The Leaven of 1517
Our current print issue takes a serious look at the current strain of ‘antinomianism’ in our midst, and in particular includes a critique of the 1517 organization. In the interest of a wider dissemination of our concerns, my Liturgical Observation column for the issue follows here.
In the year 1574, the future of the Lutheran Reformation was in great peril. Since the days of Luther himself, Wittenberg had been the heart of the Lutheran belief, teaching, and confession of the Christian faith as had been set forth in the Augsburg Confession of 1530. But Luther died in 1546, and soon thereafter his chief supporter and confessor Phillip Melancthon—who himself was author of the Apology to the Augsburg Confession—began to waver. He had a genial relationship with the Calvinists, and even with John Calvin himself, with whom he corresponded. Soon he began to sympathize with their views on the Sacrament. The infamous Variata of 1540 was penned by him as an attempt to find common ground with them, but at the expense of the Lutherans’ insistence that the Body and Blood of Christ are present truly and substantially (vere et substantialiter) in the Sacrament. This compromise was at length rejected by the Lutheran Church, and to this day Lutheran church cornerstones are common which contain the initials “U.A.C.”: unaltered Augsburg Confession. But it took some time to get to that point, and a period of some great upheaval ensued before Lutheranism finally recovered from the Calvinist scourge. By the eighth decade of the sixteenth century the threat had metastasized significantly, and the influence of sympathizers with Melanchthon (and Calvin) had grown to the point that the University of Wittenberg itself was at the point of being overrun and genuine Lutheranism eradicated altogether.
But 1574 was a fateful year, for it was in that year that a nefarious plot was exposed which, had it been successful, could have destroyed distinctive Lutheran doctrine at Wittenberg altogether. As it happened, a secret letter, known as the “Exegesis Perspicua,” fell into the wrong hands, that is, into the hands of the Lutherans, which laid out not only the clear, Calvinist, anti-Lutheran teaching on the Supper being espoused in Wittenberg in clear an unambiguous terms, but also the details of how the “crypto-Calvinists” as they became known (‘crypto’ because of their being hidden, secret, and conspiratory) were actively plotting to destroy distinctive Lutheran elements there. This was quickly made known to the Elector of Saxony, who up to this point had been deceived about the matter. But now the scales came off at once, and he could see that among other things a Calvinist prayer-book was even surreptitiously being slipped into the hands of the Elector’s own wife, in attempts to win her over to their side and soon thereafter to win over the Elector himself. When the conspiracy was made known, its leaders were arrested and sent to prison. The plot was in ruins, and the Crypto-Calvinists were driven out of Wittenberg.[1]
The reason I find this account a fascinating one to review is that it has some possible points of comparison with a similar situation facing the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod today. While to be sure there is no evidence of any secret or nefarious plotting or planning on the part of those whose doctrine is not congruent with what we believe, teach, and confess according to the Lutheran Confessions, there is nonetheless a kind of stealth, if one can call it that, that can be detected in our midst.
I refer to an impressive looking website that sports the innocuous and simple Reformationesque name “1517.” (www.1517.org, also known as 1517 Publishing). This organization has been getting the attention of a great number of confessional Lutherans in recent years, and they appear to have in their list of supporters and participants a great many associates whose names and good reputations are familiar to us, and who are affiliated with the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, though one wonders whether all the names listed are really involved. It may be that a very loose connection was what put some names among their supporters. In any case, a good number of people have been giving them favorable reviews and kudos, and among those people are some in our own circles who have the respect of many. But what is this organization, and just what sort of teaching do they represent? Why are they so heavily peppered with LCMS names, how are those individuals associated with them? We have to believe in the likelihood that a good number of those people in particular, who have good theological reputations and whom we ourselves respect, must not be fully in step with what we have found to be some questionable aims of the organization itself, but are more tangentially involved.
The avowed purpose of 1517 is “to declare and defend the Good News that you are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone.” This purpose statement appears at the bottom of every section of the website. According to their fuller definition of the statement, “[w]e produce theological and apologetic resources rooted in the tradition of the Reformation. We promote the proclamation of Christ crucified for you, the distinction between law and gospel, the defense of the Christian faith, and resources concerning vocation and civil courage.”
