A Reliable Bible?
by George Muedeking, Editor
While teaching at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, I heard one of our noblest heroes of faith. It was Bishop Hans Lilje, the renowned church supporter of the resistance movement against Adolph Hitler. Readers may recall that he was within half an hour ofbeing executed upon the personal orders of Hitler. The U.S. Army broke through the prison gates and freed him. In later years the Bishop led the Lutheran World Federation as its president
In his seminary address, made about five years after World War II, he discussed the reasons why the Christians of Germany dropped so easily into Hitler's lap. He felt it was because the Church had abandoned its basic faith in the reliability of the Bible. Losing that foundational Lutheran heritage of "Scripture Alone", church members were wide open to the blandishments of any alien mythology or religion – in this case, the religion of Nazism.
Lilje illustrated the plight of the German Church in its capricious attitude toward the Holy Scriptures, by recounting his experience at a large church assembly in Germany. He told how the delegates voted regarding a particular Scripture passage that was under scrutiny. They affirmed that St Paul the Apostle was dead wrong in what he had said about God. They were quite ready to correct the inspired apostle. They were sure they knew more about God and what He was like, than did the holy writer.
You can imagine the astonishment with which I heard those words – that mere fallible, weak, error-prone and altogether mortal humans dared to claim they knew more about God man did the inspired Bible writers.
In view of the events and the ideologies abroad in the Church during the 40 years since the Bishop made his observation, I ought not to have been so startled. For there is nothing singular these days in the spectacle of proud humans insisting they know more about God than the Bible does. Consider only how the leaders of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg last year publicly offered their flat contradiction to the Apostle Paul and the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans. They pontificated: homosexuality is "neither sinful nor a sickness, but a different expression of human sexuality." This theological acumen is not confined to Europe, as Sierra Pacific Synod members well know.
THE DEVIL QUESTION
The sophisticated pride that announces what God should have said rather than what He did say, goes all the way back through church history to the Garden of Eden. Did not our first parents embrace the devil's question, "Hath God said?" (Genesis 3:1). How unsubtle those suggestions: "Come now, really, did God say that? Surely you know more about God than that! In fact, I'll tell you exactly what God should have said – and would have said – if you were God, or even better, if I were God."
There is nothing new in putting that devil-question at the Bible. Surely, it is claimed, our knowledgeable generation can improve on those ancient and primitive notions about God that come to us from the Book. As the lamentable ELC A Church in Society document "Human Sexuality and the Christian Faith" put it so brazenly, "We must distinguish between moral judgments regarding same-sex activity in Biblical times and in our own time."
So today, the temptation to put the devil-question to Holy Scripture agitates and distracts the church's self-understanding. The 1991 Fresno Assembly of the Sierra Pacific Synod, for example, considered a rather bland and innocuous resolution suggesting that the congregations be encouraged to observe the heritage of our Lutheran faith by a Celebration Sunday. Consider and affirm our historic Lutheran faith by a Sunday of special attention and thanksgiving, the resolution urged.
Just so, Lutherans used to keep "Reformation Sunday" as a thank offering to God that He had preserved the true Christian faith and entrusted the treasure of its teachings to the contemporary church. Those three pillars of doctrine, "Faith Alone; Grace Alone; Scripture Alone", that marked the renewal of Christianity, were held up for our loyalty and thanksgiving yearly on that last Sunday in October.
An innocuous Fresno Assembly resolution then, to observe "Faith Sunday?" No indeed, for one of the supporting"whereas"clauses said that "the Scriptures command us to 'agree with one another so that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought'" (I Cor. 1:10). The delegates were persuaded to expunge the passage and finally defeated the resolution itself, moved particularly by the microphone bluster of one pastor who allowed that she had come from a church where they wanted all the members to believe the same thing, and she didn' t want her newly adopted church, the ELCA, to be like that
Any bewildered and vocally passive lay delegate might have been excused for responding, "But I thought that even the Savior Himself, in the troubled moments before his death, still found time and heart to pray to the Father, 'that they may all be one, even as thou Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.'" (John 17:21). B ut no, it was not agree with one another, but, disagree with one another. Let every one do his own thing. That would be the ideal church to tie up with.
Like Lilje' s German church, here too, God's directions and words were voted down and voted outof consideration. Weknowmore about the church we want than even Jesus and the Bible writers did. Like sheep, the majority unsuspectingly followed this leader as she took the delegates down the path and away from the Word of God.
