The Means of the Spirit: The Ministry of the Spirit through Holy Things

Transcript (edited for readability).

I want to talk over the next hour and a half or so about the means of the Holy Spirit, or the ministry of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit through holy things. And in many ways, this touches on what is the main issue at stake in the controversy, if you like, all the tension between the orthodox church and Pentecostalism.

Now let me start with two pictures. Wi-Fi. Wonderful. I'm not sure, is Wi-Fi actually available here in this room? Okay. Now, I've got my computer with me, and I need to stay connected to my wife, who is back in Wheaton, outside Chicago, and she's about to go on a two-week journey. And the way I stay connected with her is through the internet via Wi-Fi. But there's a problem, as you know, with electronic communication like this. You can be connected. I can log into Wi-Fi here. I can be connected and yet not connect. And that's a part of the problem of our age. And even with Facebook, really. You're connected with the person, but you don't really connect with them. But what interests me is that Wi-Fi is a wonderful means by which radio waves are the means for communication between people at a long distance from each other, or close to each other.

Take another example. Most of you have cell phones, and probably most of you have cell phones in your pockets. Okay? Now, what I'd like to be able to do is to be able to close my eyes and speak to my wife where she is. But that's not possible. However, I can speak to her via a cell phone. Now, if I have a cell phone, she has a cell phone, then we can connect with each other by means of radio waves, which are just as physical as this is physical. That's part of our physical creation. Now, God chooses to interact with us through physical means. In the order of creation, but supremely in the order of redemption, the church. He put us in the physical world, and he made us physical beings so that he could interact with us physically. Now, that's the basic teaching that I want to unpack for you this part of the afternoon.

What's the present problem, as I see it, in the church? The first thing is that out there in our societies, both here in North America and Australia, there's an immense interest in spirituality. I don't know whether you've noticed it. Everybody talks about spirituality, and particularly young people are supremely interested in spirituality. Now, you think, what a wonderful opportunity for the church. Yet at the same time, most people who are interested in spirituality have nothing but contempt for what they call the institutional church. That's the first thing.

Secondly, we have an obsession in our Western societies, like North America and Australia, with the body beautiful. We have an obsession with health, dress, eating, drinking, physical health, exercise, and we have this obsession with the body, and yet at the same time, and almost cheek by jowl, we have a contempt for the body. It shows itself with stuff like self-harm, tattooing, but it goes right across the spectrum. We have contempt for the body, and ourselves as bodies. That's a big, big problem. Psychologists would say that most young people feel very unhappy about their bodies, not just girls, but increasingly so, boys even. We have a contempt for the body, and with that, then we have a contempt for physical things. Despite the fact that we live in a consumer society, which majors, focuses on physical things. A strange paradox.

Now, in our society, most people define spiritual as that which is not material. So the spiritual is what is not physical, not material. So spiritual reality is quite apart from physical reality. The two never meet. Now, this double contempt, the contempt for the church, the contempt for the body, contempt for physical things, leads to a rejection of all the main parts of Christian doctrine by many young people, and older people, even going right up to my age. We have a new Gnosticism, which says that the only thing that matters is consciousness. The body is bad. People in our society reject the creation of the physical world by God; it just evolved accidentally. They reject the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the womb of Mary, by the Virgin Mary. They reject his physical miracles. His spiritual teaching, yes, Jesus the guru, that's cool, but Jesus the one who works physical miracles, including miracles of healing and resuscitation of people who are dead, that's out. No time for exorcism of demon-possessed people. They reject his physical resurrection and ascension. Sure, he died physically, but he didn't really rise from the dead physically. He didn't ascend physically into heaven. They reject his physical presence in the Lord's Supper, that he actually gives us his body and blood, with the bread and wine. And above all, they reject the church, you're like, as his body here on earth, not the idea of the church, but the actual church, which means congregations, located in particular places, your particular congregation, that your congregation, that funny institution, is the body of Christ in that particular place. And most of all, they reject the physical resurrection of the body. Yeah, everybody's into immortality, that when you die, your soul leaves your body and floats off up into, like the balloons that they now release in funeral services, or the doves that go up into heaven, but that we look for and that we hope for, the resurrection of the body, now that is just nonsense for our age.

And so we have a generation that is hungry for genuine spirituality, and this is real. They have a hunger for spirituality. And yet they regard orthodox Christian teaching as unspiritual, as crude and physical. What they're interested in is disembodied, discarnate spiritual experience, the kind of experience that you have when you take drugs, except drugs still keep you in your body, but they give the illusion that you take a trip outside of your body to some other place. That's what people are looking for, some disembodied spiritual experience, which takes you out of your body into another realm, another place. The notion that we live spiritually in our physical lives here on earth is alien to almost all people in our society.

Now this is carried over into the church. And it leads to confusion about the role of the Holy Spirit in the divine service. So, for example, I've heard it said again and again, people take the words of Jesus to the woman at the well in Samaria, where Jesus says the true worship of the Father, those who worship the Father worship the Father in what? In spirit and in truth. Now, the way most people hear that: okay, you worship the Father, you forget about the Father, Father just means God, no, generic God, but your worship in the spirit means non-physically. So non-material. You worship the Father non-materially, and truth means authentically, which means inwardly. Okay, then what's meant by spirit, worshiping God the Father in spirit and in truth? By the way, when Jesus says those who worship the Father rightly worship the Father in spirit and in truth, he was speaking about not the human spirit, but the Holy Spirit. And who is the truth? Jesus and his word. So true worship of God the Father is worship led by the Holy Spirit, and by Jesus and his word.

Or, then you get a kind of worship which emphasizes that we are to serve God spiritually. Paul talks about a new kind of service that we have by the Spirit of God. He also talks about the ministry of the Spirit in the new covenant. And Peter talks about us offering spiritual sacrifices to God the Father through Jesus Christ. Okay, now the question that I want to deal with is, what is meant by spirit? And how does the Spirit work in worship?

First of all, one of the biggest problems we have is that we quite confuse God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit, with our human spirits. So we have this common antithesis between the body as a material thing. So you have, this is my body, and somehow my spirit is the non-physical part of me. You with me? So my spirit, my soul, is the non-physical part of me. Now, if there's one thing modern science has shown us, it's that you can't separate the mind from the body and the body from the mind. The mind is just as physical as my fingers are physical, in a different way, but that's still physical, in the stricter sense of the word. But people look at it this way and say, so body is physical, mind or spirit is non-material, and spirit then can refer to one of four things quite commonly, in the history of the West, and in the churches over the last 500 years.

