Lutheran CORE
Coalition for Reform
February 14, 2007
Dear Christian Friends,
Most of us had hoped that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America would have a respite from the troublesome sexuality issues this year, and that we would not have to address them until the 2009 churchwide assembly. However, last week we learned of two decisions that will likely result in these issues being addressed at the assemblies this year. The groups in the ELCA working for approval of homosexual behavior have made them front burner issues this year.
Early this month, the New England Synod released a set of guidelines for the blessing of same sex unions. These guidelines, approved by that synod's Synod Council, provide suggestions for the blessing of same sex unions, including a public liturgy for such occasions. According to these guidelines, such blessings are a part of the church's pastoral care for
gay and lesbian persons.
Last week, the discipline hearing committee in the case of Pastor Bradley Schmeling released its report. Pastor Schmeling, a pastor in the Southeastern Synod, has acknowledged that he is in a sexual partnership with another man. The bishop of the Southeastern Synod followed constitutional provisions for discipline and presented the case to a discipline hearing committee for a decision on the pastor's roster status.
The report of the committee directs that Pastor Schmeling be removed from the pastoral office on August 15 after the churchwide assembly. The report goes further, however, and urges synod assemblies to memorialize the 2007 churchwide assembly and churchwide organization to take action that would allow for the ordination of partnered and practicing gay and lesbian persons.
The actions of both the New England Synod Council and the Schmeling discipline hearing committee are in conflict with previous decisions of our church. Regarding the New England guidelines, the Synod Council appropriately refers to the need for pastoral care for gay and lesbian persons. It cites as reference, Recommendation 2 on Same Sex Blessings, as adopted by the 2005 churchwide assembly. However, the Synod Council has chosen to disregard the other part of that recommendation which states, "We recognize that there is basis neither in Scripture nor in tradition for the establishment of an official ceremony by this church for the blessing of a homosexual relationship We, therefore, do not approve such a ceremony as an official action of this church's ministry."
Regarding the report of the discipline hearing committee, we recognize the tragic necessity of removing Pastor Schmeling from the pastoral office. His behavior is a clear violation of provisions in Vision and Expectations and Definitions and Guidelines. However, the report calls on synods to memorialize the churchwide assembly, and urges that these memorials provide for the ordination of gay and lesbian persons who are in homosexual relationships. In this, the committee has clearly exceeded its constitutional mandate. The churchwide constitution is clear that the function of a discipline hearing committee is to make a decision on discipline. The committee is not charged with making further recommendations on anything.
The Lutheran CORE steering committee takes strong exception to the guidelines of the New England Synod. We also take strong exception to the discipline hearing committee's recommendation that synods memorialize the churchwide assembly to rescind its 2005 actions regarding ordination. More importantly, these actions stand in contrast to the Biblical norm for marriage and human relationships, as we have confessed them through the ages. According to Holy Scripture, marriage is a union of one man and one woman, and other sexual relationships do not conform to the mind of the Creator.
Lutheran CORE has, therefore, initiated a number of steps to respond to both actions. We are developing a strategy to address these issues, should they come to the floor of the 2007 churchwide assembly - as now seems likely. We are in contact with colleagues in several synods, and we are preparing a synod assembly memorial to the churchwide assembly. This memorial will indicate that pastoral care does not include the blessing of same sex unions. We are working with colleagues in several synods to the end that their synod councils address the question to the Church Council: does pastoral care mean the blessing of same sex unions?
We are grateful that we are working cooperatively with the WordAlone Network and with others who share our commitment to the orthodox practice of our church.
What can you do? Here are some strong suggestions: You can become familiar with the documents, the discipline hearing committee report: www.elca-ses.org./Hearing/Decision%20of%20discipline%20committee%20-%20signed.pdf
The New England Synod guidelines: http://wordalone.org/pdf/new-england01.pdf.
