From this year’s Spring issue of the Concordia Journal, we find an article by Prof. William Miller in which the author, after having referred to the spiritist approach to Scripture as Lutheran “in principle,” states:
The approach of the two [spiritist] authors examined here is one that I believe we, who have our own confessional documents, and therefore a priori commitments, may want to take note of. Though we Lutherans assert that the content of our confessional documents is drawn from the Scriptures and not the other way around, many Lutherans do, I suspect, read the Scriptures through the lens of the Confessions rather than reading the Confessions through the lens of the Scriptures. … we take the exegetical as our starting point rather than the doctrinal.
The author therefore accuses Lutherans of lying about having compared the Symbols with the Scriptures — but he brings forth not a single piece of evidence for this charge. He then argues that, instead of “reading the Scriptures through the lens of the Confessions,” we should “read the Confessions through the lens of the Scriptures” and take as our starting point the doctrinal content of the Confessions, as opposed to the exegetical content, which he judges to be quite inferior.
Now, if it were simply the case that the author was asserting that some of the exegetical arguments in the Lutheran Symbols do not convince him, there would be nothing to object to. But Prof. Miller here makes an unsubstantiated claim against those who, as he himself admits, assert that the content of the Symbols is in complete agreement with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; and he then uses this unsubstantiated claim to pressure them into adopting his own quatenus subscription. And let us hear more about this.
Prof. Miller, I should hope, would object quite forcefully against the assertion that he does not hold a quia subscription to the Book of Concord. But how else should one take his clear implication that the Symbols, in at least some, though certainly minor points, contradict the Scriptures? For he censures those who understand the words of Scripture as the unanimous confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the true visible Church of God on earth, penned by her greatest theologians, explains them.
Concerning this deceptive subscription of Prof. Miller and many others, it must be regarded as no more serious a subscription than the one John Calvin gave to the unaltered Augsburg Confession. In fact, with this Jesuitical mental feat one could even subscribe to the unholy Koran of the Turks and the wicked Talmud of the Jews. Thus, subscription to a confession, “read through the lens of the Scriptures,” is utterly meaningless, assuming that truth is the goal. However, if unionism, i.e., friendship with the world, is the goal of such a subscription, then that has been admirably achieved, though at the cost of the truth.
Altlutheraner 