BOOK REVIEW: James Alan Waddell.  The Struggle to Reclaim the Liturgy in the Lutheran Church: Adiaphora in Historical, Theological, and Practical Perspective.  Lewiston, N.Y.:  Edwin Mellen Press, 2005.  Hardback.  415 pages.  $129.95. 

I grew up during the worship wars.  The church of my youth was low-church liturgical, meaning we used The Lutheran Hymnal every Sunday.  At Valparaiso University I came to love high-church forms, and after college I was exposed to—and opposed—contemporary praise and worship services in Lutheran churches.  Yet I have found myself ill at ease as a combatant in these wars, because I find it difficult to ally with either side.  One side quotes FC X.9 to prove that the structure of a worship service is an adiaphoron, while the other side argues that the catholicity of the church demands the use of historical liturgies.  James Alan Waddell’s The Struggle to Reclaim the Liturgy in the Lutheran Church has helped me understand my hesitance to join either side, but more importantly, it offers a roadmap for peace in our worship wars.  Waddell points us back to the Lutheran Confessions so we talk together from a common point of reference and break through the polarization.

The method and the structure of Waddell’s argument are elegant in their simplicity.  Waddell turns to the Confessions to understand what they mean when they talk about catholicity, freedom, unity, and adiaphora.  He bolsters his study with frequent reference to tertiary authorities such as Luther, Melanchthon, and Chemnitz to spell out how they understood particular phrases in their non-confessional works (what he calls the historic confessional witness).  The result is a rather striking set of claims that point toward a way forward in our current debates.

Waddell begins by arguing that the Reformers define the catholicity of the church not in terms of historical continuity or ritual uniformity, but rather “in terms of evangelical doctrine” (26).  Consequently, the Reformers did not try to resolve the tension between liturgical freedom and order.  “It is when we seek to resolve the tension between order and freedom that we get ourselves into deep trouble with respect to our theology and practice of adiaphora in liturgy” (72).  Waddell next turns to the confessional treatment of adiaphora, concluding, “The church’s teaching on adiaphora demands that we take seriously our theology of the means of grace and how this relates to liturgy.  Yet, the nature of adiaphora equally demands that we recognize humanly instituted liturgical rites, ceremonies and traditions as that which is neither commanded nor forbidden by God, as the confessional witness puts it” (99).  Waddell then reconstructs a Lutheran hermeneutic of confession for the liturgy, in which normative and non-normative elements are carefully distinguished.  This chapter (ch. 4) is particularly insightful, bringing clarity to the issues facing the church today.  It sets the stage for chapter 5, which relates the “ongoing efforts of the [Reformation era evangelical Lutheran] church to achieve concord in its liturgical practices, with the recognition that conformity in outward ceremonies constitutes neither the catholicity nor the orthodoxy of the church” (149).

In the second half of the book, Waddell applies his insights to our contemporary debates.  Along the way, he offers some provocative claims.  For example, he argues that the “use of the lex orandi lex credendi principle today in the Lutheran Church must be recognized for what it is, a theological innovation that has no grounding in the hard data of the sources of Lutheran tradition” (182).  After challenging the representatives of liturgical theology who have had a profound influence in the Missouri Synod, Waddell elucidates a Lutheran hermeneutic of liturgy, arguing that

the confusion in the current discourse on liturgy in part derives from an association of the church’s hermeneutic of liturgy too closely with its hermeneutic of scripture.  By making an implicit hermeneutic of liturgy to parallel the church’s hermeneutic of scripture—that is, by holding the liturgy to be its own formal principle just as scripture is its own formal principle—the logical inference is that liturgy is given by God just as scripture is given by God.  But this is a thoroughly flawed inference, however understandable the latent confusion may be.  Liturgy is not its own formal principle. Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions constitute the formal principle of liturgy and this distinction must be made simply and clearly.  (207-208)

Waddell then lays out a hermeneutic of liturgy in which form serves the function of proclaiming the forgiveness of sins which Christ won on the cross.  This chapter offers a good understanding of what properly Lutheran worship will look like without making the form itself normative in any way.

Waddell’s argument is in one sense highly dissatisfying and in another sense highly liberating.  On the one hand, Waddell simply refuses to resolve the tension between freedom and order.  He will not lay down a rule regarding the form of the liturgy in the Lutheran church, but neither does he simply say that everything goes.  In this respect, he follows the Reformers, as his careful and thorough exegesis of the confessions shows.  On the other hand, he contends that congregations and pastors may make beneficial use of the freedom we have as Christians in their use of the liturgy.  The use or non-use of specific ceremonies (i.e., the Eucharistic prayer, genuflection, chanting of portions of the liturgy, etc.) is left to pastor and people in each location, who are to reach their decisions with due consideration of the weak in faith in their midst and the advantages of liturgical uniformity among churches.

Yet it is precisely because Waddel sides with the Lutheran Confessions rather than either faction in today’s debate that his book is of lasting value.  The spade work he has done in the confessions and the tertiary authorities is astounding, and the hermeneutic of liturgy that he constructs on the basis of the confessional texts opens the way for rich insights into the relationship between form and Gospel in Lutheran worship services.  The low-church liturgical church of my youth need not compete with the high-church liturgical forms I came to treasure at Valpo, and the two of them can even coexist with a properly Lutheran liturgy with a contemporary style.

The Struggle to Reclaim the Liturgy in the Lutheran Church is not always easy going, in part because of Waddell’s rather obtuse style.  Nevertheless, the book repays careful reading, and it offers a roadmap for peace in the worship wars.  Most of all, it offers freedom to pastors and congregations suffering under the burden of liturgical legalism, and it offers order to pastors and congregations suffering under liturgical license.

David Loy is the pastor of Zion Lutheran Church in Bolivar, Missouri.