Burgeoning FOCL Prepares For Fall Rally
by Alan Watte*
Amidst efforts to handle growing local and national support, FOCL is preparing what promises to be its most dynamic annual Reformation Rally to date.
AAL SUPPORT
The 1994 Reformation Rally is supported by a grant from Aid Association for Lutherans (AAL), a fraternal benefit society with more than 1.5 million members nationwide.
Dr. James Burtness, internationally prominent professor of Systematic Theology at Luther Theological Seminary, will keynote a 5 P.M. gathering October 23rd, at Sacramento's Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 1615 Arden Way. Editor of two theological journals and a leader in the International Bonhoeffer Society,
Burtness has served as chair for the World Mission Division of the American Lutheran Church. He is one of the authors of the Luther Seminary faculty members' protest, signed by thousands, to theELCA's Human Sexuality draft document.
THERE'S MORE
Burtness will be joined by Dee Posey, president, Sierra Pacific Synod Women of tricELCA(WELCA).Alsoofferingremarks willbethe distinguished founder of the 1.3 million member Mekane Yesus Church of Ethiopia, and former Education Secretary of the Lutheran WoridFederation, Dr. Hebert Schaefer. They will address the ELCA's current crisis in doctrine, the continued radical drift of its leadership, and the future of the church.
Dr. Burtness will also be featured at a workshop on evangelism atBclhel Lutheran, in Cupertino, Saturday October 22nd, from 9 A.M. to noon. The Lutheran theologian will preach at three Bethel worship services that morning before capping off his West Coast appearance with the Sacramento rally
FOCL GROWS
Over the last 10 months, FOCL has seen a tremendous increase in support. FOCL POINT readership has nearly doubled. Attendance continues to swell at FOCL events as lay Lutherans, shaken by recent headlines disclosing dissident efforts to redefine acceptable human sexual expression, and angered by a national ecumenical convention that presented a grab bag of extremist "neo-pagan" proposals, are awakening to the growing gulf between ELCA statements of belief and church practices.
As a result of last year's annual rally. which featured Dr. Carl Braaten' s masterful critique of the ELCA, FOCL received more than 100 requests for video tapes of his address. This year's FOCL rally portends an even greater impact. Be certain to mark your calendar.
* AlanWaite is the treasurer of the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans, and co-editor of FOCL POINT.
Theology and the Bible
by Ben Johnson, Th.D.*
Will advances in our knowledge of the past be digested by the church of our day and contribute positively to its theology as well as to the life and witness of the believer?
That was the question I reflected upon in the address I gave 30 years ago when 1 was installed in the chair of Exegetical Theology at Hamma School of Theology. The gist of my comments was that the same energy then being applied to analysis of the Scriptures would need to be applied to the upbuilding of a theology which would draw out the implications of those new insights for our understanding of God, humans, the world, and the role of Scripture for this time and place.
Little did I sense that the comfortable Neo-orthodox world from which I came had already begun to ooze away – the assassination of John Kennedy, the experiments with LSD going on at my own precious Harvard University – into the quagmire of Vietnam and the counterculture, which would first entice us and then threaten to engulf us.
A New Emergence
What emerged theologically was psychological pietism on the one side and the politics of the New Left on the other. Both would have progressed more rapidly if they had not been troubled by the conservatizing influence of Scripture, tradition, and confession.
Today we can look back and sec that psychological pietism has been integrated in the American Litany, "It's not my fault." And the politics of the New Left has matured to the "politically correct" movement. We have a president who has promised to carry out the agenda of the politically correct movement, a group which already has profound influence in my ELCA church.
These two wings of popular American thought did not progress without resistance. Representatives of the traditional church, the confessional church and pietism were goaded into response. The Center for Evangelical and Catholic Theology was founded, promoting a rediscovery of the historical church as the key to faithfulness in a secular culture and a disintegrating society. Luther Seminary faculty sought a return to faithfulness by a reaffirmation of Luther's doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Pietists responded with a flurry of activity in the early 1980s, founding groups like Friends for Biblical Lutheranism, the Great Commission Network, and the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans.