In your own way, you can spread the word of what these documents say and mean. You can speak with the voting members from your synod to the churchwide assembly and urge them to speak and vote in favor of preserving the present standards for marriage and ordination. You can write letters - polite, thoughtful, carefully constructed letters. In fact, we urge you to do this, especially with reference to the statement of the New England Synod Council. You need to write to your synodical bishop, synod council and to any Church Council member within your synod - with a copy to Bishop Margaret Payne of the New England Synod (20 Upland Street, Worcester, MA 01607-1530). Our bishops and councils need to hear from us, how seriously we take this issue.
We earnestly urge you to be constant in prayer over our church these days. Our bishops and other leaders need our prayers. When they were installed into their offices, we promised to pray for them. So let us be about this during these troubling days, when so many have become weary with these discussions.
We readily confess that the center of our church lies in God's justifying grace in Christ. Through Holy Scripture, God speaks to us in both law and Gospel. God's grace does not nullify the law. God's grace does not give us permission to do whatever we would choose to do. The grace of God empowers us to a "new obedience."
The Return of the Fathers
R. R. Reno, associate professor of theology at Creighton University.
These are a few excerpts from the article, edited to fit in our limited format. Be mindful that Luther’s inspiration came from St. Augustine, one of the Church Fathers as he sought renewal for the church. Perhaps it is in times like these that we do well to look back to see the future more clearly.
I teach at a Catholic university that employs humdreds of professors, and the evidence is plain to see. Only two or three scientists seem willing or able to speak about the relation between the truths of faith and the hypothesis of science. Nobody studies or teaches Dante. The extensive modern tradition of Catholic social teaching has no role to play in political science. The history department employs no one to teach the Middle Ages. Administrative initiatives consistently emphasize “diversity,” and the practical effect, whether intended or not, is a slow reorientation of faculty and curriculum away from a collective focus on Western Christian intellectual tradition. The retiring professor who specialized in Dryden and Pope is replaced by a young Ph.D. whose interests run to gender studies and post-colonial theory.
If this is happening at a self-consciously Catholic university, imagine what the situation is like at Yale and UCLA. Intellectual life is now dominated by the first truly post-Christian generation. A friend of mine at Yale two decades ago wrote his senior paper on James Joyce’s use of Trinitarian language. Ignorant of Christian doctrine, he set out to find a faculty member who might provide guidance. I remember his dismay when he told me that he could not find anyone who could explain to him the classical Christian doctrine of Trinity.
The situation has only gotten worse in the intervening years. A student at Princeton and Harvard – or Georgetown and Boston College, for that matter – now studies with teachers who have no knowledge of Christianity other than crude caricatures long retailed by progressive illuminati. Christianity no longer exists as an integrated world view that shapes the education and mental habits of modern people in the West.
It is not the case, however, that we must live alone in the ruins of Christendom. The poverty of the present need not cut us off from the wealth of the past. The Church Fathers are returning as agents of renewal, guiding us toward the biblical source of a truly Christian culture.
The Church Fathers return, but what do they bring with them? Any student who picks up a treatise by one of the Fathers cannot but notice the intensely Scriptural focus. A first-time reader, however, will find ideas imbedded in what seems endless arguments about how to read specific biblical passages. Heresy is not, finally, about doctrine; it is about reading the Bible in the wrong way.
The basic patristic project was simple: to take all things captive to Christ. The Fathers did so by saturating their ideas, their lives, and their communities with Scripture. But as they return, they do not simply bring us Scripture as an undifferentiated mass of text, nor do they thrust the Bible into our hands without instructions for use. All the power of Christian truth may reside in the biblical text, but, as the Church Fathers recognized, we need to organize our minds and sanctify our lives so that the Word of God might live in us. This requires the rule of faith.
Later councils and creeds give precision to aspects of the rule of faith, but its overall shape remains fluid. Yet this no more hinders the patristic project than the lack of a unified theory limits modern science. Under the guidance of the rule of faith, Irenaeus argues, we can avoid childish errors and simplistic solutions.