THE PRICE: TOTAL RESPECT FOR THE WORD
Essentially then the discomfiture that people like those in the FOCL movement feel, is that unless we return to total respect for the Holy Scriptures, the Church in our place will go under. God will always preserve a remnant, of course. The prophetic word assures us of that. And Jesus encouraged, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom". But will we be a part of that little band, if we live out a virtual denial of the Bible's authority over our church?
FOCL supporters are convicted that renewal in the Church will not come by more exhortations to stewardship or evangelism or striving for social justice, and above all, not by more ecclesiastical political manipulations. It will come when we return to the Word of God alone, both to hear and to do. For as the famed John Ruskin put it, "Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know; it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave."
We will therefore continue the great task of educating in Christian doctrine and ethics as these have been structured forus in the Bible. For the plight of the old/line churches is that their members are ignorant of their professed faith. As George Gallup recently told the Southern Baptist Home Mission Board, "I doubt if more than 5 to 10 percent of Christians are prepared to defend their faith. Many don't know what it means to be a Christian."
To that end we have opened our pages again this issue to a serious confrontation with the biblical scholarship that finds in the Scriptures not what God thinks of humans, but what humans think of God. Dr. Bragstad, after years of wondering and wandering in the desert of "higher criticism" of the Bible, called our attention in the last issue of FOCL-POINT to what he saw as the utter barrenness of this form of literary confrontation with the Bible's content.
Your editor will confess that he has often been non-plussed by the pompous infallibility with which the "higher critics" have since the last century pronounced on the authenticity of the biblical materials, and hypothesized on who wrote what and when. He says this in a rather humble and tentative fashion for he is aware that literary scholars still argue vehemently over the question whether or not the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward De Vere, was the true author of the plays of an alleged William Shakespeare. And this was only 300 years ago(!), and in the age of printing – not two or three thousand years ago, as is the case for the biblical materials, whose traditional authorship and purpose are so readily and glibly challenged in academe. Surely, as Dr. Bragstad suggested, a new look at the pretensions of biblical interpretation and theology are in order. The spiritual vacuity of our church asks no less of us.
The Pew View
by Lee Horn
Last evening at our midweek Bible study, we pondered the message of the ninth chapter of John's Gospel. He goes into great detail concerning Jesus' healing of the man who was blind front birth. This miracle can be viewed from many perspectives. But one point, which our lay leader brought out, had to do with the Law. Though the Pharisees accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath, the only law Jesus "broke" was the traditions which had been established by men.
These religious leaders had drifted far afield from the letter and the spirit of the Law which Moses had offered in the Book of Exodus. Jesus tried to open their eyes to the truth, but they were blinded with their own unwillingness to see that truth.
Martin Luther had the same problem in his day. When his eyes were opened and he saw the truth in God's Word, he was moved to act against the corruption within the church. The religious leaders had again drifted far afield from the letter and spirit of the Law and the Gospel. Here too, men had made up new rules as they went along.
REAL SHEPHERDS
Today our church is again being led astray by religious leaders who are drifting far afield from God's Law. They find it much easier to listen to and to follow the voices of the secular world, to follow people who want the Law changed to accept their standards, rather than to follow God's Standard.
No longer do we take seriously what the Bible says, unless it, by chance, agrees with the popular trend of the day. How else can we account for the Sierra Pacific Synod Council's allowing and authorizing pastors to bless same-sex relationships?""'1
Can this be the same Lutheran Church in which I grew up? It is unbelievable!
Can these Lutheran "pastors" be reading the same Bible I'm reading?
Our next Bible study will focus on the tenth chapter of John's Gospel. There Jesus teaches about the Good Shepherdùand how to tell a real shepherd (pastor) from a fraud. When we use God's Word as a plumbline it will not be hard to sort out the 'hireling' from the true pastor.
** EDITOR'S NOTE:
Mrs. Horn refers to the following directive Statement on Pastoral Guidance and Discretion, sent out by the Sierra Pacific Synod Council previous to the 1992 Synod Assembly:
"RESOLVED, that this Synod Council encourages pastors of this synod to deliberate prayerfully and use wise pastoral discretion in decisions regarding the pastoral blessing of monogamous, covenanted, same-sex relationships."