Some people identify the human spirit with your human intellect. So worshiping God in spirit means worshiping him with your understanding, your mind, and the important thing is getting your thinking straight. So right thinking, right worship. Or, some, rejecting that, identify the spirit with the human mind, not just the intellect, but my self-consciousness. So my spirit is my awareness of myself as a unique human being. Or, most commonly here in North America, as a result of the Methodist movement, spirit is connected with your heart, your feeling. So spiritual worship means worshiping God authentically in an emotional way, with emotional involvement. Or, more recently, oh, it's not quite so recently, it's quite old, the human spirit is identified with my human soul, my human self, and spiritual worship means personal intimacy with Jesus or with God the Father.

Now, behind all these things, you have the modern teaching of salvation as intimacy with God, by spiritual intimacy with God, that is not mediated in any physical, bodily way. So immediate intimacy. So if I could use an analogy, what people want is what I'd like to have with my wife right now, that I could just tune into her, without using Wi-Fi and my computer, or by means of my cell phone. Immediate intimacy. And in fact, a lot of people look for that in personal relationships and in marriage, somehow some magic kind of feeling of closeness, intimacy, losing yourself in another person. You with me? Do you understand what I'm saying? That's what people want from God, with nothing physical in between. Now, all of you who are married know that the only form of intimacy that you can have with your spouse is basically physical. There is no such thing as that kind of intimacy, unmediated, immediate intimacy. Now, you understand how I'm using the term mediated and immediate, meaning no physical means are used.

I'll skip the next section and go on to what's meant by the Spirit, and spiritual, in the Bible. First of all, in most cases, when the Bible talks about the Spirit, it doesn't talk about the human spirit, but God's Spirit, the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is not a thing, but a person, the third person of the Holy Trinity. So the Spirit is a person, as you and I and Jesus and the Father are people. And spiritual means then anything that has to do with the Holy Spirit, anything that's given or created by the Holy Spirit. So just taking that simple sense, spiritual worship means worship that is empowered by, inspired by the Holy Spirit. That's spiritual worship. It has to do with the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit works through physical means, and it began right at the beginning of creation. How did God create the world? He created the world by means of his Word and the Spirit. Remember, the Spirit was hovering over the face of the deep, and God spoke, and his Word and his Spirit then created, ordered the world. So God's Spirit was at work in creation and continues to work in creation. The Bible teaches that plants and animals, anything that lives, is given life by means of God's Spirit. The life-giving Spirit. If God withdraws his Spirit, then plants and animals cease to exist. They die. Psalm 104. Here we go.

Now that applies to within the church and in the order of redemption. The Holy Spirit works with physical people, through physical things. Can I emphasize the physical side there? So let me just take two cases, two quotations, one from the great early church father, Ignatius of Antioch, who has this to say in his letter to the Christians at Ephesus. He says, those who are of the flesh cannot do spiritual things, nor can those who have the Spirit do the things of the flesh, just as faith cannot do the deeds of unbelief, nor unbelief do the deeds of faith. For even what you do in the flesh is spiritual. For you do everything in Christ. Everything that you do in the flesh, that means with your human body, is spiritual, if it is done by faith in Christ. So everything that we Christians say, do, is spiritual, because of our union with Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit through our faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit, who empowers us to do spiritual work.

This is what Luther has to say. To serve Christ is an entirely spiritual thing, not in the way of which monks speak of something being spiritual, which takes place only in the heart, that's in terms of feeling, emotion, but it is a spiritual service which originates with the Spirit. For whoever speaks the words of the Spirit is said to preach, teach, and speak spiritually. So what's spiritual is that which originates from the Holy Spirit, it has to do with the Holy Spirit. I'm laboring a bit because this is an enormous area of confusion.

Or Melanchthon, quite simply, in the Apology, says spiritual refers to the work of the Holy Spirit within us. So spiritual work is the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The spiritual offerings that we present are the offerings that are produced by the Holy Spirit. Speaking spiritually means speaking by the power, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God. So spiritual has to do with the Holy Spirit. Okay, can I pause there? I've labored it a bit because this is an area of great confusion out in the world and in the church at the moment. Any comments or questions? Yes please.

Question: using the idea that everything we do in Christ is spiritual, from the Ignatius quote, I believe it, I'm not criticizing that. So as I think about the reception of the Lord's Supper, we do a physical thing, yes, Christ is present, we believe that. Is it because, as we partake of it in faith, and Christ is there, we're getting not only Jesus, but we're also getting the Spirit? And then, to go on with the physical part, is that when Paul talks about when you unite yourself with a prostitute, and if you are with Christ, in Christ, and then you're doing that, then you're bringing in something you shouldn't be? I mean, so there's a physical and a spiritual connection in everything you do in Christ, including sex.

Including sex, and then you get the prostitute. Yes, spot on. And I want to come to the holy communion just a bit later in this session and the importance of this.

Okay, now, what's in the Bible: there's a very close connection between Word and Spirit. God's Word, God's Spirit, are inseparable from each other. You can distinguish them, but you can't separate them. I don't know whether you realize that the word spirit in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin means breath. It can be wind, but it means basically breath. So my spirit is my breath. The breath that I have, my breathing, which I'm using now to speak to you. So my speaking, my words, and my breath are inseparable from each other. They correlate. Human words, human breath. Scientists would say that speaking is a form of breathing. It's using your breath in a particular way to produce sound waves so that you can communicate to other people. Now, what's the physical means that takes my ideas from my head into your head? It's my breath, which creates words that reach you and, if you like, touch you. So what I'm doing, if you want a picture, is that when I'm speaking, I'm using my breath as the means to touch you, to communicate with you.

Now, okay, that applies for human beings. Now, what's the difference between these two things? Let's say I, as a person, go and visit a person who's dying of cancer, visit a sick person in hospital. And as part of the visit, I say, get well. Get well. Okay? Now, if Jesus comes, visits that person, and says, get well, what happens? But if I say, get well, nothing happens, unless Jesus says it through me. The same words, but what's the difference? It's, yes, his authority and his power, but the power is evident in his Word. His words are powerful and effectual; they do what they say, because they are filled, inspired, with his Holy Spirit. It's that Jesus, when he says, get well, uses his words to give his life-giving Spirit, his healing Spirit, to a person who is sick and unwell. So I tell the kids to do the dishes; they don't do the dishes. But when Jesus speaks, the world is created, people who are sick are healed, demons are driven out, et cetera.

