I was privileged to know a new Christian as he stepped into the faith and into the church of God. Sadly, as he was taught by more academically-minded individuals from my church body, there was a disconnect between the terms he heard them using and the terms he read in his Bible. There was miscommunication, because the teachers used academic terms with intended meanings that were different from what the plain sense was that my friend saw for where those terms appeared in Scripture. This led him to misinterpret the teaching, and then to reject the church body I was in and switch to another denomination entirely.
The below is the result of my conversations with him. It is my attempt at confessing the faith for the new Christian in today’s audience: the substance that I inherit from Lutheran teachers, recast to avoid man-made academic terminology.
The goal is not to avoid being technical with language, but rather to just use language the way Scripture uses it, as faithfully as possible. In today’s culture especially, God’s Word is often the only common ground left for a shared standard of terminology among Christians.
Though this writing may sound strange to some Lutheran ears due to the deviation from our common terminology, I asked Lutheran pastor Will Weedon to review it. He kindly did so and responded as follows (with permission to share):
“Wow. Nothing to add but my amen to your fine work here, Bryan. Enjoyed the reading.”
(You can download the full pdf here,)