Theo 351 - Reading Reflection 2 - Kärkkäinen - Chapter 4

This post will continue commenting on chapter 4 of Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective.

 

As mentioned in my previous post, in chapter four of the above mentioned book Kärkkäinen surveys the theology of the Holy Spirit in prominent Christian traditions. When it comes to the section on “the Lutheran tradition” I was surprised that Kärkkäinen examines only Luther, rather than starting with the Lutheran Confessions. Granted, Kärkkäinen does write that “the term ‘Lutheran’ . . . can denote either Martin Luther’s theology as it is expressed in his own writings, or the theology/theologies of Lutheran confessions and subsequent Lutheran formulations.”[1] Additionally, Kärkkäinen comes from Finland where the greater Lutheran Confessions as found in the Book of Concord were not formally adopted. Perhaps this is why he does not focus on the Confessional documents.[2]

 

I think it is fair to say that for most Lutherans the Reformation-era documents that make up the Book of Concord are, at the very least, foundational for understanding the theology of the Lutheran Church. In the case of confessional Lutherans, the Book of Concord is accepted in its entirety as a correct exposition of the Holy Scriptures and as the doctrinal norm for the Church of the Augustana. It is the Confessions that define Lutheran belief, not any one individual theologian, not even the greater corpus of the writings of Dr. Luther.

 

In a chapter whose purpose it was to survey the theology of different church traditions, it would have been most appropriate to have surveyed the confessional documents of each tradition, where such documents exist. Kärkkäinen does this with Roman Catholicism, citing the documents of Vatican II, but not with Lutheranism. It would have been nice if Kärkkäinen had at the very least started his survey of Lutheran pneumatology with an examination of the Book of Concord.

 

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[1] Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 85.

[2] In all fairness, in the examination of Luther's theology Kärkkäinen does quote from the Small and Large Catechisms (81, 84), both of which are included in the Book of Concord, and references "later confessional writings under the leadership of Philipp Melanchthon" (85); however, the Confessions are not the focus or primary source of Kärkkäinen's study.