Now, how does God normally give human beings his Spirit? It's through his Word. So God speaks his Spirit into human beings. So the Old Testament refers to the Holy Spirit as the one who speaks in and through the prophets. So the prophets are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Remember the Nicene Creed, who spoke by the prophets, that's the Spirit, who speaks by the prophets. The Holy Spirit speaks in and through prophets and brings the Holy Spirit to the people that they're speaking to. The Spirit comes through the Word. And Jesus gives his Spirit to people through his words. Remember the chapter on the Lord's Supper, Jesus, the bread of life, culminates in the wonderful words of Jesus, where he says, my words are what? Spirit and life. If you want to paraphrase that: my words give the Holy Spirit to you. And by giving the Holy Spirit to you, they give life to you. So Jesus gives his Spirit, his life-giving Spirit, to people, to human beings, through his word. That's his normal means by which he gives the Holy Spirit. And hence Peter, at the end of that chapter, says, Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life. The only one who has words that give the Holy Spirit, and through the Holy Spirit gives eternal life to human beings, is Jesus.

And Jesus doesn't just give his Holy Spirit to people that he directly speaks his word to, but he gives his Holy Spirit to people through other people who speak his word. So whenever you preach, what are you doing? If you preach the word of God rightly, law and gospel, what are you giving to your people when you're speaking the word of God, teaching the word of God, preaching the word of God, absolving people, blessing people, baptizing people? You're speaking the word of God, you are giving the Spirit. You're giving the Holy Spirit through physical means, the means of physical words. Not ideas, not written words, but through the physical act of speaking.

Now, all of you know, since you are good members of the Missouri Synod and you're good orthodox Christians, that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God. Now, I don't know whether you've ever asked the question, well, what does that mean, that the words in the Bible are inspired by the Holy Spirit? It means quite simply, since they are inspired by the Holy Spirit, they inspire people with the Holy Spirit. With me? Inspire means to breathe in. So the Holy Spirit is breathed in and breathed out in the words of Jesus. And they inspire people with the Holy Spirit. So if you preach the word of God from the inspired, inerrant Scriptures, you inspire people with the Holy Spirit. You with me? So, to preach the inspired word means to preach an inspiring sermon, if I can put it that way. Not in the normal sense of an interesting or engaging sermon, but a sermon that breathes the Spirit into people.

One of the most remarkable stories in the New Testament is the meeting of the risen Lord Jesus with his disciples on Easter eve. He's died, he's risen; Easter eve, he appears to his disciples, and this is what Jesus says to them. This is utterly astonishing. He says, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so am I sending you. And when he said this, or as he said this, he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. Now, how does Jesus give the Holy Spirit to his disciples, Easter Sunday evening? He breathes the Spirit on them and in them, and he does it by saying the words, receive the Holy Spirit. So, when he says, receive the Holy Spirit, he's breathing out, he isn't just breathing out those words, but he's breathing the Holy Spirit into their hearts, into their souls. Notice that this is a Trinitarian enactment. The Father sends Jesus, Jesus sends the disciples to work with him, the twelve apostles, and he takes the Spirit which he receives from the Father, and he gives that Spirit to his disciples so that they can work together with him.

Now, one of the most misleading teachings that is quite current in the church comes from the idea of being filled with the Spirit, a picture which can be mistaken. Okay, now, water. Okay, I can fill this glass, and it means that the glass can have a little bit of water, more water, or it can be filled with water. Now, people take that picture, and they have the idea that you can receive parts of the Spirit. So it can be quarter-filled with the Spirit, or half-filled with the Spirit, or three-quarter-filled with the Spirit. And if I am a super-duper Christian, then I am totally filled with the Spirit. Now, that's the case with water because it's a physical thing. But it's not the case with the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit is a person. If I engage with any one of you, I don't engage with half of you, or three-quarters of you, but I engage with the whole of you.

Listen to what Jesus has to say about the connection between the words of God, speaking the words of God, the Spirit of God, and the whole notion that we receive a measure of the Spirit. Measure means a portion, so a part of the Spirit. This is what Jesus says. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he — now, that can be taken in two ways, I'll come to that — for he gives the Spirit without measure. Circle that. He gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Note the double reference here to "he gives." Who is the one that gives the Spirit without measure? It's God the Father, and Jesus gives the Spirit without measure. Now notice the chain of giving. God gives the Spirit to Jesus. Jesus gives the Spirit to his disciples. And this is not partial, but it's without measure. It's the full measure of the Holy Spirit. The person who is sent here is Jesus. His mission is to speak the words of God, and by speaking the words of God, Jesus gives to his disciples the Spirit of God. And by giving people his Holy Spirit, Jesus gives all God's heavenly blessings to his disciples here on earth. There's no partial giving. Despite the fact that all of us receive different gifts, Jesus, or God the Father, gives the Spirit fully, Jesus gives the Spirit fully, and yet all of us receive different charismata according to our different giftings, even though we all receive the Spirit fully. You see, there's a difference between — no, I better not bring this up because it complicates things. Notice the chain of bestowal here, from the Father, through the Son, to the disciples.

Now, if there's one thing that Luther hammered over and over again, it's the fact that Jesus normally gives his Holy Spirit through the Word. So just taking one example: God has ordered it so that the Holy Spirit ordinarily comes through the Word. Now, the word ordinarily means that God can give his Spirit to people apart from the Word, if he chooses to do so, but that's not his normal way of doing it. And we can't look for and receive the Holy Spirit apart from the Word. That's God's ordered way of giving it. So the Spirit is at work everywhere in creation, but you can't receive the Holy Spirit, and can't be sure it's the Holy Spirit, unless you receive it in and through the words of Jesus.

