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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