Despite these responses – and ironically – the majority of Lutherans trained in the Bible fall into the "politically correct" camp. Is someone needed to argue that the clear condemnations of homosexual practice contained in Scripture either do not mean what they say or are no longer relevant? Call your local exegete. Does a commission need a scholar to argue that the early church was socialist? Call your local exegete. Would people be more comfortable if the hard sayings attributed to Jesus were in fact not uttered by him? Call the local representative of the Jesus Seminar, who will gladly make more palatable the teachings of Jesus. In one of the more ironic developments in the history of theology, biblical interpretation appears to be the enemy of biblical belief.
Bible Faith Shunted Aside
Contrary to my expectations three decades ago, that the period ahead would provide a grounds well of support for the role of the Bible in the life of the church and the believer, I found the opposite. Biblical faith has been shunted aside as naive and irrelevant. Exegetes do not stand against the triumph of the radical left. Rather, they encourage it. Where it has been slowed, the retardation has been provided by historians and theologians in the world of thoughtùnot the biblical experts – and by some of our congregations, seminaries, and bishops.
It also became increasingly clear as the '70s progressed, that reading in my field would not deepen my understanding of Scripture as a resource for the life of faith. Rather, I would have to leave the seminary and enter the life of the ordinary Christian as a parish pastor, living among the people, and sharing their faith struggles.
My 30 years' question was thus sharpened to the following: Can a person believe and preach the Bible and survive as a minister in the Lutheran Church? I am not talking about the Bible as exempted from the investigations of historians and critics, nor do I mean the Bible as a guarantor of one or a few special doctrines. And I do not mean the Bible interpreted in a world of two dispensations, where the age of miracles ceased with the death of" the last apostle.
After a return to 12 years of parish ministry, I feel incredibly blest. First, I met and learned to love some of the greatest and most genuine people I will ever know. They are the church. And they make my work and efforts, and those of the Lutheran Bible Institute, worthwhile. Second, through living among believing Christians, reading theology and preaching upon Biblical texts as called for by the lessons of the church year, I believe not only
have I survived, not only have I been blest by the people God has given us, but I have learned some important things about the Bible. These are: (1) its supernatural character, (2) its authority, and (3) its perspicuity.
The Bible's Supernatural Character
The supernatural character of the Bibleùthe fact that the book itself participates in a connectedness to God, is stated in Galatians 3:8: "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed.'"
This fact about the Bible, which is also confirmed by those who live with the Scriptures, teaches us that in the content of the Bible we are confronted by a living and intelligent force, a force which knows the mind of God and assists us in discerning that mind. This supernatural character is reflected not only in the central content of the gospel of justification by grace through faith, but in its very reflecting of the nature and character of God. Much as Moses' face shone after his extended period with God (Exodus 34:35), so the Scriptures shine with His presence. We cannot but be touched by God through an intimate knowledge of His Word. This supernatural character is not dependent upon theories about the Scripture's origin or manner of composition, but is revealed in the subject matter itself.
The Authority of the Bible
The authority of the Scripture is linked to the community which acknowledges it, but is not derived from that community. In acknowledging the authority of Scripture, we as a community acknowledge that the content of the Bible has a special claim upon us.
We also acknowledge three ecumenical creeds of the ancient church. The church in fact acknowledged a series of canons (or standards): a canon of faithùsummarized in the Apostles' Creed; a canon of writingsùwhat can be read publicly in the church; a canon of liturgyùan order for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. The Scriptures which could be read publicly in the church were the Old Testament and the collection of gospels and apostolic writings which came to constitute the documents of the New Covenant. These commonly numbered the same 27 books in the Eastern and Western churches by the end of the 4th century.
As Lutherans we claim that the Scriptureùamong other canons or authoritiesùis the primary canon to which we look, because it is our chief revelation of God, who is also the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Later the authoritative Word was reduced to the message of God's justifying act in Jesus Christ. But it is just as important for our generation to understand what it means to have a LORD as to understand what it means to have a SAVIOR.
In the face of the profoundly distorting readings of the Bible in our time, we may find that Luther's sola scriptura principle is inadequate. At least as a temporary buttress, we may wish to add (with Adolf Harnack): (1) an affirmation of the Apostles' Creed as a marvelous summary of Biblical faith, and (2) to affirm our place within the traditional church and our continuity with those who uphold the faith once delivered to the saints.