This Statement was issued without asking the legislative body of the Synod, the Synod Assembly, for input or approval. It was sent without consulting the congregations or the membership of die Sierra Pacific Synod to see if this directive in any way represented the majority will of its constituents. Witness the concern shown in a June 1993 letter of alarmed protest over this arbitrary action, sent to Ms. Kuhlman, the chair of the Synod Council. In it the president of Salinas' Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Ms. Gael Nichols, offered the official response of her congregation. It reminded the Synod Council, "Our most important concern is that [this directive] urges pastors to consider actions which are contrary to biblical teaching and the policy of the church....the statement is directed to the area of pastoral care, an area of utmost importance to the church as it directly relates to contact between a pastor and an individual member or members.
We question whether the Synod Council has authority to make policy in this area. Even if it does, any decision should be made with special care and lengthy consideration. ...we request that the Council rescind the Statement on Pastoral Care previously passed". At a subsequent Synod Council meeting the request of this and other similar letters was denied.
CONGREGATIONS CONCERNED
There is good reason for concern. It is not tilting at windmills to see this as another in a series of steps to manipulate this Synod and finally the ELCA itself into relieving the guilt of those who participate in homosexual life style, unburdening them of that culpability that bears down upon all violations of God's revealed Standard. Is that to be our witness to the Lutheran Church's professed faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures as the guide and norm for our faith and life?
If the Church condones and approves, are we not also validating the life-and-death consequences of this permissive behavior? By February of this year, for example, the Centers for Disease Control report that two-thirds of all AIDS cases are directly attributable to homosexual conduct. And according to the chief of the Retrovitology Laboratory at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Dr. Robert Redfield, 50 percent of male homosexuals in San Francisco are infected with the HTV virus that causes AIDS.
To say that (he Synod Council's Statement refers only to "monogamous, covenantal" relationships is to obscure the fact that the Kinsey Institute, for instance, found that 43% of the homosexual men surveyed estimated they had sex with 500 or more partners, and28percentwithl000ormorepartners. The American Journal of Public Health reported that in 1985 the average number of different partners was 50 per year.
If pastors and congregations are willing to share these concerns with their delegates to the upcoming Synod Assembly in May, it could well be that they will insist the Assembly repudiate and disavow that hasty Statement from the Synod Council, a statement which surely quite thoughtlessly supports the spread of moral, physical and spiritual disintegration in our church and in our society.
Lee Horn, a well-known conference leader from the American Lutheran Church Women of the former ALC, is a member of Grace Lutheran, Palo Alto.
The Bible and Abortion
by C. Ben Mitchell*
Abortion is an unusually divisive issue in our nation. Why? What is the issue? What is at slake? The answer something larger than abortion alone, although abortion is the present focus of the controversy and is sufficiently heinous to demand such attention.
THE ISSUE IS SACREDNESS
The issue is the sanctity or sacredness of human life. When we distill the controversy over abortion, euthanasia, fetal tissue use, etc., the common essence is the sanctity of human life. Are human beings the unique creation of God? Is human life sacred and inviolable?
Some researchers and ethicists argue that the developing embryo in a mother' s womb is merely a "glob of tissue" and of no more value than the embryo of a guppy. The issue is, then, whether or not human life is unique, sacred, and worth protecting.
Modern secularists, having built their view of humanity on the foundation of their own unaided human reason, have little reason to regard human life as unique, sacred, and valuable.
The question that keeps ringing in the ears of those who are committed to a Biblical worldview is: "What does the Sovereign Lord, the giver and creator of life, have to say about the value of human life? What does God have to say through His Word, the Bible?'
1. The sanctity of human life is rooted and grounded in the Creator Himself. Many Biblical texts affirm that humans are the special creation of God and have been invested with sacredness and unique value over and above the rest of the created order. We humans are, unlike the other creatures of the earth, created in the image and likeness of God Himself.
Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over the creatures that move along the ground. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26-27 NIV).
David, the youthful shepherd, gazed into the starry sky and was overwhelmed at the expanse of the heavens. When he thought about the universe and humanity* s place in it, he wondered why God would even care about humans. The answer to that question is rooted in a Biblical anthropology.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:3-5).
Why does God care about human beings? Because He sovereignly chose to create us and invest us with sacred worth and unique value. We are crowned with glory and honor.
WHEN DOES IT BECOME SACRED?
The Biblical revelation everywhere teaches that human life is sacred and has been invested with special worth by the Creator Himself. This is why it is wrong to kilt human beings unjustly. Not only does abortion violate the sanctity of human life, but so do euthanasiaandphysician-assisted suicide. Only God Himself, orthose appointed by God Himself (Romans 13:1-5) have the authority to end human life.
