Confessions, Lutheranism, etc.

Fearsome Pirate has a good post about how we sometimes become so confessional we confess ourselves right out of the confessions. An excerpt.

For example, it's sort of trendy these days to say that simul justus et peccator means that the life of a Christian is at best indistinguishable from that of an unbeliever except when he is participating in the liturgy, and that furthermore unbelievers are very much capable of being outwardly far more righteous than Christians. This doubtlessly arose because every other Christian tradition teaches the opposite. The problem is that the Confessions teach the opposite as well. This is because Scripture is painfully clear on the subject, and the Lutheran fathers did not see a need to reinterpret Scripture every time they found someone else agreeing with it.

Full text here.