Hence, we have a strong stress in our Lutheran confessions on the mediation of the Spirit through God's Word, both in the Augsburg Confession and in the Formula of Concord. I'll just summarize it here. So the Word is said to be the instrument of the Spirit. It's the means of the Spirit. The spoken word and administered sacraments are instruments of the Holy Spirit. Instrument means that they are used as things by which God gives us his Holy Spirit. Preaching and hearing the Word are the ministry or the organ of the Spirit. They are its instruments, its medium. On the negative side, our Lutheran confessions reject the teaching that the Spirit is given and received immediately without means, without media, without any created medium or instrument. They reject the teaching that the Holy Spirit is given immediately with no means.

Now, all of you have been brought up on this, and I think you know it, but it needs to be reemphasized, and the consequences need to be drawn from it. Since God gives his Holy Spirit through the Word, the Word is the most holy of all holy things and makes everything else holy. So God gives his Holy Spirit through his Word, his Spirit makes the Word most holy, and everything else is made holy by the Spirit of God through the word of God. We receive the Holy Spirit through the holy things that are instituted by God through his Word.

Now, you most commonly, and modern Lutherans very commonly, talk about the means of grace. And it's not wrong to talk about the means of grace, but I don't know whether you realize that it doesn't clearly communicate to people out there. Old Lutherans, in fact, never used to speak about the means of grace. They would speak about the means of the Spirit or the means of salvation. And that's far better. You know what the means of grace are, it's word and sacrament. I prefer to speak about them, these are the holy things. They are the means by which the Spirit's given, the means by which we receive salvation from God the Father.

But don't get me wrong. The Spirit can work anywhere where he chooses to work, with any human being. The Spirit blows where he wills. The problem is that you don't know whether it's the Holy Spirit who's at work or not. You can only be certain that the Holy Spirit is at work if the Spirit comes and is connected with the word of God. You can only be sure that you receive the Holy Spirit if you look for the Spirit at the place where God is bound to give the Spirit, which is the means of the Spirit, the word of God, whether it's proclaimed or enacted. Now, I'm giving you a sort of Lutheranism 101 here, I think, but it needs to be re-emphasized.

Now, most of that is commonly known by us as Lutherans, but one thing that we forget is the importance of faith in this. So the Spirit is given through the Word to disciples, that's the giving side, but what about the other side? Always where you have giving, you have receiving as well. Okay? So if the Spirit is given freely, fully, by Jesus, to everyone who's a Christian, who receives the Spirit, and how? It's received in and through faith. Faith is the empty hands that receive the gift of the Spirit. So, for example, you have this report from Peter on the conversion of Cornelius in Acts chapter 11: God gave the same gift to the Gentiles, the same gift of the Holy Spirit, to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Holy Spirit comes to those who believe in Jesus. Or take Paul's teaching in Galatians 3, verse 14: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through what? Through faith. Giving the Spirit through the Word, we receive the Spirit through faith that is the Word.

Now the blessing of Abraham is the promised inheritance that God promised to Abraham, that he gives to us, and that is now the gift of the Holy Spirit. So when God said to Abraham, I will bless you and make you a blessing, in and through your seed all the families of the world will be blessed, he was promising the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's what we have inherited from Abraham. That's the gift that we receive as heirs of Abraham. The Spirit is received through faith in God's promise and its fulfillment in Christ. So the Holy Spirit is given and received wherever the word of God, the gospel, is proclaimed. Now this is stressed supremely in the Augsburg Confession and in the Apology. So Augsburg Confession 5 says through faith the Holy Spirit is received. The Apology: faith alone justifies because we receive the forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit through faith alone. And look at Melanchthon's tart criticism in the Apology, he says, nowhere can our opponents show or say how the Holy Spirit is given. That's the basic question that the Pentecostal movement has raised in the church, revived in the church: how do we receive the Spirit? And we need to add, not only how, but where do we receive the Spirit? How do we receive the Spirit? Through the word of God. How do we receive it? Through faith in the word of God. Where do we receive it? I'll have more to say of that shortly.

Now, what does this mean? Good Lutherans, okay, this is the way it is. Now, what does it mean? What are the practical liturgical implications of all that I've been speaking to you about? Okay, we are called to serve God in the divine service. Now, we are to serve God spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit. What does it mean in practical terms, that we are to offer God spiritual service in the divine service? It means quite simply that everything we do must be done according to the word of God, and by faith in God's Word. If we don't enact the word of God, or what we do is inconsistent with the word of God, the worship may be inspiring, but it doesn't deliver the Holy Spirit to people. Can I say that again? If we perform our worship in a way that doesn't enact the word of God, or is not consistent with the word of God, the worship may be very interesting, inspiring, but it doesn't deliver the Spirit of God to people. On the other hand, if people don't receive it in faith, if they don't listen to and hear the proclamation and enactment of the gospel, they won't receive the Spirit of God. The Spirit is given through the Word and it's received through faith in Jesus Christ.

So Luther summarizes this and he says, therefore everything that we do, we do with the word of God. We teach with the Word, we consecrate the Lord's Supper with the Word, we bind and absolve sins by the Word, we baptize with the Word, we present offerings with the Word, we judge all things by the Word. So if we are to serve God the Father in spirit and in truth, it means that we do it according to God's Word, we do it with the Word. So I confess sins with the Word, we absolve sins with the Word, we pray with the Word, we celebrate holy communion with the Word. We bless with the Word. And by doing all that, we do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Where the word of God is enacted, there the Holy Spirit will be at work. There the Holy Spirit will be given. There the Holy Spirit can create faith in people's hearts, faith that receives the gifts that God wants to give to his people in the divine service. Without the Word, without faith, worship is purely a human thing. It is done by the power of our human spirits, which means there's very little power whatsoever.

So we use God's Spirit-giving, sanctifying Word in the divine service. We do what's been divinely instituted in the service. So everything we do is what we've been given to do, the things that Christ has instituted. And if we do that, we do it by the power of the Holy Spirit. So if I perform the Lord's Supper according to the institution of Christ, according with the words of Christ, then I am delivering the Holy Spirit to people who come to holy communion. But if I don't do it with the words of Christ, then I'm not delivering the Holy Spirit. And it also means that if I base it on my own words, my own ideas, my own convictions, then I won't be able to, or the Holy Spirit won't be able to, create faith and strengthen faith. Because faith is created by the Holy Spirit in people who hear the Word; they receive the Spirit, and their faith is either created or strengthened through the hearing of God's Word. And they can be sure that they receive the Spirit even if they don't feel anything.