According to Augustine, the problem is not that we have bodies and live in a finite world. Sin is not ontological, as if being a finite, embodied creature were the root of our problem. Instead, the problem rests in our will and personality. We can either love and enjoy finite reality, taking it to be the sum total of what makes life worth living, or we can use that reality in such a way that we make spiritual progress toward the infinite and eternal truth that is the Holy Trinity. The latter is the way of sanctification, for it requires us to discipline our finite loves so that they might serve rather than impede a crowning love of God. “The mind should be cleansed,” as Augustine writes, so that we can see the divine light. This cleansing is not speculative or abstract. It involves the specific moral and spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.
The issues preoccupying editorial pages and the evening news are not trivial or unimportant. We have a duty to fight for moral truth in a Western culture increasingly committed to a velvet barbarism. This will certainly involve defending and buttressing fragments of a Christian culture now being eroded. But we should not confuse what we must do for the defense of life and social sanity with the deeper task of renewing Christian culture in the West.
We must do what we can to limit the damage done by the barbarians of our time, but the renewal of the culture they now control will require the revolutionary power of people whose lives are immersed in Scripture. Men and women saturated in Scripture are as explosive as rags soaked in gasoline, but, unlike Molotov cocktails, the fire of divine love transforms and perfects rather than destroys and consumes. This the Father knew, and this they teach us as they return.
Letter to the Editor
James Kallas
The F.O.C.L. POINT issue of August 2005 was superb, one of your very best in defining and denouncing the impious assertions of being forced upon the ELCA.
There is a klaxon-like clarity ringing through Karl Donfried’s extended article as well. His observation that our confession that all people are sinful does not mean we condone sinful behavior cuts to the core of contemporary befuddled thinking. It is the transgression which is to be abandoned, nots its prohibition.
But as compelling and insightful as are the other articles, the most penetrating comment is in Prager’s analysis of his debate with Dershowitz: “When Professor Dershowitz differs with the Torah, he assumes he is right and the Torah is wrong. When I differ with the Torah, I assume I am wrong and the Torah is right.”
Here is the heart, the fatal threat, the destructive assertation and error of those who urge homosexuality upon us. The have abandoned the primacy of Scripture. The Reformation principle f “The Word Alone,” is discarded. When contemporary culture concerns confront us and contradict what Scripture clearly says, the Scripture is no longer the ultimate arbiter. It no longer judges us. We judge it, rewrite it, casting it into a new format compatable to our altered attitudes.
This insidious undermining of the integrity of Scripture was the basic building block from Rudolf Bulmann’s heralded program of demythologizing Scripture. His writings did not create or introduce the desire to rewrite Scripture to fit our own views. But those writings gave that desire an undeserved legitimacy.
Bultmann’s thesis is simple, built on three assertions. The first is that Jesus’ message was based upon the apocalyptic view, who believed in the reality of Satan and his eventual overthrow, the end of the world. His second point is that though Jesus accepted those ideas, Modern Man does not. The third point is that since Jesus’ views clearly recognize the reality of the pessimistic-dualistic view of Satanic corruption of the total world-complex, and since Modern Man will not accept the accuracy or authenticity of such views, the views of Jesus must be rewritten, cast into a new form, divested of mythological guard and adorned in a new raiment, cast into a new form acceptable to our world view. If we retain archaic and unacceptable ideas of the New Testament we will be unable to communicate with Modern Man; we will loose our audience.
His solution is attractive: change the language, not the content. Change the way we speak, but retain the original intent of that now outdated language. Recast eschatology. No longer see temporally, but existentially. Talk not about the end time, but the time of change in one’s own life. Talk not of the end of the world, but the opening of one’s own eyes, the seeing of light, the acceptance of God’s rule. Recast demonology. No longer use antiquated and asinine terms like Satan, demons, the devil and his power to make one sick. No one believes that.
It was Bultmann’s claim that this substitution of language would not compromise nor contradict Scripture, but would instead clarify the true intent of the Bible writers while making their message acceptable to us today. This was the claim, but it was untrue. Scripture was not simply rewritten, it was violated, contradicted, its essence ignored or rejected.
Bultmann is relentlessly thorough. He recognizes that if one rejects the reality of evil powers outside of man and insists that they cannot invade of alter us, to be consistent, one must resist good powers outside of man as well. And this is what his demythologizing does: “[Modern Man] finds what the New Testament has to say about the ‘Spirit’ . . . utterly strange and incomprehensible.”