One might be inclined to reply, What’s not to love about that? In themselves these words certainly are the kind of language we would employ ourselves. But context always determines whether they are used according to the same understanding we have. We, too, promote the proclamation of Christ crucified, and prefer the “for you” emphasis that is common and generally preferred over the “Christ in you” stress that is characteristic of Pietistic or personal experience-based traditions. But there’s much more to our confession than that, and indeed, “that” can itself be understood variously by various strains of tradition. For instance, “Christ for you” is an emphasis that is also easily adapted by the kind of neoorthodoxy that was common in the early and mid-twentieth century that was anything but Lutheran, though it sounded good to Lutherans at first, with its thoroughgoing stress on the importance of the Word of God.[2] Yet it turned out that for the neoorthodox, the Word of God was not necessarily the words of Sacred Scripture, but only if those words, in the moment of their transmission, produced the all-important “encounter” with God. Back in those days I once heard a neoorthodox pastor introduce a reading from Scripture with the words, “Listen for the word of God.” The meaning intended for words depends on the context of those using them. As is true with every discipline, what someone means by what he says is not necessarily that same as what the hearer understands by it. Ambiguity is a choice weapon of a false confession.
Thus, a careful examination even of the avowed purpose of 1517—to declare and defend the Good News that you are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone—is in order, and raises questions. In particular, who is referenced by the pronoun ‘you’? If it’s the penitent Christian, particularly someone who is in need of assurance, this expression is welcome and needed: you are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone! But what might this mean to an avowed atheist? Can he, too, be told that he is forgiven and free? “You are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone” is in fact a prima facie plenary declaration of mercy that is without qualifications of any kind. And while objective or general justification, and the universality of the atonement, are important things to affirm, the way in which they are affirmed matters, lest an unsavory kind of universalism be read into it that in the end denies the need for Christ altogether. The doctrine of objective justification holds that the whole world has been redeemed and reconciled to God because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, but the expression of that truth must always be made within the context of His atoning sacrifice, and in addition when it is affirmed, it is never to be done in a way that suggests it may be applied willy-nilly to any particular individual sinner. This may sound like splitting hairs, but it is in fact a critical difference between objective and subjective justification, as the dogmaticians call them. As soon as the matter of justification is expressed from the point of view of its particular application to any beneficiary of the atonement, the matter becomes subjective, that is, a matter of subjective justification, which is always by faith. This perspective is also that of Article IV of the Augsburg Confession:
they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith, when they believe that they re received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ's sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins. This faith God imputes for righteousness in His sight. Rom. 3 and 4.
In short, our teachers were always careful to maintain the distinction between the objective reality from God’s point of view, namely toward the world and in explicit connection to the atoning sacrifice of Christ, and on the other hand from man’s point of view, which necessarily must include faith. Otherwise, mischief arises. If it’s all so simple that one may say to anyone that “you are forgiven on account of Christ alone,” whoever you are, then there’s no real need for Christ to be preached, or faith, or the word of God, notwithstanding any insistence that it’s all “on account of Christ alone.” Strictly speaking, this is universalism.
And it’s not surprising to find this here, for the group has already been losing some of its charm among careful theologians for seeming to espouse a rejection of the importance of the law of God. This is called antinomianism, an error that first arose in the sixteenth century in a dangerous controversy in which Luther himself was fiercely embroiled. F. Bente’s assessment of it goes to the heart of the trouble:
[A]ccording to Luther, an commingling of the Law and the Gospel necessarily leads to a corruption of the doctrine of justification, the very heart of Christianity And as both must be carefully distinguished, so both must also be upheld and preached in the Church; for the Gospel presupposes the Law and is rendered meaningless without it. Wherever the Law is despised, disparaged, and corrupted, the Gospel, too, cannot be kept intact. Whenever the Law is assailed, even if this be done in the name of the Gospel, the latter is, in reality, hit harder than the former. The cocoon of antinomianism always bursts into antigospelism.[3]
There’s plenty of emphasis at 1517 on the Gospel, and it all sounds good, as far as it goes. It’s all very slick, you might say. The website’s opening video is peppered with the sound of truthful words:
Theology is not about what we do for God; theology is the proclamation of what He has done for us. . . . His love . . . bursts forth through the redemption and forgiveness that He bestows on each of us again and again in word, water, wine, and bread. . . . He’s come to save everyone. . . . [4]
But for all that, it’s hard to find any specific confessional subscriptions or references at 1517. They don’t even call themselves Lutheran, much less are they openly aligned with any Lutheran confession. Why would that be?
