In the 29-word subtitle to his a Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McClaren doesn't mention that he might be (part) Lutheran (he does claim inheritances from various other traditions, including methodist, calvinist, catholic, anglican, charismatic, green, etc.). But in defining salvation, McClaren echoes the Lutheran understanding of Law & Gospel:
Salvation is what happens when we experience both judgment and forgiveness, both justice (exposing the truth about our wrong) and mercy (forgoing the negative consequence we deserve). Without both we don't end up with true salvation. (Page 95)
McClaren doesn't actually suggest that he might be Lutheran, but he clearly embraces the Lutheran tension of Law & Gospel.
My wife gave me the following quote from Douglass John Hall, who suggests that Luther is the least understood of the Protestant Reformers .
It is true, certainly, that Luther, while honored by English-speaking Christians as the first great Reformer, has been the least known of the sixteenth-century Reformers in anglo-Protestant settings. And it is also true that the reforming spirits most influential in English-speaking cultures (John Wyclif, John Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, and others), both individually and collectively fostered certain theological emphases significantly different from, if not inimical to, Luther's theology of the cross. (The Cross in Our Context, Fortress Press 2003, page 14)
Perhaps that is true. Luther's theology is rife with dirty, grimey, mucky paradox. It's not clean. It's not neat. It's a messy theology that claims to see God most clearly in suffering, and which adamantly denies the ability of human will to do good. This kind of theology has no place in an America where we prefer to gloss over unpleasant details (such as the scant evidence for WMD in Iraq or a weak levee system in New Orleans) and proudly proclaim a macho individualism.