The earliest, most emphatic, eloquent and adament insistence of the earliest church was not on the reality of the cross, but on the explosive victory of the resurrection. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain . . . is Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. . . . If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.” When Modern Man sets himself up as the yardstick over Scripture, only then are such passages as Bultmann’s denial of the resurrection possible: “An historical event which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable.”
The purpose of the recall of these ideas which surfaced thirty or forty years ago is to emphasize the fact that while the major current issue before the church is the matter of homosexuality, the true problem confronting us is much broader than that. What chaos is unleashed when we seek to bring Scripture into accord with the views of Modern Man, rather than bringing the views of Modern Man into accord with Scripture.
1.Roy Harrisville II spoke of a conversation he had with Bultmann prior to his death in which Bultmann lamented how his work had been perverted to be used to strip authority away from Scripture. It was Bultmann’s intent to try and strip away the objections of modern man to the Gospel by uncovering the mythological elements inherent in a first century world-view in order to get down to the central message of justification by faith. So, if we shoot arrows at Bultmann, we’re liable to hit Luther in the background. Bultmannn’s attempt was noble, but his subjectivism submarined his own agenda.
A letter to the Editor was received castigating FOCL Point’s views. Appropriate to this publication portions of the letter are herein printed, with response for your consideration.
“To confess is to speak with someone else, to say the same words as another. The Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans in its publication of FOCL POINT (January 2005, Issue 2) does confess. However, it never speaks with Christ.
Christ says he forgives those who are against God, who don't fear God, who don't love God, and does so with God's authority. Christ says he dies on a cross and rises again so that forgiveness – God's promise of mercy for those who don't love God – can be proclaimed in his name. Christ says he is the resurrection for all who believe him. These words of Christ are never spoken by FOCL. Rather, they confess, not Christ and forgiveness, but Moses and condemnation.”
In reply:
Let us explore together what is being said. For those who think in terms of the author of this letter to the editor, are you really willing to ‘dialog’ as has often been the stated request in our church, or is it – as many of the proponents of FOCL have feared – that you’ll talk at us until we die or go away.
The message is consistent. Jesus died for the sins of all. That is what Scripture says and here we have no argument. The Word Incarnate, the Anointed Salvation of God (as the Hebrew Yeshua Ha-Mashiach means), died and rose again giving the promise of God’s mercy for . . . here’s where the exact use of words gets tricky. You stated, “for those who don’t love God.” But in the very next sentence, you say, “for all who believe in Him.” So I guess you agree with the need for a qualifier.
You see, we can say that Jesus died for everyone – and He did – but that does not mean that we can agree that the imputation of grace through Christ’s sacrifice is given to everyone – carte blanche. Jesus Himself said, “for as many as believe, to them He gives the power to become the children of God.” Did we not hear the qualifier in the Second Lesson on the First Sunday in Lent, when Scripture declared: “If you confess him with your mouth , ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” But what if you don’t say, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart? Jesus also taught that there would be a separation of goats from sheep in Matthew 18. Is Jesus blood for all, or just for the many, as the synoptic Gospels state? Quite frankly, what do you do with some folk who don’t want to be saved? If someone doesn’t want to be with God, or any god, is God going to ‘force’ that person to reside with Him forever? Where’s free will? Does this not create an illogical conclusion to universal imputation of grace?
It’s not a matter of being smarter, better, selected, or any other criterion (by the way, criteria is a Greek word that very much plays a part of what we’re talking about here – you’ll find its definition in Strong’s Concordance, number 2922). It’s a matter of understanding the nature of God’s choice in revealing who He is. The God of Christianity is not arbitrary, nor vague in revealing Himself. The account of Scripture is one where the story of God’s intervention in to human affairs is clearly evident.
