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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