In other words, Lutherans who affirm the importance of the church as obedient carrier of the tradition, are our allies. And those who affirm strongly God's justifying act in Christ are our allies, because they affirm a God whose righteousness requires a radical act to bring us into a beneficent relationship with Him.
Our opponents – whether by ignorance or malice – are those who would stand in judgment over the Scriptures, those who would adjust the strong word of Scripture to the relativities of the neo-pagan time in which we live. They may be nice people. But faithfulness to Christ is not about civility. As the Apostle Paul says, our struggle is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness.
Put simply, the debate of our time is not about the theories of the Bible's origin, but about the content of the proclamation. The genteel enemy is the man or woman who either rejects a personal god completely, or more perversely, one who substitutes a god so distant from the biblical picture of Yahweh or Jesus Christ, as to be in serious discontinuity with the Bible.
And make no mistake, that god – loving, warm, always accepting and affirming – is the god of much of America. Santa Claus without a red suit. A god who only comes out when called upon – and then always and only to bless.
Christians who take the Bible as authority know a God who hates sin, a God who not only redeemed us, but will ultimately judge us – albeit with our advocate Jesus Christ at our side. We understand ourselves as being under that living Lord. It is fearful and exciting; and it's a life and death matter.
We therefore do not broker His image, the God to whom Scripture calls us back when we are tempted to project images of a god we would rather have, much as the children of Israel did in the wilderness with the golden calf.
The Perspicuity of the Bible
The perspicuity of the Bible is a key doctrine of the Reformation. It asserts that the meanings of the text can be clear to the ordinary reader, that God uses the text of the Bible to communicate His person and will.
Opposition to this teaching has more recently centered in linguists, some of whom believe that only those who read the Bible in its original Hebrew and Greek are fit interpreters. (An ironic position, since the words of our Lord Jesus come to us already translated from his native Aramaic. By these linguists' own standards, no one then would have access to Jesus.)
Not only is language a barrier, but is there not a 20-century gap between us and the nearest biblical texts? Currents of thought and assumptions differ from that time to ours. Hence it is argued that all but the most learned reader will inevitably misread the Scriptures.
The opposite, no doubt nourished by this elitism toward the Bible, is to treat it as 'candy for your mind" – that is, agree that the Bible can mean anything the reader finds tasty in it for himself. From such interpretation we come away rarely knowing more of the Bible, but we do learn of the struggles of faith of the interpreter. To tolerate or even encourage this kind of blurring of the line between text and interpreter is an abuse of our confidence that God will speak to us through the Bible.
A Fence for Perspicuity
This is an abuse of the Bible's perspicuity, and indicates we need to build afence around this doctrine, that is, define it more circumspectly. Thesepointscome to mind:
(1) For doctrinal purposes, the New Testament has a clear position of superiority to the Old. The Old Testament predicts, prefigures and prepares for the adventofjesus Christ, Sonof God, Savior. It is important in its affirmation of God as the Creator and ultimate redeemer of the world. But we Christians live under the new covenant, not the old.
(2) Doctrine is defined by the church as it weighs Scripture, tradition and experience. It is not reinvented every generation. Nor is it simply lifted from individual texts (the baptism for the dead of the Mormons for example). When we read the Bible as individual Christiansù-even clergy in our preparation for preaching – we are not formulating doctrine. So the Apostle Paul cautions, "If even an angel from God should preach to you another gospel from that which you received, let him be accursed."
(3) Yet the Bible is a living, active, busy thing. And it has a word to speak to anyone who opens it, or hears it read. My recent encounter withapracticing Christian illustrates this. Invited to a Christian friend's home for a college break, he was impressed by the family and their interaction. He went with them to church that Sunday and was converted. When he later told the pastor, the latter embarrassedly could not recall what the sermon was about. "Oh," the student said." You weren't preaching that day – somebody from the seminary was in the pulpit asking for money. No, it wasn't the sermon – it was the Gloria. I knew the music in Latin. But I'd never before heard the words in English."
That's the perspicuity of Scripture! It can reach out and grab you – in a lesson in church, on acard, in a hymn, in the liturgy. That doesn't make you Mr. or Mrs. orthodox Christian. You may have miles to go, rough edges to smooth. Yet as surely as Moses when he gazed upon the burning bush – you have heard the very voice of God!