So what's today, today is Monday, isn't it? Yesterday, I went to church. Now, I didn't see, obviously, from my human point of view, anything spectacular happen in the service. It was a service with communion. There was confession of sins, absolution, there was the reading from the Scriptures, there was an excellent sermon, there was praying. There was thanksgiving. There was the celebration of the Lord's Supper. There was a benediction. Now, I didn't feel anything special in that service, although it was a wonderful service. Just from a human point of view, it was very well done. But I know for sure that the Holy Spirit was at work there. Why? Because the Word was there. Every single part of the service was done with the Word. It was all entirely scriptural. And I know the Scriptures pretty well, and I can say there wasn't a single thing there that was inconsistent with the Scriptures, inconsistent with the gospel. The word of God was enacted in that service in such a way that I know that the Spirit was delivered. And I'm certain of that. I have a certain faith in that because it was done according to the Scriptures. So Word and Spirit belong together inseparably.

Now, this is revolutionary teaching. It's not old stuff. And it's something that your church has to offer the whole of North American Christianity. I don't know whether you realize how much all other denominations separate the Spirit and the Word, and that creates all sorts of spiritual problems in people's lives. This is your great treasure and my great treasure. It's something that you have to offer to the whole of Christendom, not just in North America, but all around the world.

I'd like to conclude with Luther's wonderful summary. He says, the Spirit cannot be with us except in material and physical things, such as the Word, water, Christ's body, and his saints on earth. The paradox: the Spirit is given through physical things, to physical people, to make them spiritual, so that they lead spiritual, heavenly lives here on earth. So that everything they do, from conception to burial, everything that they do, from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed, is spiritual. And it means heavenly. Thank you.

Well, this is timely because I was having a conversation with one of our field education students, and we're in the St. Louis area, and he's doing a summer internship at a congregation, and has been heavily exposed to the kind of worship you were describing earlier in the first session, and was having a lot of honest inquiries about that. And he and I were trying to work through some of those things. So I had some questions that I thought I'd throw out, because this is an insight conference, so we're looking for insight. Right? Why are people attracted to praise worship? Why do you think that they are, and how do we connect with them to bring them the Spirit of God, thinking of, you know, unbelievers, especially young people?

My teacher, Dr. Sasse, always used to say that before you dare to criticize somebody, particularly in the church, don't ask the question, what's wrong in their teaching, but ask what's right in their teaching, and what's wrong in my teaching. Okay? Now, to unpack that fully, what's right in that teaching is a rediscovery of something that the church always taught, but has been forgotten in large part over the last 100 years. And that's this: that praise is a very important part of the divine service. What is it that we will do forever in heaven? Praise God. What is it that we begin to rehearse here on earth, and that we never really get right, but will be doing perfectly in heaven? Praise. That's the first thing. So we do it forever in heaven. What is it the angels do before God in heaven? They praise God. So praise is supernatural. When we praise God rightly, we stand together with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. And we join with them in singing the song that we will sing forever in eternity. So praise is supernatural. Okay? And so praise is a very important part of our Christian faith.

Now, that teaching of the heavenly nature of praise, and our praising God together with the angels, is something that was an essential part of Christian worship right from the beginning, but was lost about 100 years ago. It's still there in the old hymns. Very often it's in the last verse. But basically, it's been lost. And so often, Lutherans then, who want to shorten the service, simplify things, drop what I'd say is one of the most important parts of the divine service, which is the Glory to God in the highest and the Holy, holy, holy. So, number one, what we can learn, what Pentecostals have taught us, is the importance of praise. And praise is supernatural. And praise is not inspired by good music, or good musicians, or good singers, but praise comes from — who inspires the praises of the people of God? The Spirit. Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms and hymns. You know that. It's the Spirit of God that produces praise. Wherever you have the Spirit of God, what will be the fruit of the Spirit? Praise. And heavenly praise will begin here on earth. They've got it right. And we have had to relearn that from them. It's something that's part of our teaching, but we need to relearn it. So that's right. And instinctively, people resonate with that. And I think young people resonate with it in some way.

Now, it's not that any form of praise is heavenly. What kind of praise is heavenly? Praise that is triune praise, the praise of the triune God. Praise that proclaims the mighty works of God, that enacts the word of God. So it's scriptural praise. The other very important passage about praise is in Colossians, where Paul says, let the word of Christ, the gospel, dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to God the Father, for everything. So praise is something that's supernatural. It's produced by the Holy Spirit, but it's also the work of Jesus. Who is the praise leader in your congregation? Not the organist, not the cantor, not the lead singer, but Jesus. Jesus leads us in our praise of God the Father. So it's a rediscovery of that. That's the first thing.

The other thing that they have cottoned on to, that we'd forgotten, is what's the best way that we have of commending God's goodness, God's grace, the wonder and riches of what we have, the unimaginable riches that we have as sons and daughters of God? We have something here that we can't put into words, and that we'll understand. When you've experienced something good in your life, what do you automatically do? Let's say I've discovered a good wine, or read a good book, or seen a good film. What? You want to tell others about it. You praise it to other people. What does a girl want to do who's fallen in love with a guy head over heels? And all her friends get heartily sick and tired of her praising this guy who is just the most wonderful man since Adam, and there's no defects whatsoever, he's just simply wonderful, amazing. Now, how do we commend the gospel, commend Christ to other people most clearly, and not just intellectually or verbally, but physically with our whole being? It's by praising. A life of praise, the singing of praise, and our whole life as one doxology. So they've discovered the power of praise, if you like, in evangelism, which we Lutherans should never have forgotten.

Do you know what it was that converted most people to the Lutheran movement at the time of the Reformation? It wasn't Luther's translation of the Bible. It wasn't his tracts, it wasn't all the long sermons that the parsons preached from the pulpits all around Germany, it was the chorales. And it wasn't individual praise, but something which is countercultural, which is communal praise. Everyone singing from the same sheet, if you like, with one voice, the same message. The praise of God, evangelism, proclamation of God to the world. Those are the things that we can learn most of all from it. Now, I can give you a critique of what's wrong with the praise singing, but I want you to focus on those things that are right.

And I have one quick follow-up to that. And that is, could you comment on musical forms as created gifts, because that seems to be a lot of the issue a lot of times that we run into, and just how all that fits into this and relates to maybe younger people and that kind of thing?