This entire enterprise seems on the one hand to want to proclaim itself up front to be “to declare and defend the Good News that you are forgiven and free on account of Christ alone,” but on the other hand there is no confessional subscription evident in any of its literature, and I would have to guess that’s intentional. By not being straightforward about where this group is actually coming from, they can certainly appeal to a host of confessional LCMS Lutherans who didn’t ask.
The annual Here We Still Stand conference is “a three-day event packed with teaching, music, food, and fellowship; all focused on the radical message of God's grace toward sinners . . . standing in the freedom of the gospel.” Evidently this freedom includes a bit of unionistic “fellowship” that once again seems careful on the one hand not to sport the label “Lutheran,” to say nothing of “LCMS.” The “music” they are “packed with” is led by one Blake Flattley, the head of “1517 Music,” whose bio tells us he is “an accomplished singer-songwriter.” His arrangements of such classical hymns as “Joy to the World,” “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” and others remove them from the genre of hymns, and with their additions of guitar, beat, and crooning singer plant them squarely in the Contemporary Worship/ Praise Band category. Not exactly something Gottesdienst is, uh, wont to endorse.
That in itself ought to give us extreme pause, ought it not? Has not Gottesdienst from our very conception insisted upon the necessary connection between the way we worship and the substance of our worship? To be blunt, if you’re sporting praise bands in your church, count us out. We already know what that means. At the very least, you have misunderstood the important distinction between the sacred and the profane. Sacred ground is the place where Moses takes off his shoes, not the place where he begins to entertain the masses by the crafting of golden calves and the choreography of dances around them. Need I go on?
What concerns us most is the matter of whether this is truly a Lutheran group with a distinctively Lutheran emphasis—as it seems bent on persuading people it is—or whether perhaps it’s crypto-something else.
I did a quick count of about a hundred or so contributors and counted only six wearing collars, and I found it difficult to determine in most cases whether or not the contributor was on the LCMS synodical roster. It’s rather difficult to ascertain in most cases whether the individuals listed as fellows or contributors are even ordained ministers, a fact that strikes me as having at least a hint of anticlericalism latent in the organization. Additionally, many of the prominent contributors are affiliated in some way with the Missouri Synod, but not all. If I had to guess, I’d say most are not listed on the synodical roster, either as pastor or teacher, though some are.
There are many essays, for instance, by the late Gerhard Forde, whose avowed rejection of the vicarious satisfaction is well-known.[5] The executive director himself, and often a speaker at their conferences, is Scott Keith, who earned his doctorate studying under ELCA theologian James Nestingen. Keith’s name is not on the LCMS roster. Chad Bird is a “Scholar in Residence”[6] who “has served as a pastor, professor, and guest lecturer in Old Testament and Hebrew.” Note the past tense. He was in fact a professor at CTS and to boot a former editor at Gottesdienst ! He is no longer either of those things today, but that isn’t because he resigned; he was in fact removed.
Another Fellow is Daniel Emery Price, who has his own website that tells us that he “was heavily involved in worship ministry before moving to Seattle in his early twenties to pursue a career in music. He later moved to Phoenix and returned to leading worship and took a position in youth/collegiate ministry, before moving back to Arkansas, where he helped plant Trinity Church NWA in 2009, and he now serves as our Pastor. Daniel lives in North-West Arkansas with his wife Jessica and daughter Anna.” Trinity Church, it turns out, is “an independent creedal church” he planted in 2009. But now, with the blessing of his elders and congregation—Daniel transitioned to full-time ministry with CHF (a project of 1517) soon after their inaugural Here We Still Stand conference, an annual celebration on the Anniversary of the Reformation.” But evidently he isn’t Lutheran at all.
