altar.

And therefore, I had to do that in respect of the fact that God was there, not as all Christians believe he's on the present, but specifically he was there in the bread and wine. Now, how would the Lutherans differ?

I mean, do you lift up the elements in a way that you adore them, worship them? Do you believe that? Would you actually say that this is God, et cetera?

So it kind of depends on what your definitions of those of those words are. So we believe we are receiving Christ's body and blood, that this is not merely a symbol. We don't hold to the reform view that we are spiritually ascending to heaven.

But as I said, and this is the and the arguments that we'll oftentimes have with the reform, well, sometimes we'll speak similarly, but where you're always find a different answer is if you say, all right, a person comes and eats and drinks, what does he receive upon his tongue?

And at that point, that's really where you can kind of see the divide where Lutherans say we receive the body and blood of Jesus and the reform will say merely bread and wine. So but a distinction between the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans on the issue of how the elements are treated.

Is for Lutherans, our position is essentially God gives us the sacrament, Jesus comes to us for the purposes of eating and drinking his body and blood, not to parade it, not to parade them through the streets, not to become sort of tokens, you know, not to become kind of spiritual tokens of of adoration.

Right. So so that you aren't to Jesus, Jesus did not institute the sacrament so that you could take the host home and worship it or keep it as a, you know, as a good luck charm under your pillow. But rather that it was given for the purposes of eating and drinking.

So we eat and drink it and and we leave it at that.

Whether Roman Catholics and Lutherans Are Christians

OK, we have a listener. Reverend Christopher, I'll give his full name since he is a minister. I usually don't give the full names of listeners. Christopher Bacalupo, minister of religion, commissioned at Trinity Lutheran Church of Islet, Long Island, New York.

And he says R .C. Sproul used to like to say that Rome anathemized the gospel in the Council of Trent. Interestingly enough, it would seem that Paul anathemizes Rome's understanding in the first chapter of Galatians.

Many Christians would tell us not to consider them, meaning Roman Catholics, Christians based on this. We Lutherans do. How might this be explained?

Yeah, so I think there is a distinction to draw, first of all, between so there are Lutheran fathers that spoke of what they called the felicitous inconsistency, which is a fun phrase to say, which is essentially that someone can belong to a church body that teaches something while they themselves don't believe that.

And also that that they can that someone can be taught something, but it just doesn't click for them and they still end up clinging to the truth despite the false teaching that's there. So, for example, I had one of my favorite stories from my time training to be a pastor.

So when I was on what was what we call Vicarage, which is the third year of my seminary studies, it's like a year long pastoral internship. And there's a lady in the congregation who was telling me she grew up Methodist and she was telling me the story about when she joined the congregation, the Lutheran congregation there and became a Lutheran.

And so she's talking with the pastor and she's going through instruction. He's teaching her what Lutherans believe. And they get to the Lord's Supper and he says, well, we believe we're actually receiving the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament.