Photo credit: Wolfgang Hasselmann wolfgang_hasselmann. Unsplash license.
Had a nice day today, but it stretched long, which is why I’m posting late. The board of the Georg Sverdrup Society, whose journal I edit, met in Mankato, Minnesota. And then we were treated to a tour of the archives and museum of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, on the campus of Bethany Lutheran College in that same town.
There’s probably a lesson in the fact that our different church bodies are the offspring of two opposing sides in 19th Century controversies among Norwegian Lutherans in the U.S., and yet we find ourselves today, if not allies, at least amiable rivals. The ELS is a legacy group out of the old Norwegian Synod, the most conservative and rigidly orthodox of the Norwegian immigrant church bodies. My group, the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations, comes from what was then the liberal, free-wheeling, revivalist Lutheran Free Church. Our spiritual forefathers were bitter enemies who anathematized one another in fiery sermons and editorials. Now we find much to unite us.
That observation is, I suppose, the wrong way to introduce my topic tonight. Because I want to talk about objective truth. Eternal verities that must not be compromised.
Yesterday I described my delight at the new, sharp sight I’m enjoying in my left eye since my cataract surgery, less than a week ago as I write. My drive to Mankato today was along one of my favorite scenic routes in my state, Highway 169 along the Minnesota River valley, through Le Sueur, St. Peter, and Mankato. The skies were clear and colors were bright, and I felt ten years younger than I had a week ago.
But, as I mentioned, I do now have minor retina damage that slightly warps everything I see through that eye. Straight lines no longer look straight to me.
The lesson modern thought would have me learn from this experience is that I should abandon the whole idea of straight lines. Since I can’t see them anymore, obviously they don’t exist for me. We all live in our own reality, and my reality no longer includes straight lines.
I say phooey. I can remember straight lines. I can listen to the testimony of reliable people who talk to me about them. I can study geometry if I care to, and learn all about parallels and right angles and so on.
It’s like that bloody elephant in the famous secular parable. One blind man touches its flank and thinks an elephant is very like a wall. Another touches the trunk, and decides an elephant is very like a snake. And so on. Moderns take all this to mean that elephants don’t exist as such, but are something different for each person.
But the actual point of the parable is that they’re all wrong. What those blind men need to do is to get together and pool their information. After some frank consultation, they’ll probably be able to construct a pretty reasonable description of a whole elephant. If not, they can ask somebody who can see.
Good to read of your recovery, Lars.
I’ll say ‘amen’ to that, however belatedly!
And, as you note in an earlier post (also just caught up with) the difference between the 1960s (and 70s?) and recent decades are wonderful and a blessing!
Wikipedia having two kinds of “Norsk” finally got us looking into the matter – and we’ve been astonished! But still great is our ignorance – was that a feature of these “19th Century controversies among Norwegian Lutherans in the U.S.”, too, by any chance?
David, I’m not entirely sure what the “that” (as a feature of 19th Century controversies) you have in mind is. I suppose the heart of the controversies between the Haugeans (various groups of pietists) and the larger, more orthodox Norwegian Synod, had to do with a provision in the Augsburg Confession. That provision says that laymen are not to preach or lead Christian meetings. We Haugeans pretty much ignored that paragraph; to observe it would invalidate our whole movement. Strict confessional groups to this day don’t recognize us as real Lutherans.
Many thanks for this additional elucidation!
My inexact “that” referred to the (to me) astonishing controversies in what Wikipedia calls the “Norwegian language conflict” over “the different varieties of written Norwegian”, and my curiosity as to how far this was also going on among Norwegian speakers in the US.
Ah, well, as far as I know, the American Norwegians showed little interest in the Language Issue as such. That was mainly an urban and academic dispute. The people who came to America were mostly rural, and spoke whatever dialect they’d spoken at home. I am surprised to realize that I’ve heard no anecdotes about Norwegians in America having trouble understanding speakers of other dialects, though it’s well documented back in Norway. These dialects were passed down one or two generations, and it’s on record that some Norwegian language scholars traveled to America to study the old dialects, preserved in amber as it were. On the other hand, the dialects were influenced by English with time, and dialects like “Iowa Norwegian” and “Wisconsin Norwegian” are also documented.