Yet 1517 is. Or is it? Most of its participants are Lutheran. But why not all? To be fair, we could suppose that the group never meant to pass itself off as Lutheran. But if that is so, then why not be up front about it? Touchstone magazine, for instance, is not Lutheran, as is abundantly clear. Consider Touchstone’s online “about” statement:
Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content, with editors and readers from each of the three great divisions of Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox.
It provides a place where Christians of various backgrounds can speak on the basis of shared belief in the fundamental doctrines of the faith as revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized in the ancient creeds of the Church. . . .[7]
No question there about where they’re coming from. By sharp contrast, 1517 would have to be characterized as coy. To say the least, that is cause for concern. Are they Lutheran or not?
“Senior Distinguished Fellow” John T. Pless certainly is. He’s currently the Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Missions and Director of Field Education at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and very much an active professor on the LCMS roster.
And then there’s “scholar-in-residence” Steven Paulson, whose contribution to Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations is partly to blame for the tempest that arose early this year when the book was published. Concordia Publishing House published it as a product of the Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations and promoted and advertised it as a book intended “for Lutheran pastors, church workers, and seminary students.” Although the general editor John Pless is LCMS, Steven Paulson is an ELCA scholar, which is to say, not in fellowship with the Missouri Synod.[8] What’s his name doing on a book meant to teach theology to LCMS pastors and seminarians?
His essay itself is worth careful scrutiny here, because in fact its ambiguities and antinomian tendencies epitomize the very concern we have with 1517. Because there it is, tucked in neatly among a number of helpful essays and emphases, a little sprinkling of the leaven of 1517.
Paulson’s commentary is on the Third Commandment, with the subtitle, “Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep it Holy.” The article opens with a head-scratcher, as he launches into a diatribe against abuses of the Sabbath requirement by people by whom “rest” (the literal meaning of Sabbath) is “quickly abused; people either use it to be lazy, or they start sneaking in work on the weekend.”[9] Is he saying there are people who actually employ the Third Commandment as a rationalization for laziness? I certainly never heard any such arguments in defense of sloth. More problematic, to say nothing of its being odd, is the evident suggestion here that if a person were surreptitiously to work when he’s supposed to be resting this is somehow abusing the Sabbath requirement. What in the world is he talking about? He doesn’t explain. Instead he claims that “[s]uddenly, religious authorities get ahold of this commandment and turn Sabbath rest into copious requirements.” [10] While it’s true that the rabbis of Jesus’ day had been so fastidious in providing the details about what was supposedly forbidden by this Commandment that they were teaching as doctrines the commandments of men, as Jesus declared,[11] and it’s also true that mankind has a propensity for thinking of religion only in terms of what God requires, it is not true that thinking in terms of legal requirements is in itself a wrong-headed way of thinking. After all, legal requirements are the essence of the Ten Commandments themselves. You know, commandments.
But Paulson seems eager to rid the mind of legal ways of thinking altogether. Perhaps that is what he means by ‘suddenly’. As if to say, just as soon as God says something, there is a tendency for people to think of it in terms of what is required, but that that tendency is itself somehow altogether foreign to what God really wants to say. “Suddenly, religious authorities get ahold of this commandment and turn Sabbath rest into copious requirements.” Is this some kind of rebuke against thinking in terms of what God requires of us?
We note that there is no attempt at all here to expound upon the simple meaning of the Third Commandment provided by the Small Catechism, “We should fear and love God that we may not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.” Is Paulson uncomfortable with should?
While he does insist that “[t]he First Commandment demands our whole heart [and] the Second demands our lips” he continues with an adversative, “Yet to possess your heart and move your lips for right use of His holy name, our Lord starts with the Third Commandment and your ear.”[12] Why the ‘yet’?
He also refers to the Pharisees who “harangued Jesus” to the point at which “Jesus blurted out: ‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’ (Mark 2:27).” [13] The language is catchy and clever enough, but is it appropriate? It seems to paint Jesus as someone who finally could not control himself in the face of His enemies. One is left with the impression that Jesus had, as it were, had it up to here with his adversaries and simply couldn’t take any more of their attacks. He “blurted out”? Such a reading is cringeworthy.