At what point in time does God invest human life with its uniqueness and sanctity? When does human life become sacred?
2. Human life is sacred from the moment of conception. Again, a Biblical anthropology correctly informs science. The tools of high technology medicine make it impossible to deny that the baby in the womb is a unique human being from conception.
Each individual baby has his or her own genetic code. The heart begins to beat at its own rate in the first month of pregnancy. The baby may have a different blood type than the mother. Everything we know about genetics and embryology points to the fact that the fetus is a developing human being ù not a guppy or a glob of tissue.
Only a Biblical view of human life makes sense of what we observe. What is the witness of Scripture about the beginnings of individual human life? Again, it is David the Psalmist who praises God, saying,
For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 1239:13-16).
To Jeremiah, the living God declared, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you a prophet to the nations" (Jeremiah 1:4-5). The God who has invested human life with special value and sacred worth is the same God who frames and fashions human babies in the womb. Human babies don't become human at some variable point in their development. They are conceived human. As humans, created in the image of God, they possess the unique sacredness God invests in all human life.
Over 1.6 million human babies, made in God's image, were aborted last year in the U.S. alone! That would be unimaginable if it were not true. While abortion is the focal point of the attack on the sanctity of human life in America, it is but the leading edge of a wedge that will increasingly divide our society.
If we kill the helpless unborn, then we can kill the helpless disabled. If we can kill the helpless disabled, we can kill the suffering ill. If we can kill the suffering ill, we can kill the unproductive members of society. If developing human life has no value, then perhaps legislators will decide that human life after 70 years of age has no value. What we do to our babies we will do to anyone.
The Biblical witness is uniform and clear. God has invested human life with sacredness and uniqueness from conception onward. The war of world views in our society has many victims, not the least of whom are the unborn babies. May God help us save the babies.
* Mr. Mitchell is the Director of Biomedical and Life Issues, for the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, printed from National Right to Life News, 8/25/92
The Evangelical New-Road
by Charles W. Colson*
One thing the last election clearly does. It shatters any false security Christians might have felt because a president sympathetic to our views was in the White House. It should cause us soberly to assess who we are, what we've been doing, and what strategies God would have us pursue in the future.
This is a good thing. For the strategies evangelicals have followed over the past decade have not worked. As I wrote in my book, The Body, ChristianvaluesareinretreatonalmosteveryfronL Two-thirds of the American people believe there are no moral absolutes, and half as many people today believe the Bible to be true as did in the 1960s. We live in a post-Christian culture.
Why did we fail in the 1980sùthat era of evangelical enthusiasmù to change people's attitudes for the better? Why are we losing ground? There are three principal answers to that question.
LOSING GROUND
First, we were politicized. While it is good for Christians to be active in politics, to work for moral issues and candidates, there is an important balance to be struck. When our focus is completely political, then people can dismiss us as just another extremist interest groupùthe "Religious Right". As is now painfully clear, when Christians marry one political agenda, theyareheldcaptiveto it When their political spouse losespower, they do too. Those who live by the political sword also die by it.
Second, some of our leaders fell. Their well-publicized scandals caricatured the rest of us; Christians became the butt of ridicule and suspicion.
Third, we neglected the basics. In our desire to reverse America's moral slide, we rushed off on all sorts of energetic entrepreneurial crusades and movements. Well-intentioned, but we forgot the truth that being precedes doing. We must first be holy people before we can bring a holy influence into society. And the institution by which we are equipped to be holy people is not the U.S. Congress. It is the church.
Have we really forgotten this most basic truth of all? Has our political fervor blurred our focus on God's revealed plan for the redemption of the world? Itis His Body: the living, vibrant community that spans centuries and continents, whose purpose and mission and character cannot be boxed by political agendas, whose power is dependent solely on the living Christ and the in-dwelling presence of His Holy Spirit
BACK TO BASICS
Whether we are distressed, pleased, or neutral about the results of the election, the message for all of us is clean as believers, we must get back to basics. Though, we of course, must continue to contend for Christian truth in every area of life, politics included, our primary task is not to build political power structures. It is to build the church. The church is the only institution on earth that is supematuralry endowedù the only one, Jesus promised, against which the gates of hell itself cannot stand!
When we grasp this truth, all else pales by comparison. Election results, court decisions, anti-Christian bias in the mediaùare these really more powerful than the promise of the King of Kings?