Being a Christian, as it is historically understood, is not the same as believing in a universal salvation provided by Christ. All roads leading to the same salvation is a contradictory oxymoron that is neither logical, nor viable. A faithful Muslim would not agree to a reciprocal view that his faith was just one of many. Without getting into the very real differences between faiths, there are different roads leading to different places. The offer of Christ is one of a personal relationship with the God who Created everything. Yes, there is condemnation in Scripture. But God’s desire that all would come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Jesus spoke of Moses too. Moses know the God that Jesus revealed. FOCL confesses the God that revealed Himself in the Incarnation, was crucified, died and was resurrected. Scripture is the Word about the Incarnate Word. All of it – the parts we like and the parts we do not like. We don’t choose, God does. Why is it that Luther’s primer of Christianity, the Small Catechism begins with the Ten Commandments and ends with the Sacraments and the Office of the Keys? Are not these each parts of the whole?
The Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans is committed to holding fast to the faith – in its entirety – as it has been delivered throughout the ages.
The Editor
A letter to the editor was received by the FOCL Point editor in frustration of finding a venue to comment about the article “Looking for God in Creation,” in the October 2006 Lutheran. The purpose of publishing this letter is not to open a theological discussion of evolution, but to understand the subtle influences of learning that cause us to assume as fact that which is still intellectual speculation. In keeping with the tone of this issue of FOCL Point, see this in light og a seeming intentionality to move away from our orthodox understanding of how we views Scripture.
RESPONSE TO “Looking for God in Creation
In discussing the Copernican revolution, the author of the Lutheran article writes, “We read of Martin Luther’s dismissal of Copernicus with a reference to Joshua telling the sun to stand still – not the earth. Literalism always gets you in trouble.” It is more correct to say that false information always gets you into trouble.
The statement used as a Luther quote was made in June 1539, a piece of casual talk published in Table Talk, and was made before the work of Copernicus was printed. That Luther’s theological authority hampered the understanding Copernicus proposed is a palpable falsification of history.
Joachim Rhaeticus, a mathematics professor at the University of Wittenberg, and a colleague of Luther’s, played a chief role in promoting the work of Copernicus. The work was subsidized by a Lutheran prince, Duke Albrecht of Prussia, and supervised by a Lutheran mathematics professor from Wittenberg, Andrea Oseander. Copernicus new world view was accepted first in Wittenberg and Nurnberg, under the auspices of Lutherans. It wasn’t just Copernicus, but Lutherans such as Erasmus Reinhold, Johann Kepler and Tycho Brahe who were there for the beginning of the scientific method of modern times, flourishing in the heart of the Lutheran Reformation.
Though Copernicus remained a Roman Catholic all his life, it was the Roman church that condemned him, while simultaneously falsely accusing Luther and his associates of hampering the knowledge of the earth’s movement.
In this article, there is not one piece of scientific evidence to support the thesis of the article concerning evolution. For the author, Hollanbaugh, to say that he personally witnessed astronomical and geological evolution when he saw a supernova in 1975 and an earthquake in 2000 is emotional sentiment, not science. It is sheer speculation to declare that an exploding star light years away produced the chemical elements necessary for life, or that we owe our the existence of life to ocean basins created by earthquakes.
The article ignores the startling developments in the field of microbiology, understanding the DNA code, three-dimensions proteins, irreducible complexity, make the thesis presented, as C. S. Lewis called it, “A great myth.”
One final comment on the quotation of Luther, which says the Bible is “the manger in which Christ is found,” which seems to me to imply that the Bible isn’t important. The actual quote comes from Luther’s Introduction to the Old Testament. He begins, “There are some who have a small opinion of the Old testament, thinking it is a book that was given to the Jewish people only, and is now out of date, containing only stories of past times.” After quoting Paul, Peter and Jesus who urged the study of Scripture, Luther continues, “They do this in order to teach us that the Scriptures of the Old testament are not to be despised . . . there are the very words, works, judgements, and deeds of the high majesty, power, and wisdom of God. Think of the Scriptures as the loftiest and noblest of holy things. Here you will find the swaddling-clothes and the mangers in which Christ lies, and to which the angel points the shepherds.” Clearly, Luther is emphasizing the authority of the Old Testament.
Theodore E. Guetzlaff, Waverly Iowa