Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

Of the founders of the Norwegian Synod, it was Ulrik Vilhelm Koren who most
succinctly and clearly elucidated the proper approach to the Scriptures that would come
to define the hermeneutical approach of the Old Norwegian Synod. Three documents in
particular lay out the spirit and the principles of the Norwegian hermeneutical approach
to Scripture: Koren’s En Redegjoerelse (An Accounting to the congregations of the
Norwegian Synod); Koren’s 1881 essay Can and Ought a Christian be Certain of His
Salvation; and What the Norwegian Synod Has Always Wanted (1890).
III. The Norwegian Hermeneutic defined
What is interesting about the above treatises by Koren is that each of them begins
with some sort of extended address about proper hermeneutics. For instance, Koren
writes in his introduction to En Redegjoeresle,
We do not accept as our own a single doctrine which is not
clearly based on God’s Word and which cannot be shown
in the Confessions of the Lutheran Church. We owe our
congregations an accounting for what we teach and
confess; and although we dare to believe that our hearers
both know our testimony and will judge it by what they
hear of us and not by what others say, we have still
considered it our duty to present to you now this our
common complete accounting, in which we hope no
essential question that concerns the disputed doctrines has
been unanswered. We present this accounting to you, then,
in the name of the Lord, for testing by the Word of God. 43
Similarly Koren comments in Can and Ought a Christian be Certain of His Salvation,
Men want to build on their own acceptance of the Word in
addition to God’s Word. They want to make their faith or
their willingness to believe, of their own non-resistance, a
basis for this confidence…but surely, thereby, faith has
congregation. Only one standing firmly on the revealed Word of God could have sustained such an
experience and made the comments recorded above.
43 Ylvisaker, Grace for Grace, 173-174.
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