I don't know about younger people, because I'm very wary of anybody who pontificates on what younger people think or like. I have my own young people, and that's one lesson I've learned. Every generalization I made about them or their generation is totally wrong, and they say quite clearly that I haven't got a clue. They may be exaggerating, but I hope they'll exaggerate.

Now, right from the beginning, even in the Old Testament, singing was not the problem, but musical instruments were problematic. Now, they were problematic because certain instruments in animist societies, pagan societies, were used to conjure up spirits. So certain musical instruments, certain forms of music, certain meters, certain kinds of rhythms, conjured up spirits. You'd know about this from Madagascar, I think. So, for example, New Guinea; we have lots of Lutherans up in New Guinea. Now, one of the traditional musical instruments is a flute that they play, a bamboo flute. Now, those bamboo flutes were used in almost all the important rituals that they practiced before they became Christians. And yet flutes are banned from the church there, but they're not banned in Australia. Why are they banned in the church? Because in traditional animist New Guinea society, they were used to conjure up spirits. And so no person coming from that background can disconnect that instrument, and also the kind of music that was played on them, from those pagan rituals, very dangerous pagan rituals. I could give other illustrations.

So when God established the Levitical choir with the instruments in the Old Testament, he deliberately picked those musical instruments that were spiritually neutral. That's the first thing. They were spiritually neutral. So lyres, harps, trumpets. And you had cymbals too. They were basically spiritually neutral. But they didn't use drums, quite deliberately, and lots of other instruments. Why? Because all the other instruments had pagan usage. Now, that's the first thing. The second thing is that there is no divinely instituted musical instrument in the New Testament. It's adiaphora. The important thing in music is not the music, but the fact that the music accompanies the Word, and it does so appropriately, in a particular society. So I would expect different musical instruments to be used in a Lutheran church in Germany, different to Australia. Or in Australia, different musical instruments with a traditional Lutheran congregation to an Aboriginal Lutheran congregation. Different musical instruments in New Guinea with Lutherans, or Indonesia, or India, or particularly South Africa, quite different. Hal knows all about that, but he's just come back from there. What's the right, correct musical instrument? Okay, there's no one. But it's those musical instruments that best serve to assist the congregation in rightly praising the triune God, at that particular time, in that particular context. Look, we Lutherans should never have got our knickers in a knot as to whether we should use guitars or organs in the church. It's a silly debate. It's adiaphora. And that doesn't mean it's not important.

Most of us don't realize how modern organs are. In Australia, there were hardly any organs at all, right from the beginning. Most singing was unaccompanied. It was just a cantor. Why? Because the people couldn't afford musical instruments. In some congregations, you had clever guys who could make pipe organs, so there are some old pipe organs there. But then came two wonderful inventions. The first one was the reed organ, to accompany singing. That was a modern invention. Okay, that came in. And then came pianos. Originally pianos were not used because they were just too expensive. And then you get keyboards. And now you get electronics. So the issue is not what kind of instrument, but is it appropriate, and is the music appropriate? Does it serve to enhance what happens in worship? Now that's a big topic. And I know it's very controverted all around the world, but we Lutherans, I say, shouldn't really have difficulty with this.

Would you care to comment regarding the necessity of the Word of God as enactment and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Lutheran phrase regarding church music, the viva vox evangelii, and how music fits to support the Word?

Yes, and for once, Calvin gets it right. He said that music and singing was the funnel by which the word of God went from the mouth through the ear and into a person's heart. So it is a funnel that brings the word of God into the hearts of God's people. And because it has to do with singing, it's the way of bringing the Word and the fullness of the Word into the hearts of God's people. Yes, who else? Yes.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I have. We were on vacation, my wife and I, and we stopped off at a Lutheran church, and all the liturgy had been replaced by the pastor, who basically said the same thing, but he wasn't using Scripture. I mean, he just kind of worked off the cuff, off his own. What would you say to that?

I'd say he's an idiot. Okay.

We were taken aback by it. Well, you asked me, that's what I'm asking. That's exactly what I'm asking. I'll give you a far more measured answer, though. He said it was still the word of God working through him.

Okay, but he may have had the certainty. But you as a visitor didn't have the certainty. And I'm sure that many of his congregation had no certainty. Or they may have had certainty, they might trust in him, until the devil starts kicking in and creates doubt. And that's where the trouble begins, and does great damage. There are two kinds of certainty that are needed. You see, being a pastor, in case you don't realize, is a very difficult job. And there's no criteria actually to say whether you're successful or failed. You know the way it is, Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, you look back over the service and what's happened, and all you see is the things you did wrong, or the things that went wrong, or the response of people. Okay, so I judge my success or failure by the response of people. Now, the praise that they give or withhold as I shake hands, whether they say, pastor, that was a good sermon, or not, or even it's the response of looking at them to see whether they are listening or not listening, or I judge myself by the things that I did well and the things that I stuffed up.

Okay, then how can I be sure that the worship that I lead is pleasing to God? How can I be sure that this Sunday my ministry was in the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit? There's only one criteria that I can have for judging myself: was I faithful in doing what Christ gave me to do in my ordination? Was I faithful? Now, the shorthand is preaching the Word, administering the sacraments. Was I faithful in ministering to people in such a way that their faith was actually built up, that they were encouraged in faith, and in love, and in hope? And the only way that I can answer that is by saying, was I faithful to the word of God, faithful to the gospel, faithful to the confessions of the church? And then I needn't pat myself on the back. I needn't take criticism personally, I needn't take praise personally. That's the real dangerous one, to look for and to angle for feedback and praise. I can listen to my wife's criticism, but I can take it with a grain of salt. That's the one thing: I can have certainty in my ministry. Now, that's important, because if I'm uncertain, then the devil is going to do what? He's going to undermine my ministry and my confidence in my ministry in order to drive me either away from this particular congregation, or to drive me out of the ministry. Or to make me so uncertain that I'm basically in a position where all I want to do is please people. That's the worst of all. That, okay, I aim to take the line of least resistance. What is it that people want? Okay, I'll give them what they want. But you know that no good conscience comes from that.

