One Layman with Scripture

At the Leipzig debate, Luther said, "One layman with Scripture is worthier of belief than pope and council without." The implications of that statement went far beyond papism, and open up some territory that is very uncomfortable for a good many Lutheran pastors. There is no special revelation to pastors; they have no monopoly on the truth of the Gospel, nor even on being able to proclaim and explain it.

About five years ago, a pastor told me to "submit and shut up" in a dispute about Scripture and the Confessions because he was a pastor and I was not. He was propagating the theory once taught by J.A.A. Grabau (of whom he, and I until very shortly before then, had never heard) that the Holy Gospel is operative as a means of grace through which the Holy Spirit works only when proclaimed by an ordained pastor. A layman reading the Bible at home, he said, received no grace thereby; a layman telling his neighbor the Gospel conveyed no grace thereby. The commission given to Christians to teach the Gospel to all nations was given only to pastors; it was the role of laymen, he said, to pray and to support pastors with their offerings. This was a formula I have heard applied to the Roman church--"pay, pray and obey"--but I had never dreamed that it was something that would be thought, let alone spoken, by a Lutheran pastor.

Through the years following, I have seen the names of several professors mentioned as supporting these teachings--David Scaer and Arthur Just of Ft. Wayne, Norman Nagel of St. Louis. However, I know Dr. Nagel well enough to know he teaches no such thing, and I have an email in which Dr. Scaer tells me specifically that he teaches no such thing; I have no reason to doubt that eminent scholar's word. Dr. Just did present a symposium paper on one occasion which, if read in the most expansive possible manner, might be taken to support such a thing; however, any reasonable reading of his paper stops well short of that position.

The simplest of all possible logic ought to discredit such a position in a heartbeat. We are Lutherans. Luther himself made clear repeatedly that the Word is the Word, whether spoken or read, whether spoken by a pastor or by a layman. But the proponents of this idea respond, "We are not the cult of Luther but the church of the Confessions." Very well. Who wrote the Confessions? The Augsburg Confession, its Apology, and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope were written by Philipp Melanchthon--a layman. So on the authority of the writings of a layman, pastors say only the pronouncements of pastors matter. The contradiction is so obvious as to be painful.

What is the exclusive property of the ministry is authority over preaching in their congregations. There is no unique quality of pastors that enables them to preach the Word, without which the Holy Spirit is not in the Word. Luther, on one occasion, expressed the wish that Melanchthon would preach. At Luther's funeral, Melanchthon did preach, at a service conducted by Bugenhagen (who also preached). If Melanchthon had preached as Luther wished, and when he did preach at Luther's funeral, it would have been, and was, under the authority and at the request of a pastor.

When anyone proclaims the Gospel to anyone else, the Holy Spirit is present and, when and where He wills, works grace as set forth in AC V. That is true whether it is the pastor in his pulpit, a father with his family, a teacher with her pupils or a hairdresser with her customer. When we read the Scripture, He is present and works grace when and where He wills. While it is quite true that, as Dr. Nagel has said, "you cannot gift yourself," when you are reading Scripture, you are not gifting yourself. You are receiving the gift for the ages given by the Holy Spirit through Moses, the Prophets, the Evangelists and the Apostles.

There are not two classes of Christians. There are Christians. Some have been given the office of ministry, to be the carers for the souls of the congregation that has called them. That includes remaining responsible for all preaching and teaching done in that congregation, but not necessarily doing all of it. St. Paul tells St. Timothy to "give attention" to preaching, the reading of the Word, etc., but he does not write "Let no one else" do it.

There are attacks on the ministry in today's church. There are those who would make the primary carers for souls the "lay leaders" in the congregation, with the pastor really pastoring only those "lay leaders." They would make the primary proclamation of the Gospel the small groups, led by "lay leaders", and not the congregation itself. These are not issues of "usurpation" of the office by laymen, but of abdication of the office by pastors. It is entirely proper for a church to have auxiliary offices that assist the pastor (see Walther, Church and Ministry, Thesis VIII); it is not proper to turn the ministry into an episcopate with the presbyteral duties delegated to laymen.

But those who would turn our ministry into a Roman priesthood are dead wrong.