Our brothers and sisters in the former Eastern bloc know the power of that promise. For decades they were oppressed, imprisoned, driven underground by a government system that was determined to destroy Christianity. They had absolutely no political power at all.
But the church could not be destroyed...and in the end, it was the church triumphant that brought the fall of Communism. It was the cross of Jesus Christ that triumphed, because people's hearts and minds had been changed by the power of Jesus Christ No government on earth can stop that revolution within!
It's ironic: I have been a lifelong Republican, and for many years my fortunes and my state of mind were tied to the fortunes of the Republican party. Today, as the conservative presidency, legislators, and referenda across the country have been defeated, I am not dismayed. I am greatly concerned over the issues, of course, but I feel a renewed sense of energy and vision and purpose.
This is an historic opportunity. Itis time to build the church. As our brothers and sisters in Eastern Europe can tell us, we will not win the culture war, either with bullets or with ballots. Wewon'twinitbecause "our man" is sitting in the White House.
We will win it by building up the Body of Christ Our place is on our knees, in the streets helping people in need, winning our neighbors and colleagues to a Christian world view by speaking the truth in love. We will win die cultural war one house, one block at a time, as God's people are trained and equipped by the church, and then go out and live their faith in the world. That's how we' 11 bring about real moral – and political – change.
Remember that through history, movements that truly change cultures come from the bottom up. Only in rare cases have societies been changed from the top down. Ground swells of social change come from the people, not from the palaces.
This is the hour for the church!
* Colson, the leader of Prison Fellowship, and world authority on prisonreform, sent this excerpted letter to hissupporters soonafterthe election last November.
Reader Responses
DEAR EDITOR:
In response to Dr. Bragstad's article, "The Historical-Critical Method Needs to Go" (Autumn '92): When one goes hunting, it is a good idea if one knows what one is shooting at Dr. Bragstad takes aim at the historical-critical method of exegesis, but really is firing at the Neo-Orthodox theology which has been prevalent in many of our Lutheran seminaries after Hitler and World War Two. One aspect of the Neo-Orthodox camp isarejection of anything that goes beyond the laws of physics and it is this position that Dr. Bragstad needs to put in his sights.
No doubt many scholars doing historical criticism are in the Neo-Orthodox camp and clearly have their exegesis influenced by its positions. Nevertheless the method does not, as Dr. Bragstad insists, "banish the divine from history a priori." Let's not make the mistake of separating the natural from the divine and equating God and divinity with the supernatural. To do this would be to move from Luther to the Spiritualists. Moreover, historical criticism simply seeks to understand the original context of the Scriptures to better grasp what the text meant so that its meaning today can be more clearly understood.
This goal does not necessitate, for example, concluding that Moses really didn't part the Red Sea, etc . . . Indeed, the beauty of the historical method is not that it holds an illusion of being completely objective but that it tries to let the text speak rather than having us impose our own wants on the Scriptures. That is, making Scriptures say what we want it to say, whether that be a traditional or new interpretation.
I’m sad that Dr. Bragstad and FOCL (if he represents FOCL' s view) are not clear on what they are shooting at How regretful it is that a way of seeking the truth of what the Scriptures proclaim to us today might be injured by a mistaken shot
Rev. William Crabtree Lodi, CA
DR. BRAGSTAD REPLIES:
Pastor Crabtree's letter addresses a number of issues that deserve response. I hope that the following will prove to be as brief and to the point as his original.
1. "A mistaken shot." My brief article began a discussion on the merits of historical-critical methodology, especially for theological institutions. As such, it restated a number of points which the critics are saying, or have said, about their own methodology.
Pastor Crabtree argues mat while I have taken aim at the method, my real complaintis with "the Neo-Orthodox school of theology". Iwould only point out that the essay in question by Rudolf Bultmann ("Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?") is not an essay about Neo-Orthodoxy, but rather, is about historical study in general, and biblical study in particular. Or to put it another way, the essay is significant precisely because it addresses the historical method and not simply Neo-Orthodoxy. Hence, if someone has missed the mark, it was not me.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Bultmann's assertion referred to is: "The historical method includes the presupposition that history is a unity in the sense of a closed continuum of effects (editor's emphasis added) in which individual events are connected by the succession of cause and effect")
2. God and Nature. One of my seminary profs made the point that there are really only two basic issues in theology: Creation and Incarnation. It is this second issue which was the focus of my article. I do not have a problem with Luther's natural theology. Yet, as Christians, we do not worship nature per se, but rather the God of nature, who is, to use Pastor Crabtree's term "beyond the laws of physics."
