Gene Veith is Martin Luther’s kind of Lutheran: a professor of literature and the provost of Virginia’s Patrick Henry College, and someone who hails the Christian Gospel — not by tacking his theses to a church door, but through multiple books, and his lively Cranach blog, named after Luther’s close friend Lucas Cranach. Veith will be in Washington on Thursday evening to give the inaugural lecture of the Preaching in the Capital series at Christ Reformed Church (6:30-8:30 p.m., 1611 16th St. NW). He shared with The Washington Examiner by e-mail thoughts on faith, vocation and grace.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I am a Lutheran Christian. Lutheranism is sacramental and liturgical, and it is also evangelical and biblical. At the same time, Lutheranism avoids legalism, affirms our life in the world, and above all focuses on the grace of Christ. For me, Lutheranism embraces the whole scope and depth of Christianity at its best.
You keep a lively blog about matters pertinent to people of faith, but it’s one of a handful among countless blogs about politics and entertainment. What conditions would you like to see exist so that Americans can discuss faith more productively?
Well, at the Cranach blog we discuss politics and entertainment too! Breaking down the dichotomy between what is spiritual and what is secular might be a start in helping people to see just how much faith entails. I think, too, that one killer of religious conversation is relativism — this notion that everyone constructs his or her own spiritual reality. If that is so, people have nothing in common when it comes to religion. But we actually have a lot in common, and a lot we can talk about, to the point that we can help each other in our spiritual journeys.
What responsibility do colleges and universities bear in nurturing students’ spiritual lives?
The real responsibility falls on individual professors, whether at a religious or a secular school. God works through human beings — nonbelievers as well as believers — in their callings. As a teacher, I am called to love and serve my students. I do this by teaching them my subject. But I dare not corrupt them, harm them, or use them for my own ends. My impact on their spiritual condition may be minimal or great. At a distinctly religious institution, like Patrick Henry College, I can be more intentional about that than when I taught at a secular college, but all teachers are part of a vast web of influences in their students’ lives. A heavy responsibility comes with that.
What’s the state of preaching these days?
As a humble layman who travels around quite a bit, I have heard lots of sermons. Some have entertained me; some have informed me; some have instructed me; some have inspired me. But what I prize the most are sermons that have cut through my soul.
The classic Lutheran preachers developed that kind of sermon into an art form. They preached from God’s Word — not their own word — and they did so in light of what they called “the Law and the Gospel.” They would preach the commandments of Scripture not in order to be moralistic, or to draw out principles for better living, but to make the hearers realize they did not keep those commandments, and to provoke a genuine sense of repentance, even desperation. Whereupon the sermon would turn to the One who did keep those commandments — to Christ, who offers free forgiveness through His lavish grace. The hearers seize on that message, the Gospel, with relief, gratitude, joy and faith.
That’s the kind of sermon we need to recover, the kind that can actually build faith and transform lives.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe in Luther’s doctrine of vocation, which teaches that God works through human beings. He gives us our daily bread through the vocation of the farmer, the miller, the baker, and the whole economic system. He creates new life through the vocation of mothers and fathers. He creates beauty through artists and informs us through journalists. And He works through all of us in our multiple callings in the family, the workplace, and the culture, as we live out our faith in love, and serve to the neighbors that He brings into our lives. Vocation sees God’s presence in ordinary life and charges the seemingly secular realm with spiritual significance.
– Leah Fabel
