Paulson and the Dangers of Reactionary Theology

    So Stephen Paulson wrote an essay in the Lutheran Quarterly that has some major flaws.  I'm sure that there will be plenty of people who will point out those flaws in detail, especially in our LCMS circles. However, I think that many from within the LCMS will miss part of the nuance of those flaws, how they manifest - and how it forms a similar danger for us with in the LCMS.

   The first thing we in the LCMS forget when dealing with Paulson is that Paulson is not LCMS.  "Duh, it's clear that he's not LCMS and should never be!!!!"  Yes, that is true - he's not LCMS.  Remember what that means.  It means he is only tangentially involved in LCMS discussions or approaches - Paulson's main focus, context, background, and shaping is dealing with the ELCA.

    So what does this mean? In his attacks upon "the Law" and any sort of didactic, culture shaping application of the Law by the Church, Paulson is directly responding to the "woke" progressive elements of the ELCA.  He is attacking the doubly "Progressive" sanctification of the ELCA.  Paulson is not a "liberal" in the political sense; he (and Forde before him) is attempting to counter and react to all the crazy liberal social theories that are now much more manifest in society today.  In the late 80's and early 90's, the ELCA was already institutionally captured by what we might call "CRT" or "Intersectionality" today.  Paulson is reacting against all of that.

    And rightly so.  If you want to understand what Paulson is doing, you have to remember that for him the "Church" teaching morals means the utter destruction of any semblance of morality in the name of acceptance and welcome.  It is the "Church" pushing and promoting sexual deviancy.  It is the "Church" pushing people away from simply being the creatures they were created to be and pushing them into self-defining and refining everything.  

    In the LCMS, we are fighting against the infiltration of these ideas; Paulson is and has been fighting a church that actively teaches these ideas - where these ideas being pushed functionally "is" the ELCA's idea of what the third use of the law looks like.

    It was utterly right to have been repulsed by what the ELCA had been pushing in late 80s and following, just as it is utterly right to oppose these foolish ideas today.

    But then how did Paulson get it so wrong?

    Because instead of defending the truth and teaching the truth, he fell into reactionism.  The opposite of any error is just another error.  As the church was teaching incorrect social teaching, the reaction was that the Church should have no social teaching. 

    If you are in the LCMS, don't denigrate this reaction.  It is politically, worldly speaking, a solid tactical move.  If there's a debate, and you are utterly outnumbered and cannot win the debate because you'll be shouted down, there's a wordly wisdom to undercutting the idea of debate at all. It's practically the same idea as time wasting at a convention - if a resolution you don't want to pass will pass if it comes to the floor, you keep it from coming to the floor.  Or perhaps this: Instead of trying to fix public schools and how they teach, maybe it's best just to withdraw from public schools, or try to shut down the entire endevour.  It's not a "fix", but it is a way to attempt to curtail the worst excesses for at least some people.

    While the reaction was functional, it ignored the fullness of the truth.  It ignored the fulness of the Scriptural witness.  Here, Paulson's reactionism ran right along the theological weaknesses present in the ELCA. The ELCA and it's predecessors had already weakened the idea of the Scriptures as the Word of God.  Instead of being the Word of God, the Scriptures merely contained the Word of God.  The practice was already established to simply deny that something is the Word of God.  Hence, when it comes time to react and reject a practice that some claim to be "Godly", Paulson rejects it as being the actual Word of God.  However, he doesn't stop there. To curtail the wicked and falsified moral teaching from going forward, he ends up wanting to circumvent all moral teaching in Scripture.  The (well meaning) attempt to fight one error puts incredible strain on another deep flaw, and that's where things break apart.  Moses as moral teacher is not put in his proper place to serve the neighbor and drive to repentance, but instead is utterly rejected as not being God's Word at all in an effort to prevent a wretched abuse of the twisted-moral teaching.  And stuck in his reactionism and his Scriptural presuppositions, Paulson can't see it.

    This is an example of the dangers of reactionism.  Instead of being driven into the Scriptures, Paulson (and Forde) reacted in a reasonable, understandable way.  But the goal of opposing something bad (in this case, very bad) overshadowed the Word - it became higher than the Word.  And then, given time, this plays out in extraordinarily typical "contains, not is" tomfoolery.

    "Okay, Brown - say this is all an accurate assessment.  Why is your post entitled 'Paulson and the Dangers of Reactionary Theology'?  We're LCMS, we're not going to fall into that contains BS."  True, but we in the LCMS do have our own traditional flaws and weaknesses, ditches we will drop into.  We have a history of pietism.  We have a history of isolationism.  We have a history of proof-texting, which can end up denying other parts of Scripture just as much as "containism" can.  There's a reason Dr. Scaer used to say, "Gentlemen, we must destroy Lutheranism before Lutheranism destroys us" - referring to these sorts of weaknesses and habits that can overshadow and push us away from the central point of the Scriptures - that Jesus is the Christ, that we are to know nothing but Christ and Him Crucified, that the Church stands and falls on Article 4.  If your use of Scripture does not reach its ultimate goal, its end in Christ, in the "so that you may believe" - you've misused and bastardized the Scriptures just as much as whatever that Deuteronomy 30 rant in Paulson's paper was.

    So, watch yourself when you are reacting to the social tomfoolery of the day.  It is worth reacting against.  However, don't fall into mere reactionism, where opposing a false social teaching becomes the HIGHEST goal and purpose.  First and foremost must be Justification by grace through faith in Christ Jesus.  Otherwise, other things will come in and break.  Whether that becomes false, extra scriptural standards of purity, or false expectations for outward demonstrations of piety, or Pharisaical disdain, it doesn't overly matter; Justification gets jettisoned in any case. Correcting errors is and can only ever be a preaching of the Law, which cannot and must not ever predominate over the Gospel.

    Because the danger of all this social tomfoolery isn't merely civil disorder.  Natural law and reality (sometimes cold, hard, and deadly reality) tend to fix civil issues in the long run... maybe with the decline and fall of an empire, but so be it.  The real danger of all this social stuff is that it is an attack on Justification by Grace through Faith in Christ.  Where there is no sin, there is no need for a Savior.  Where the fight is over making this world just so, looking forward to the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come (the result of Christ's death and resurrection) is cast aside.

    Be frustrated with with all the stupid social stuff.  You ought to be.  But don't let it push you into reactionism, otherwise you'll end up treading the same path Paulson has but just falling into, just with LCMS crazy sprinkles instead of ELCA crazy sprinkles.