Three Answers about Scripture
Thirty years ago – fresh from the benefits this world's learning has to offer, I posed questions. Today, in the midst of a neo-pagan culture, older, and hopefully wiser, 1 want to underline three answers about the Scripture, which I passionately believe are as true about the Bible today as when the first bit of B ible emerged among our Hebrew ancestors in the faith.
The Bible is supernatural. While it may not have fallen from the sky, it has the glimmer and sparkle of angel dust, and the faint rustling of angel feathers. This characteristic of the Bible alone should make anyone who has ever treated aBible disrespectfully to blush.
The Bible is authoritative. Church doctrine ought to be measured in relation to it. A church or believer who listens to it will find a consistent rootage in God's will which sustains through tumultuous times. Abandoning itùor cavalierly standing in judgment over it – makes one vulnerable to relativism.
The Bible is perspicuous. It is a treasure to the believer. God gave it to the church, the whole church. Both wise and simple women and men’ yes, and children, will continue to find Him in its pages.
* Dr. Johnson is Dean of the Faculty of Lutheran Bible Institute in California. Holding a doctorate from Harvard University, he served as Dean of the Faculty at Hamma School of Theology, New Testament professor at Trinity Seminary, and as the hugely successful pastor of Salem Church in St. Cloud, MN. These abridged remarks are from his inaugural installation address at LBIC.
Perspectives
According to the Ecumenical Press Service (5/19), China will have printed more than 8 million new Bibles by this September, using paper given by the United Bible Societies. Four million new hymnals have been printed also.
Seven million Protestants are officially counted by the China Christian Council these days, more than double the number who could be named when the first Christian Church was reopened in 1979 after the Communist Cultural Revolution. That 1979 figure was up from 700,000 known Protestant Christians in China when the Communist Revolution began 30 years before. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Thirteen seminaries are now functioning, with only one-sixth of the applicants accepted, for lack of space. The first and largest seminary, reopened in Nanjing, which your editor visited in 1981, now has 150 full-time students. Senior Beijing pastor Yang Zhouhai told EPS,"At Christmas lime pastors have to ask people not to come to church because it's too crowded and there won't be room for new members".
Evangelical sources in Hong Kong believe there actually may be more than 100 million Christians in China today. Most of them meet secretly in house churches forbidden by the government, which demands official registration of all church groups so that a single eye can be kept on their doings.
If this last figure has validity, it would mean percentage-wise there may well be more real Christians in Communist China (living their faith at the risk of prison and persecution) than there are in America. For one can seriously doubt if 10% of our nation could likewise be counted as actively Christian. (While about 50% claim Christian Church membership, no more than 30% of this number show up in church on a given Sunday, where there is no overt persecution or ridicule for one's allegiance to Christianity.)
ALSO WORLD MISSION ADVANCE?
The 540 million Twice-born Christians across theearth, found in some seven million congregations, have been rallying to the goal of "a church for every people and the Gospel for every person by the year 2000." An"unreached people" is any people-group that does not yet have a culturally-relevant church that is capable of reaching the rest of the group without outside assistance.
Can it be done? "No way," says George Verwer, International Director of Operation Mobilization, "without a massive surge of new missionaries." 40,000 are ready to go right now if churches would back them and send them out, estimates Rick Wood of the US Center for World Mission. One missionary needs to be sent out from every 300 congregations, and that would cover the 11,000 Unreached Peoples groups.
Wood points to the ominous finding, however, that according to The North American Mission Handbook, "for the first time in American history the number of career missionaries is dropping. In 1988 America fielded more than 50,000 missionaries. By 1992 that number dwindled to about 41,000"
Commenting further on the goal for the year 2000, Verwer says, "It is a mistake to think that the next big move is God's. His big moves have already taken place: the Cross, the empty tomb, and Pentecost. Now it is our turn. We need to repent and turn from all that is hindering us from doing God's will in our day."
Breakfast with Mother Teresa
[Editor's note.: At Washington's National Prayer Breakfast in February, Mother Teresa addressed these abridged remarks to the 3000 guests. They spontaneously leaped to their feet in a standing ovationùexcept for the President and Vice President of the U.Sand their spouses. They sat and stared in stony silence, according to the Los Angeles Times Syndicate columnist, Cat Thomas.]
