July 14, 2009: Maybe I'll Get To Recant Something!

A friend told me how a friend told her that she had read something in one of my Pastor's Pages that she disagreed with, and that got me very excited. Experience has taught me that great things result from disagreements between thinking Christians. I may soon have to refine, correct or disambiguate something I wrote, and I relish that opportunity. Or maybe I'll stand my ground with holy zeal and persuade this friend to see something differently. Or, maybe - it could happen! - I'll find that I'm wrong and need to recant.

I do recant from time to time. Back in 2004 I wrote a Pastor's Page that turned out to be based on bad information - I've deleted that essay and have kept it out of bound volumes. About 10 years ago I foolishly said in a Bible study that, while the Old Testament forbids slander and false testimony and oath breaking, Scripture does not forbid lying per se until you get to the New Testament. Then somebody showed me Leviticus 19:11: "Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another." Oops. My bad. You're right. Forget what I just said. A year ago in a sermon I made some idiotic point about St. Paul being a servant of God, not the church. Then a few days later I remembered 2 Corinthians 4:5: "ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake," and so the next Sunday I had to spend a few minutes retracting that observation. And I can think of two Scriptural interpretations my mother espoused 25 years ago where I strongly disagreed with her until I got older, and wiser, and discovered that best evangelical scholarship confirmed what she knew instinctively. Mom 2, Paul 0.

Thankfully we Christians have a ground for settling disputes: Scripture. Scripture Scripture Scripture Scripture Scripture. When Martin Luther was threatened with nasty things by the church of Rome (which had burned his predecessor John Hus), he said, "Show me in Scripture where I'm wrong." In a memorable exchange with his opponent John Eck, Luther said, "When Christ stood before Annas, he said, 'Produce witnesses.' If our Lord, who could not err, made this demand, why may not a worm like me ask to be convicted of error from the prophets and the Gospels?" Eck blustered hopelessly: "Your plea to be heard from Scripture is the one always made by heretics." Luther responded,

Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason...my conscience
is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant
anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here
I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

Words to carve in stone.

Some time ago I was - at least in my own mind - cruelly wronged by a fellow minister. In my wounded fantasy I marched into his office with a Bible - several Bibles, including a Greek New Testament – dumped them on his desk and challenged him with, "Here, make your case against me with these, you miserable twit!"

Right ground, wrong attitude. The Holy Scriptures are indeed our guide and arbiter in all disputes. But we make our appeal to them with calm humility, careful thought and gentle admonition. When Eck debated Luther, he wanted stenographers out of the room because "taking them into account would chill the passionate heat of the debate." Luther's colleague Philip Melanchthon responded, persuasively, "The truth might fare better at a lower temperature." The stenographers stayed, and Melanchthon was proved right. Cool Scriptural truth prevailed over hot unscriptural rhetoric. May it always do so.