But not to an antinomian spirit that wants to rid the mind of all legal requirements altogether. For Jesus to become notably exasperated is for Him to have lost at least a little control of Himself. This is acceptable if legal requirements in themselves are evil, or at best misleading descriptions of the will of God. But not if the will of God as expressed in His own laws is in the first place a good and not an evil thing.
Speaking of cringe worthiness, it’s no wonder that Paulson had already come under scrutiny for some earlier radical expressions he had made about Jesus in other writings, namely some declarations that Jesus was actually guilty of sin. Statements such as this are at the least not helpful:
[Jesus] wants to take your sins and leave it to no one else; so he sins against the Golden Rule.[14]
Perhaps this kind of language could be excused as a manner of speaking for Paulson, who comes across as a wordsmith whose expressions tend to be witty for attention-grabbing purposes. Nevertheless, there it is, in black and white, and it’s rather hard to defend as it stands. Jesus sinned against the Golden Rule, says Paulson. Taken out of context? Possibly, but careless at best.
The blogosphere and the Twitter world have been ablaze for years with arguments for and against Paulson’s radical declarations ever since the publication of Paulson’s Lutheran Theology in 2011, which planted him fairly firmly in the theological arena with radical theologians Gerhard Forde and the antinomians of an earlier age.[15]
Here’s another Paulson quip:
Jesus could not seem to stop himself once this sin began rolling downhill, not only did he confess our sins as his own (and believed it), but he proceeded to take on every single sin ever committed in the world: “I have committed the sins of the world” (“Ego commisi peccata mundi”).[16]
Perhaps Paulson didn’t mean it quite like that, but it’s hard to defend, to say the least.
In his Third Commandment essay, Paulson’s distaste for religious authorities who add their own rules to the commandment is certainly in keeping with that of Jesus, who reserved His greatest invective for hypocritical shows of holiness. But it’s also true that Jesus made it clear that He by no means meant to abolish the law.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. . . . (St. Matthew 5:17-19).
To be fair, Paulson does, in a nice turn of phrase, declare that “God insists on owning your ears,”[17] and he also stresses the importance of worship. Yet he explains this in a way that seems to leave open the question whether joining the assembly at worship is somewhat optional. One the one hand he says that God has “established the Holy Spirit’s office of preaching so that you may obtain faith (AC V 1),” but on the other he adds, “Faith in what? In Christ’s simple word: ‘I forgive you,’”[18] leaving us to wonder if we can ignore the rest of Christ’s simple words. Paulson does not say that we should, and his exposition stresses the importance of listening to the preacher, but there is a quantitative and arguably qualitative difference between it and Luther’s own stresses in the Large Catechism. There we are enjoined “to be occupied in holy words, works, and life” and “that we occupy ourselves with God’s Word, and exercise ourselves therein” and “daily be engaged upon God’s Word, and carry it in our hearts and upon our lips” and
devote several hours a week for the sake of the young, or at least a day for the sake of the entire multitude, to be concerned about this alone, and especially urge the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and thus direct our whole life and being according to God’s Word. At whatever time, then, this is being observed and practised, there a true holy day is being kept.[19]
Luther hammers home the point with relentless exhortations, while Paulson seems more concerned about describing the activity of the Holy Spirit in true worship, and that true worship is that “in which God sends a preacher to forgive sins.”[20]
Paulson seems eager to emphasize what God has done rather than what we are to do, which in itself could be called a good frame of reference, since, to be sure, the Gospel itself is about what He has done and not what we have done. But that ought not to be discussed to such an extent or in such a way that what we are to do is practically ignored, or at least given hardly any exposition at all, and especially in discussions of the Commandments. But Paulson’s worry is, as he put it, that “Satan constantly seeks to put a different word into your ear than what God has done for us so that we ask ourselves instead: ‘What have you done?’”[21] True enough, but that does not mean we ought never ask ourselves such questions. For they are, after all, questions that lead to contrition and repentance, and provide a pattern for the emendation of life. Yet here is Paulson’s weakness, and, for that matter, the very weakness of 1517. But “weakness” isn’t quite the correct way of putting it. There’s nothing weak about an organization that openly promotes praise bands and, while boldly proclaiming itself given to the spread of the Gospel, at the same time carefully skirting matters having to do with the dignity of the Blessed Sacrament, the office of the ministry, and questions of confessional subscription. This is precisely the problem. Antinomianism does its greatest and most nefarious damage by what it leaves unsaid, in the very context where certain things ought to be said.