On the other hand, there's the certainty for people, how can I be sure that the people in the congregation have the basis for their faith? How can the congregation be sure that what I'm saying or doing is the Word of Christ, is the gospel? The only way that they can judge me is, is it scriptural? And so one of the most helpful things that you have in your new hymn book is the little things in brackets that you have. Here, where we — I can't read upside down — but you know, you have the part and you get the scriptural reference. Here we get, "This is the feast," Revelation 5:12. Now, why have the people who've compiled this hymn book put those scriptural references there? Is it just to be defensive so that they cover their backsides? Of course it's that. But they're thinking pastorally. What's the pastoral function of this? It's for the benefit of the pastor to give him assurance that God is pleased with the service, but also assurance to the people that what's being done is done according to God's Word and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yep. Sorry, Kathy, come and line up. I'll make this answer short.

On this point, something I found helpful was when Luther often speaks about the Word — we have to have the Word, the Word — he means doctrine. The entire context of the doctrine in its full consistency and taken in its totality, and that's what he means by that. You know, even with the liturgy, you can't cut and paste the different parts because it's meant to have a certain flow in leading us to the heavenly sanctuary. And that's usually — that's something I found helpful. I had a con—

Yes, yes. I would qualify that, because people very often draw the wrong conclusion from that. Because as long as they say, no, I don't actually preach on the text, as long as I preach from the people's dogmatics — yeah, that's not what it means. Okay, no, I know, in a different context. Instead of saying that, the way I'd put it is the words that Paul uses in Ephesians — Acts chapter 20 — where he says he did not shrink from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. That means the word of God in all its entirety. It's not all at once. Right, but it's full consistency taken. It's full consistency, and it means that each part is consistent with the whole. I don't just play on one string, but I play on all the strings, but not all at once. Yes.

I was wondering if you could say more about the last quote from Luther there that you have on page seven, that the Spirit cannot be with us except in his saints on earth. Of course, again, that doesn't mean the saints just sitting around and saying nothing or doing nothing. But if you could say more about that, how the Spirit is with us in the saints.

I think — can you keep that question on hold? Because that's, in a sense, the topic of the next unit, if I remember rightly. Am I a bit tired? Yes, it's the topic of the next unit. Not directly, but by implication.

But if I can just pick up one point that was brought up with me in the break, and it's this. I spoke about us working with God, doing the work of God. That what we're called to do as Christians is, we're given the Holy Spirit, we're called to work with Jesus in doing the Father's work here on earth. Now, for us as Lutherans, it sounds a bit like synergism, doesn't it? Now, there is a right synergism, and there's a wrong synergism. Synergism is cooperation with God. Okay? Cooperation with God. We don't cooperate with God in our justification. But we work with God, we cooperate with God in our station and vocation. So, say, as a father, I'm working with God in the order of creation, but also the order of redemption. As a mother, you're working with God in giving life to a child, and in rearing a child as a Christian, as a child of God. As a pastor, I'm working with God. And what else is it? I'm doing God's work, not my own work. I'm working together with Jesus, doing the work of the heavenly Father. So God's work is to forgive sins; I work with him in forgiving people's sins. God's work is to bless people; that's what I do. God's work is to give the Holy Spirit and all the gifts of the Spirit through the body and blood of Jesus; that's what I do in holy communion. So we work with God in our station and vocation, and not just as pastors. It's in whatever our station and vocation is, we are working together with God. We're not just working for God. Everybody works for God, whether they know it or not, but we work with God. And we do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yes, Kathy.

In talking about the assurance that we receive in the divine service, when you're talking about the liturgy and contemporary worship, the wonderful thing about the liturgy is, as you said, you know you're receiving the Holy Spirit through the Word that's given to us. And it's such a blessing, especially as you travel around the world and in different cultures, even if we don't understand the language, we know that what we're participating in is the truth, it's the word of God. And the Spirit's at work here. That's right. Even if we can't cotton onto it. Right. As opposed to people doing whatever, there isn't that same assurance.

We don't have the assurance. We don't have the certainty of faith. There's a wonderful phrase in Hebrews 10 which talks about the full assurance of faith, that we draw near to God the Father in the divine service. Now, a lot of the problems that we have in the so-called worship wars are language problems. The language is loaded. We talk about traditional worship or contemporary worship. Now all worship is traditional, even Pentecostal worship is traditional. All worship is contemporary, or it's not worship at all. Ridiculous terms. Meaningless terms. So I, as a pastor, refuse to use those terms. I might say we do the divine service, or we do the service with organ accompaniment, or band accompaniment. Or we have a sung service or a spoken service. But it's the same service. And it's always traditional and it's always contemporary, otherwise it shouldn't be done. In the stricter sense, it's traditional because we don't create worship. We receive worship from God himself. He gave it to his people in the Old Testament, and then he fulfilled Old Testament worship, and he's given us a new form of worship, word and sacrament, in the New Testament. So we receive it from the hands of Jesus, and we receive it from the past and we hand it on to the future. So tradition means you've received it and you hand it on. And even the most way-out modern form of worship is traditional in its own way. It's never invented completely out of nothing. It has a tradition behind it. Yes.

I thought you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about the confusion between the spiritual and the physical. And I was wondering, could you talk more about why you think that is, and specifically about the idea of it having something to do with the rehashing of Platonic philosophy, with postmodern thought? Because I was a philosophy major in college, and I actually, unlike most people, had solid Christian instruction in the home to arm me against solid philosophical instruction at school. So just something about that.

Yeah, to deal with that fully, I'd have to deal with the whole history of philosophy, from the very beginnings to modern times, because that's the basic issue in all philosophy. The two basic schools of philosophy that we have in the West are either the idealist school coming from Plato, which is this idea of the material world being the lesser world, and then you have the spiritual world, and there's an iron curtain between the two. Okay? Then you have the realist philosophy of Aristotle, which is much more congenial to it, which says that the two can overlap. They aren't identical, but they overlap. But that's only part of the picture. A very ancient philosophy, which is all around the world, is what you could call animism. Most people in the world are animist. Your traditional people are animist. Now, I don't know all forms of animism, but animism is that there are two worlds, and they overlap, say for our Aboriginal people, they overlap at certain points. Right? Now, you have the visible world, not so much the material world, but the visible world, and then you have the invisible world. So the people who are half alive are people who are living visibly here on earth. But the super-living are the spirits of those who've departed, the ancestors, living in the invisible world. But they overlap.

