Braaten Answers

Dear John:
You are right about Lutheran seminary education in general, and to be sure I was a part of that for some decades. But no matter what you think I was never a liberal Protestant from day one. The book I wrote and published, Principles of Lutheran Theology, includes chapters of what I was teaching about "The Scripture Principle," "The Confessional Principle," etc., and they were written in
the late sixties. My mentors were Lutherans of the likes of Schlink, Aulen,Nygren, Wingren, and others who were more or less neo-orthodox. But they were not fundamentalists of the  kind we had in all the synods in American
Lutheranism. You are right, I was critical of the conservatives in charge of the Missouri Synod, the Preusses, for example. But I was supportive of Missouri Synod persons like Arthur Carl Piepkorn. So it was a mixed bag. But no matter what my sins, I never promoted the agenda of the liberal protestants. Their theologians were people like Ogden, Kauffman, Calhoun, even the Niebuhrs. I considered my own teaching to be on the side of the Ancient Creeds, the Lutheran Confessions, and 20th century neo-confessional Lutherans like Schlink and Peter
Brunner. I definitely was never promoting the repristinating of the 19th century versions of Lutheranism in America, which was very divisive, anti-ecumenical,fundamentalistic inerrantists, nationalistic, etc. I saw no future for the synodical divisions that fought against each other. I took the side  of those who
sought new formations of Lutheran unity. But all that history is water over the dam. Now we are in a totally new situation. The seminaries took on board a whole host of new isms, which I struggled against -- the radical feminists, the
new age spiritualism, the relativizing of dogma, the religious pluralists, the gay and lesbian lobbies, etc. The ELCA is now mostly antinomian (which I never was and am not now), so there is no way to say "No" to anything that comes along. So my open letter to the Bishop should not be construed as longing to
return to the reactionary theologies of 19th century Lutheranism, whether German,Norwegian, Swedish, or Danish or whatever.
I look for allies in all the denominations who are evangelical (without being protestant), catholic (without being Roman), and orthodox (without being Russian or Greek). I think also that is the direction in which I want to see world
Lutheranism going. But it is not. And that is what the struggle is all about,not only in America but around the world. If you have the slighteest clue about what I have been doing the past fifteen years with and at the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, you will know a little of what I am trying to
say. We are not fundamentalists, nor are we liberal protestants. There is a huge ecumenical option that draws people from all denominations into what we
are doiing.

With best wishes,
Carl E. Braaten