I keep going back to that name: “1517.” Why that year as a name for the entire enterprise? That’s when the Reformation began, of course, and that’s why they say they have these “Here We Still Stand” conferences every year around Reformation Day. But why the punctuation mark–the period–after the year 1517? The period at the website even stands out in red ink. Is this a subtle way of saying that it’s the only part of Reformation history they are really interested in? Was what happened in the sixteenth century after the day Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses less significant? What about 1530 when the Augsburg Confession was published? And what about the highly significant controversies that our churches endured after that, until the definitive year 1577 with the Formula of Concord’s reaffirmation of and further elaboration upon the Augsburg Confession the face of those controversies. We recall that the ELCA has declared that the Augsburg Confession is about as far as they’re willing to go, as a not-so-subtle rejection of the 1577 Formula of Concord. Is “1517” a kind of Lutheran Confessions reductionism?[22]
The Missouri Synod stands apart from this kind of thinking by insisting that we believe, teach, and confess in accordance with the Augsburg Confession as it was reaffirmed in 1577 after great controversies threatened to splinter and destroy the Lutheran Church altogether. If you’re going to pick a year to be the name of your ostensibly “Lutheran” organization, why not pick 1580, the year when the entire Book of Concord was published? If “1517.” (with the punctuation mark) can be subtle, so can 1580. Also with the punctuation mark. As in, here’s where we stand.
Like the Crypto-Calvinists of the sixteenth century, these theologians use familiar and favorable terms that our own theologians love to use, and in this way have managed to gain headway and favorable reviews. Our own review of this organization, however, must be counted with the alarming reviews of a growing number of concerned theologians who are not as favorably inclined, especially as one gets into the details.
Of course this doesn’t have the drama as the uncovering of the Exegesis Perspicua did, but it is our hope, to be frank, that it might in the end prove as effective. Because a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
Notes
[1] See F. Bente, “Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books,” in Concordia Triglotta (CPH, 1922), 172–192.
[2] Neo-orthodoxy arose as a reaction against the liberal theology popularized in the nineteenth century and gained its own popularity due to a heavy emphasis on revelation and the Word of God. The leading proponent of neo-orthodoxy was Karl Barth (1886–1968).
[3] Bente, 161. For a full historical account of the antinomistic controversy, see Bente, 161–172.
[5] For an exhaustive treatment see Jack D. Kilcrease, The Doctrine of the Atonement: From Luther to Forde (2018).
[6] Is it legitimate to call someone a Scholar-in-Residence at an online organization that has no physical residence? Not sure.
[7]https://www.touchstonemag.com/nav/about.php
[8] To their credit, the delegates at the 2023 LCMS Convention in Milwaukee set aside the proposed resolution to commend Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations, and we can hope that in the end the book fades from use and from memory, notwithstanding the earlier insistence from LCMS President Matthew Harrison that the reader would be astounded at the content and quality of the volume. Well, count us less than astounded.
[9] Steven Paulson, “The Third Commandment: Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep It Holy,” in Luther’s Large Catechism with Annotations and Contemporary Applications (CPH, 2022), 277 (PDF document pagination)
[10] Ibid.
[11] Matt 15:9
[12] Paulson, 279.
[13] Paulson, 277.
[14] Lutheran Theology (2011), 103.
[15] See, for instance, three blog posts at “Theology like a Child” (www.infanttheology.wordpress.com) that unpack Paulson’s version of Lutheran theology: infanttheology.wordpress.com/2020/04/17; infanttheology.wordpress.com/2020/04/24; infanttheology.wordpress.com/2020/04/28.
[16] Ibid., 105
[17] Paulson, 279.
[18] Ibid.
[19] LC 87-89, Trigl., 605.
[20] Paulson, 279.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Perhaps ironically, there’s also an ELCA outfit that goes by the name of “1517 Media.” https://1517.media/