So you go up to New Guinea, and the native people there, before they became Christians, you had the longhouses, okay? You had a house made of wood, and then there was a leaf roof, and they had a kind of a ceiling and platforms across the beams of that particular house. When a member of the family died, they would expose the body on a tree until the bones were left. And then they would bring the bones of their family members back into the house, and put them, if you like, up into the ceiling. Now, that's a good picture of the way they see the world. Why do they put them up into the ceiling? To be closer to them. They're still part of the family. There's the visible part of the family, what we'd call the people who are alive, and then there's the invisible part of the family, which we say is dead, but they don't regard them as dead. They're still part of the family. And it's the role of the spirits, if you like — and this is a Western way of thinking — the spirits of those who died to look after them, to make sure that they ward off bad luck, to make sure that they have good luck. Okay? Two worlds that basically intersect and overlap very, very closely.

And for both Aboriginal people and for people up in New Guinea and many people that I've come across in various other parts of the world, there's one physical thing which is also a spiritual thing. There's one supreme overlap of the two worlds, the physical and the spiritual. You know what that is? It's not the bones of the ancestors, or the graves of the ancestors, which in some places are very, very important. It's blood. Blood is both spiritual and physical. It overlaps the two worlds. Now, look, that's such a big topic. And Platonism is just one very respectable one in the universities and so on. But there are so many different understandings and ways of seeing it.

And a lot of the traditional ways of understanding have been turned on their head by modern science and particularly the understanding of the brain. The commonest understanding that we've had in the Western world, and it goes back to the Greeks, but particularly since the Enlightenment, is the so-called mind-body dichotomy. You're familiar with it? So you have the mind which, if you like, is the ghost in me, and then you have the body. Okay, they are the two. The mind, if you like, belongs to the spiritual realm. The body belongs to the physical realm, and they work together, but they are separated from each other. And in that understanding, then, when the person dies, their mind, the spirit in that sense, leaves their body. But there are all sorts of problems with that. And so there have been various ways that's been modified. So for many people, spiritual means non-material, the opposite of material. It's either mental, or emotional, or psychological reality, if I can put it in sort of crude categories. Yes.

When I'm teaching, I usually teach people that we come to the divine service because that's where God serves us. And I heard you say that God calls us to serve him in the divine service, and I see it's kind of a both/and, but could you elaborate a little bit more on who serves whom?

Okay, yes. Yes to both. We serve God, God serves us. Now, to put it most simply, the whole of the divine service, we're involved in a Trinitarian action. So God the Father gives us his Spirit through the Son. That's the sacramental side of worship. So through the Word, the enactment of the Word, which is read, proclaimed, prayed, enacted fully, through the word of God, God the Father gives his Spirit through Jesus to the congregation, to the church. That's the sacramental side, but the sacrificial side also seems to be our work. But even that, how does God the Father give the Holy Spirit to us through his Word? Through a pastor that baptizes, preaches, proclaims. So God the Father serves us through human beings. That's the office of ministry. So that sacramental side is God's work, but it's God's work that's done through human beings. It doesn't happen unless you have a pastor and a congregation.

But then the other side, which is the ascending order, which we call the sacrificial side: by the Holy Spirit, together with Jesus, we present our offerings of prayer and praise and gifts to God the Father, through Jesus. So who's the one whom we pray together with? Jesus. Who's the one who leads us in our praises? It's Jesus. Who's the one that takes our offerings and presents them to God the Father? It's Jesus. So you have a Trinitarian descent and a Trinitarian ascent. Now, a lot of the problems we have in modern worship is that our worship is not consistently Trinitarian. We act in a Unitarian way. I don't know whether you noticed my use of that term. We speak about God as one person. We speak about Jesus, to the exclusion of the Father. Or we speak about the Father God, or we speak about the Holy Spirit by himself. But always in worship, all three persons of the Trinity are present, and they are at work everywhere in everything. In the descending order, in which God serves us to deliver his gifts to us, and in the ascending order by which we are brought into the presence of God the Father. We have access to God the Father in the heavenly realm. Now, I don't know if I've answered your question, brother. Have I? Yes. When do you want this to finish, Hal?

You said that we can be sure we have received the Spirit, even if we don't feel anything, because the Word of God was enacted, and the unity of the Spirit and the Word, the coming together of the Spirit and the Word, as being revolutionary teaching, instead of something that's old, and something that we have to offer to North American Christendom. And my experience has been, teaching this, and teaching people to see that it's revolutionary is quite difficult. Also difficult because it's a counterculture in America. And it's not just countercultural in North America, but it's countercultural in all parts, in all places, everywhere from human history. So I wondered if you had any thoughts on why we've had such a difficult time presenting this to American Christendom, and even in our own congregations a lot of the time.

You know, I don't know your scene well enough to speak with absolute confidence, but I have a hunch, that there are two reasons. The first reason is that we speak about it rather than doing it. We spend a lot of time teaching about worship, quite correctly, or about doctrine, or about forgiveness, or about the Lord's Supper, but we don't do it. How do you teach children to walk? Not by giving them the theory of walking, or explaining what walking does, or its significance, but how do you teach kids to walk? By walking them along. How do you teach people to worship? By worshiping. How do you teach people to pray? By praying for them, with them, getting them to join in. So the concentration should be less on theorizing, if I can put it that way, and that's always a Lutheran problem. We theorize about doctrine or worship, but we don't actually do it. We theorize about the word of God, but we don't enact the word of God. That's the first thing. Okay, you with me? Okay.

My second hunch is that we then — and it's very closely connected with this — that is, when we teach about it, we aim at what in people? Their heads. And we treat them as if they were disembodied minds, discarnate minds. We don't treat them as if they were fully embodied human beings with five senses, and we don't aim the whole divine service to the conscience. We aim it at the intellect, if I can put it that way. And in contrast to the other Protestants who aim at the emotions, or Catholics who aim at the body physically, you know, just do the ritual. So we aim at the intellect. Now all of those are partly right and partly wrong. The basic target, and this is the heart of our Lutheran teaching, is that the whole of worship and all our teaching and preaching, our pastoral care, is aimed to deliver a good conscience. The delivery of a good conscience. Now, I spoke about that at the worship conference in Seward a couple of weeks ago, if you're interested in getting hold of that. But that's my hunch. Now, I'd be interested if any of you here have any other take on it, because I'm a visitor. I don't see it from inside. So it's the theorizing and the aiming at the mind rather than aiming at the full person and the conscience of the full person. So the whole person, to deliver a good conscience to people with a bad conscience.