How do the confessions lead us deeper into the Bible?

Episode summary
In the second part of our arc on the confessions as a way into scripture, Maurice Lee and David Luy welcome the Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland—pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Edmond, Oklahoma, and a New Testament scholar trained under John Barclay at the University of Durham.

Following his clergy retreat lecture, this conversation traces how a Pauline scholar came to make his home in the confessions, and what that home looks like in practice.

Orrey describes arriving at Lutheranism through, rather than despite, his study of Paul. Working with Barclay on grace as the "incongruity" of God's gift—favor given to the unworthy—opened a door into justification, Christology, and the sacraments that made sense of both the text and his own life.

From there the conversation turns to a posture Orrey commends for pastors: engaged, enriched by serious scholarship, and quietly confident in what the confessions hand on. He and David name the alternative: a fortress mentality that keeps to "safe" sources and grows brittle. The goal, Orrey argues, is a durable faith that can meet hard questions with generosity instead of anxiety.

At the heart of the episode is the idea of the endpoint. When the confessions become the destination, scripture quietly slips into a supporting role—cited often, but no longer allowed to work on us. When scripture is the endpoint, the confessions do what they are meant to do: they give us a grammar for reading, set faithful boundaries, and lead us toward Christ.

The hosts and guest close with a shared image: the confessions as the placard beside a great painting. The caption tells you what the work is about, then invites you to stand before the art itself and be changed by it.

In this conversation:

• Orrey's twin journey into Pauline scholarship and confessional Lutheranism
• John Barclay and the incongruity of grace
• The old and new perspectives on Paul—and scholarship's turn toward particularity
• Why reading beyond Lutheran sources strengthens rather than threatens confessional faith
• Teaching that moves from scripture to the confessions and back again
• The confessions as grammar, and scripture as the inexhaustible word

Key discussion points

• McFarland's account of Luther's status in post-New Perspective scholarship, and how it reshaped his path into the Lutheran tradition
• Five marks of what he calls a "generous confessionalism": conversation with other traditions, close scriptural reading, critical-but-charitable engagement with the confessions' use of Scripture, quiet confidence, and character over combat
• The distinction (from Arthur Carl Piepkorn) between binding doctrinal content and the confessions' individual exegetical judgments
• Augustine's rule that any reading of Scripture must build up love of God and neighbor

Mentioned in the episode:

• John Barclay, Paul and the Gift
• Krister Stendahl, "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West"
• Robert Jenson on "filling the church with scripture"
• The old and new perspectives on Paul

Coming up
Next time (releasing August 12), Maurice and David sit down with Orrey again to press further into his lecture, turning to the particular ways he suggests the confessions open us to the riches of scripture.

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What are the confessions actually for? Not a fortress to defend, and not the final word—but, as the Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland puts it, a way into the riches of Scripture itself.

Episode summary

In this presentation episode, Maurice and David introduce the lecture that Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland gave at the NALC's 2025 clergy retreat, “Confessions and the Scriptures.” McFarland begins with his own unlikely path into confessional Lutheranism—as a PhD student in Pauline studies at a moment when Luther's reading of Paul was widely dismissed by New Testament scholarship. Out of that experience, he offers five practices for relating the confessions to Scripture in a way that keeps Scripture, not the confessions, as the ultimate destination.

Main themes

• The confessions as a pathway into Scripture
• Subscribing to doctrinal content without treating every exegetical detail as beyond question
• Reading in conversation with other traditions rather than in a closed Lutheran silo
• Confidence in the confessions that produces charity rather than combativeness
• The goal of confessional reading: formation into the likeness of Christ, not winning arguments
  

Key discussion points

• McFarland's account of Luther's status in post-New Perspective Pauline scholarship, and how it reshaped his own path into the Lutheran tradition
• Five marks of what he calls a “generous confessionalism”: conversation with other traditions, close scriptural reading, critical-but-charitable engagement with the confessions’ use of Scripture, quiet confidence rather than defensiveness, and character over combat
• The distinction (drawn from Arthur Carl Piepkorn) between binding doctrinal content and the confessions' individual exegetical judgments
• Augustine's rule that any reading of Scripture must build up love of God and neighbor
• The closing analogy of visiting an art museum—neither ignoring the guide nor letting the guide replace the art
  

Resources and figures mentioned

• The Book of Concord
• Arthur Carl Piepkorn
• Edmund Schlink
• David Yeago
• Augustine, On Christian Teaching
• Kevin Vanhoozer
• Psalm 1

Coming up

Listen for the follow-up conversation episodes (releasing July 31st and August 14th), where Maurice and David sit down with Orrey to press further into this lecture.

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What do the Lutheran confessions actually do?

In this concluding conversation with Dr. David Luy, hosts Maurice Lee and Nathan Yoder press into some of the most generative questions raised by Dr. Luy's lecture, "Confessions as a Way into Riches." What are the doctrines so essential that to miss them is to lose the whole? What is a creed actually for? And why might a longer, richer confession actually create more freedom—not less?

Along the way: Origen and the mixed fruits of theological tradition, Augustine's surprising instruction to his future readers, the "depth grammar" of the Nicene Creed, the inexhaustibility of God as the ground of confessional generosity, and the personal story of how Dr. Luy—with a background spanning Bible church, Baptist, Jesuit, and pan-Protestant evangelicalism—found his theological home in the NALC.

This is Part 2 of the Luy conversation. We recommend listening to Episode 2 and Episode 3 first.

In this episode:

1. The confessions as navigational guide—what to seek, what to avoid, and how
2. "Can't-miss" doctrines and the integrative function of justification
3. The Nicene Creed as depth grammar, not a miniature canon
4. Enrichableness: the posture of remaining open to receive
5. The sturdiness and the dynamism—and why the NALC felt like home

Cardigan & Collar is a podcast of the North American Lutheran Seminary (NALS), pursuing theological conversations for the enrichment of pastoral ministry.

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