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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What does it mean to be a confessional Lutheran—and why does it matter how you answer that question?

In this episode, hosts the Rev. Dr. Maurice Lee and the Rev. Dr. Nathan Yoder sit down with Dr. David Luy to unpack the ideas behind his lecture at the 2025 NALC Clergy Retreat. This is the first of two conversation episodes exploring what Luy calls confessions as "a way into riches"—and why how we hold our confessional identity shapes everything about our ministry, our preaching, and our life with God.

What you'll hear in this episode:

The conversation opens with the origins of the retreat theme itself—why the NALC seminary asked how the church's confessional character should be described, not just defended. From there, Luy introduces the central tension: between a confessionalism that is primarily negative (defined by what we're not) and one that is oriented toward the inexhaustible riches of the Christian faith.

Along the way, Maurice and Nathan draw out key themes from the lecture:

• The Peter/Lucy contrast from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—the warrior posture vs. the sense of wonder and adventure
• The dangers of a "keep it simple" approach to doctrine—how reducing the faith to manageable categories can paradoxically produce something thin and brittle
• Edmund Schlink's emphasis on the primacy of doxology—and how it shaped Luy's understanding of what the confessions are for
• Wittgenstein's phrase "going on in the same way"—and what it means to be faithful to the confessions without mere mimetic repetition
• The Nestorius/Chalcedon question: what binds us—the theological judgment, or the historical context in which it was made?
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an exemplar of confessional faithfulness that never merely sloganeers

The episode closes with a teaser for the next conversation: the "parable of the city" and what it looks like to navigate vast theological space with the confessions as a guide rather than a cage.

Resources mentioned:

• Edmund Schlink, Ecumenical Dogmatics (English translation of Ökumenische Dogmatik)
• C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle
• Charles Porterfield Krauth (referenced in relation to confessional vows)
• Robert Jenson (referenced by Nathan on the use and abuse of slogans)
• The 2025 NALC Clergy Retreat

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

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What does it really mean to carry out ministry in accordance with the creeds and confessions? Is confessionalism just a fence—a list of things we can't say? Or is it something far richer than that?

In this episode, Maurice Lee and Nathan Yoder offer an on-ramp into Dr. David Luy's lecture, The Lutheran Confessions: A Way into Riches, originally delivered at the 2025 NALC Clergy Retreat. Nathan introduces the lecture through the lens of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—specifically the moment when Lucy first hears the name of Aslan: not as a call to battle, but as an invitation to summer-holiday wonder.

Then Dr. Luy's lecture begins. His central claim: the confessions are not primarily restrictive—they are generative. They function like a well-built well, drawing up the abundant riches of the Catholic and Apostolic faith for those who preach, teach, and pastor from them. A confessional pastor is not one who carries a big club. A confessional pastor is one who feasts.

Along the way, Luy explores the vastness of Christian faith across four domains—the triune God, the great deeds of God, Scripture, and the great cloud of witnesses—and argues that the marks of a genuinely generous confessionalism are wonder, enrichableness (his own coinage, borrowed from Tim Keller), and invitation.

The episode closes with one of the most memorable lines of the lecture: Luy and Dr. Pierce, he suggests, are something like stray cats who found their way to the NALC—because someone left a saucer of milk on the porch.

Topics covered:

• What ordination vows actually commit a pastor to
• The restrictive vs. generative functions of the Lutheran confessions
• Confessionalism as a posture of wonder, not warfare
• The vastness of God, Scripture, and the cloud of witnesses
• The marks of a generously confessional church: wonder, enrichableness, and invitation
• C.S. Lewis, Bonaventure, Andrew Walls, Blaise Pascal, and Luther's final note

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What does it mean to be confessional—and why does it matter now?

In this season premiere, hosts David Luy and Maurice Lee introduce Season 3 of Cardigan & Collar and the theme that will guide it: the confessions as a way into riches. Drawing on four rich presentations from the North American Lutheran Church's 2025 clergy retreat, David and Maurice unpack the season ahead and begin exploring some of the big questions at the heart of it.

The conversation opens with a deceptively simple question: what exactly is confessionalism? Together, David and Maurice trace the word through its various meanings—confession of sin, confession of faith, the confessions as historical documents—and explore how these senses hold together across past, present, and future dimensions of Christian life.

Along the way, they reflect on why confessionalism can feel like a burden to modern sensibilities, and why that reaction is worth taking seriously. But they also argue that, rightly understood, confessionalism is better described as a gift—the gift of being given place in a world you did not create, before a God you did not invent, alongside a communion of saints who have gone before you.

The episode closes by asking what it looks like to hold confessional identity with the kind of posture it deserves: one that recognizes the confessions not as a fence to guard but as a doorway into the inexhaustible riches of God, Scripture, and the great Christian tradition.

Themes in this episode:

• What is confessionalism? (And what are confessions for?)
• Confession as a past, present, and future act
• The "burden of catholicity" and confessionalism as gift
• Why modernity resists confessional identity—and why that may be changing
• The confessions as a way into riches: God, Scripture, and the Christian tradition
• The Augsburg Confession's catholic and unifying posture

Season 3 Presenters:

• Dr. David Luy — Confessions as a Way into Riches
• The Rev. Dr. Orrey McFarland — Confessions and Scripture
• Dr. Alex Pierce — Confessions and the Christian Tradition
• The Rev. Lara Bhasin — Confessions and Culture

Hosts: Dr. David Luy & The Rev. Dr. Maurice Lee Produced by: The North American Lutheran Seminary

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Join Professor David Luy and Pastor Maurice Lee in the debut episode of Cardigan & Collar. In this conversation they set the stage for a unique journey exploring the crossroads of theology and pastoral ministry while they share their vision for the podcast.

Get ready for a compelling exploration, as theology and ministry come together in this exciting inaugural episode!

Learn more about the North American Lutheran Seminary (NALS)

In Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Daniel Treier, we explore how Bonhoeffer’s diagnosis of modernity equips pastors to navigate the church’s formation today. We talk about the allure of technological autonomy, the embodied wisdom of the Old Testament, and why returning to creation, community, and the Psalms might be key to faithful ministry in a secular age.