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May 21, 2007

On the Development of Doctrine

Robert Koons, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas - Austin, recently announced that he will be received into the Roman Catholic Church. This comes just weeks after Francis Beckwith, another Texan philosopher at Baylor, announced his return to the Church. On a number of accounts, Koons' reception is markedly different than Beckwith's: Koons does not serve as the head of an evangelical body and, perhaps more importantly, Koons was happily a life-long Missouri Synod Lutheran.

I would suggest that it is because of his Lutheran heritage that Koons' cursory remarks (and notes) on his imminent reception seem very different than Beckwith's. Koons grapples with the "new perspective" on Paul and what it has done to the classical ("Lutheran") understanding of justification and allows Newman's On the Development of Doctrine (1845) to serve as a foundation to his inquiry of the deposit of faith. Quite rightly, Koons sees the beauty of recent rebuffs (N.T. Wright and others) of the new perspective and realizes that even the classical, Lutheran understanding of Pauline justification may fit into a Roman mold. Much like the LC-MS, Koons' theological imagination is first and foremost ecclesial.

I was baptized through the Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod, and I have been an active member of the church body ever since. As a Lutheran, I've never thought of myself as "Protestant", nor have I ever embraced the kind of extreme sola-scripturism that has been much in evidence in responses to Frank's announcement. I always recognized that the Scriptures are themselves the foundation of, and very much a part of, a divine Tradition. Although I believed that only the Scriptures were infallible, I nonetheless assigned great weight to the 'rule of faith' established by the continuous tradition of teaching by the Church, and as reflected in the writings of the Fathers and the decrees of Councils. Insofar as I accepted a form of 'sola scriptura', it took the form of insisting that all doctrines must have their source in the Scriptures as interpreted by the Church, or in the universal practices and teaching of the early church. This is the only sort of 'sola scriptura' principle that can hold up to logical scrutiny' since the Scriptures themselves provide no definition of the canon and no clear statement of any sola-scriptura principle (both of these can be found only in the Fathers and Councils). Extreme sola-scripturism is, given these facts, self-refuting.

For an excellent defense of classical scholarship on Paul and a hardy salvo against the new perspective, I warmly recommend Stephen Westerholm's Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The "Lutheran" Paul and His Critics.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at May 21, 2007 06:31 PM

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Posted by: Chuck at May 23, 2007 10:12 AM | permalink

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