This God we revere especially where He chooses to reveal Himself; and nowhere is that more clearly focused than in the "Word made flesh". That historical event raises the question of the supernatural, in the proper sense of that term.
As C S. Lewis once put it:
". . . the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into his own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left." (from God in the Dock).
In his essay, Rudolf Bultmann – or historical science in general, cannot "perceive" such a miracle and its manifestations in history if it is to remain faithful to its presuppositions.
3. Historical presuppositions. Pastor Crabtree writes, "...historical criticism simply seeks to understand the original context of the scriptures..." Would that it were so. I question whether the historical method is really as "simple" as Pastor Crabtree would have us believe. While an historical inquiry should never presuppose the results of that inquiry, one can never embark on historical study without presuppositions. Dr. Bultmann was honest enough to spell out the presuppositions of the historical method. The presuppositions of contemporary historical science, I would suspect, are not that far removed from those of Dr. Bultmann. Indeed, they cannot be, if the methodology seeks to understand the text historically.
William Bragstad, Ph.D., Havward, CA
DEAR EDITOR:
Praise God for committed servants of the Word. FOCL is an urgently needed organization to challenge the apostasy in the ELCA. Universalism and the Historical Critical Method are destroying our traditional orthodox faith.
For some months I have contemplated organizing a cadre of conservative pastors. President Cliff Pederson of Lutheran Bible Institute in California is excited about the potential of such a group. FOCL is a giant step in that direction. We know something must be done to challenge our leadership and bring us back to the saving truth of Christ and His inerrant Word.
The Green Hymnal is so terribly wrong, in my opinion, by suggesting that the Order for Confession and Forgiveness at the beginning of the worship service is "an option". We need confession right off in worship, so that the blood of Christ can wash out those thoughts, fantasies and deeds from our heart and mind, so that the Word can have clearer access to us.
The first issue of St. Olaf College's Manitou Heights, for incoming freshmen, is positively mind-blowing. I'll try to make a copy of a couple of pages for you. [Editor's Note: The article mentioned, "Sex atSt Olaf; AConnoisseur'sGuide", describes 32 sites for having sex, including: "Boe Chapel: Some might consider it profanity to even think about sex here. Try the altar, late at night, with the outdoor lights illuminating those stained glass windows."] Imagine what such evil suggestions can do to some freshmen. And it is our Church College!
Forgive me, but I am so disturbed by what is and IS NOT happening in our church. "Salvation, saved, lost, condemned, repent, sin, conviction of sin, confession of sins"ù these words and teachings are all lost in the vocabulary of many of our pastors.
Thanks again for a stupendous job on FOCL-POINT.
Myrus Knutson, Ph.D. Joshua Tree, CA
DEAR EDITOR:
Thank you for your work. May the Holy Spirit guide you to "correct in love," as you keep your eyes on Jesus.
Lavon and Fern Bohling, Hebron, NE
DEAR EDITOR:
I am writing concerning the sexuality study by the ELCA. There has been nothing said about the matter in our congregation. I am very concerned that the ELCA may adopt the study as it is written. I don't want to belong to a church that does not give full authority to Scripture and the Holy Spirit's leading.
Emilie Kryder, McCIure, OH
FOCL RALLIES
Professor Dr. Carl E. Bratten, internationally noted theologian and director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology will be featured at a series of FOCL rallies to be held in late October of this year at various locations in the Sierra Pacific Synod. Watch for specific times and places in the next issue of FOCL-POINT, and plan to attend his dynamic presentations of the church's responsibility for sharing the true biblical Gospel with our contemporaries across the world.
True Beauty
Not the great number of her adherents, not her organizations, not her charitable and other institutions, not her beautiful customs and liturgical forms, etc., but the precious truths confessed by her Symbols, her Confessions, constitute the true beauty and rich treasures of our Church, as well as the never-failing source of her vitality and power
Wherever the Lutheran Church ignored her Symbols, or rejected all or some of them, there die always fell an easy prey to her enemies, But wherever she held fast to her God-given crown, esteemed and studied her Confessions, and actually made them a norm and standard of her entire life and practice, there the Lutheran church flourished.
Accordingly, if Lutherans truly lave their Church, and desire and seek her welfare, they must be faithful to her confessions, and constantly be on their guard lest any one rob her of her treasure.
– F. Bente