It is not enough for us to say, "I love God." How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? Love, to be true, has to hurt. I must be willing to give whatever it takes not to harm other people, and, in fact, to do good to them. This requires that I be willing to give until it hurts.
Otherwise, there is no true love in me, and 1 bring injustice, not peace, to those around me. It hurt Jesus to love us.
"I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. If we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
Persuading for Life
"How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love. Love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.
"By abortion the mother kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.
"Many people are very very concerned with the children of India, witli the children of Africa, where quite a few die of hunger. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who arc being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. [Editor: According to Planned Parenthood';; figures: 31.5 million unborn baby deaths in the U.S. since the Roe-Wade decision in 1973ùfour thousand three hundred and fifteen every day – a dead baby every 20 seconds! ]. This is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today – abortion which brings people to such blindness.
Bring the Child Back
"For this Iappeal in India and I appeal everywhereù 'Let us bring the child back.' The child is God's gift to the family. Each child is created in the special image and likeness of God for greater things-ù to love and to be loved. In this year of the family, we must bring the child back to the center of our care and concern. This is the only way that our world can survive because our children are the only hope for the future. As older people are called to God, only their children can take their places.
"But what does God say to us? He says, Even if a mother could forget her child, I will not forget you, I have carved you in the palm of My hand. We are carved in the palm of His hand; that unborn child has been carved in the hand of God from conception, and is called by God to love and to be loved, not only now in this life, but forever. God can never forget us.
"I will tell you something beautiful. We arc fighting abortion by adoptionùby care of the mother and adoption for her baby. We have saved thousands of lives. We always have someone tell the mothers in trouble, 'Come, we will take care of you; we will get a home for your child.'
"Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortion.
"We cannot solve all the problems in the world, but let us never bring in the worst problem of allùand this is to destroy love."
Addendum
(Editor's note: In February 1994 ,Mother Teresa submitted a brief to the U.S Supreme Court in the case of Alexander Loce v. New Jersey, Its clear reasoning should be shared with our FOCL Point renders);
"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships, (t has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts – a child – as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominance over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconsiderable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners.
"Human rights are not aprivilegeconferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."
READER RESPONSES
HEART-BREAKING!
Dear Editor:
The condition of the ELCA is heartbreaking. The influence of feminism, the issue of homosexuality, and liberalism in the seminaries present a grave threat to the identity and Lutheran integrity of the church.
Rev. Bruce Wilmont Adams, Glengourie, S. Australia.
OVERLY KIND?
Dear Editor:
Pastor Gordon Selbo's recent article inFOCLPOINT, "Assembly Reflections" (Spring 1994), is much appreciated. He raises a number of signficant issues and contradictions related to the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA and its April Assembly.
Certainly the most unfortunate thing to come out of that Assembly was the defeat of Resolution 94-4, which would have rescinded the Synod Council's "Statement on Pastoral Guidance and Discretion" which "allowsfor'the pastoral blessing of monogamous, covenantal, same-sex relations.'" (The Lutheran, June 1994, p. 47).
The Council's original document, we should note, lists a number of current authorities for its position, including, "Biblical scholars, social scientists, theologians, physicians, medical researchers, ethicists, and other experts."
Yet, interestingly enough, this list omits Scripture as an authority, even though the ELCA Constitution maintains that "the canonical Scriptures (are the) authoritative source and norm of its proclamation, faith, and life." (2.03).
IF ALL ELSE FAILS, READ THE DIRECTIONS!
Had the Synod Council been able to lay its hands on the Scriptures for present guidance, it could have saved us ail a lot of trouble, as the Scriptures decline the approval of, much less the blessing of, same-sex genital relations whether they be monogamous, covenantal, sincere, committed, loving, or whatever. One reason for this, no doubt, was the persecution and martyrdom of many early Christians at the hands of Roman homosexuals who went by the name of Caesar.
If anything, Pastor Selbo is being overly kind in referring to this synod as "out-of-step." 1 would suggest that this synod has taken "another step" away from the Church catholic, and towards accommodation with the spirit of the times, and the spirit of the world.
(Rev.) William Bragstad, Ph.D. Hay ward, CA