This will be a short (as short as I can make it) meditation on a subject that deserves a far more comprehensive treatment. Chances are the idea I’ll raise isn’t original to me, and somebody else has already written about it, probably far more sensibly.

I was recently sent .pdfs of a couple open letters from prominent figures in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The first was this letter, written by former presiding bishop Herbert Chilstrom. In it he defends recent ELCA decisions that placed a blessing on the practice of homosexuality. The decisions, he says, are consistent with a Lutheran understanding of the Word of God. He quotes in particular the theologian Carl E. Braaten, writing, “The ultimate authority of Christian dogmatics is not the biblical canon as such, but the gospel of Jesus Christ to which the Scriptures bear witness—the ‘canon within the canon.’”

I was also sent Prof. Braaten’s response, which you can read here. Although Prof. Braaten is not someone I myself have ever looked to as a model in matters of scriptural interpretation, there are some things that can still make even an advocate of the higher criticism gag. Prof. Braaten answers, “You are right that the Word of God can mean one of three things, the incarnate Word, the written Word, or the proclaimed Word. In this case, the context makes it clear that it means the written Word of God, the Bible. I do not believe that the other two meanings of the Word of God diminish by a single iota the authority of the written Word of God.”

He goes on to argue (very ably, I think), that Bishop Chilstrom’s appeal to “reason and experience” as trumping Scripture would, if carried out consistently, destroy the foundations of Christianity. “Yes, reason and experience are in command. Whose reason and experience? Not the Church’s, as defined by millennia of teaching by the fathers, martyrs, saints, doctors, evangelists, and missionaries, down through the centuries and across all cultures, but yours and those with whom you agree during the last 20 years of American culture-conforming Christianity.”

He points, with some justice, to the problems of Lutheran pietism, the tradition that he has rejected (or transcended), but which I myself (for whatever it’s worth) continue to embrace. It’s true that, historically, the pietists often failed to appreciate church history and doctrine. But pietism was never about “finding Jesus inside myself.” It was always about finding Jesus in the Scripture (as well as in the sacraments, at least for us Lutherans, though I’ll grant that part of it sometimes got short shrift). The Jesus of classic pietism always came in from outside, and was objective, Someone we had to conform ourselves to. Pietism’s idiot offspring, modern liberalism, is about Jesus emerging from oneself, and the focus is subjective.

It occurs to me that what we’re seeing today in Christian liberalism is a new form of Gnosticism—a Gnostic heresy, if you will. The old Gnostics believed in a secret knowledge that was hidden from the unenlightened masses, and made them superior. The new Gnostics believe in a revelation which is secret in the sense of being personal—“I have my God who speaks to me things He/She might not say to you. However, for me, my revelation is authoritative, and nobody has any right to criticize it.”

This new kind of secret religion is open admission, however. Instead of a small core of enlightened masters, everyone is now an enlightened master.

Except for conservatives, of course. Conservatives are just wrong. And hateful.

Well, every religion needs at least one sin to condemn.

(Cross-posted at Mere Comments)