It's A Spiritual Sickness

By Dr. Jack Eichhorst

The quota system, Higgins Road Headquarters, bishops – we can rant and rave about them. They are only symptoms of the troubles in the ELCA. Trouble started with the predecessor bodies, long before the ELCA was formed. But because this is my church, in one way or another I share in its troubles, in its suffering and hopefully, in helping it into a more positive future. But getting there will be a painful journey.

TROUBLE NUMBER ONE

The first trouble, AUTHORITY, is a word on which many choke. It comes off our lips with a fear of authoritarianism. Whether it be in organizational matters, matters of doctrine or the Bible, we seem afraid of authority.

Such a negative disposition toward authority is rooted in the Enlightenment. Radical individualism has won. The church is made up of people bent on "doing their own thing," people with an attitude that "no one is going to tell me what to do."

Pop psychology has also shaped the public and thus the church. Knowing the truth is out; getting in touch with your feelings is in. We all know the lingo: "Feelings are neither right nor wrong; everyone has a right to his feelings." The lead question is, "How do you feel about it?" Feel good is the goal.

No small culprit in creating this environment has been the Clinical Pastoral Education movement (CPE). It is amazing how pastors rejected a "feeling" religion in Pietism, which at least had Jesus and the Bible as its corrective, but they then fell into secular sensitivity models, with virtually no internal correctives.

Under this influence we produce pastors who are "enablers" and "facilitators." The model has not been to preach and teach "with authority" (Mark 1:22), but to counsel and get at feelings.

Should we now be so surprised to be part of a church that has God-trouble? Surprised to find a gospel whose core is that God feels good about us, and so we should feel good ?

God, the supreme authority of heaven and earth, of alI things political and all things spiritual, such a God does not fit the culture or the church created in the past forty years. In this scheme a God who loves through law and judgment, a God who calls for obedience and submission, a God before whom we are by nature children of wrath, and who rightfully judges us – such a God does not fit!

This church does not have a theological headache; it is suffering from serious heart disease. It chokes on the central confession of the early church, namely, that "Jesus Christ is Lord."

Any church that becomes shaped by an anti-authorily posture must sooner or later live in rebellion against God. If Jesus Christ is Lord, the all-powerful "self" whose highest goal is "self-realization," must either bow or rebel.

The ELCA is filled with rebellion. See the search for other gods and goddesses. Official synod gatherings and assemblies invoke the god of the "fourdirections/' "andwhateverother gods there be." This stuff parades in the name environmental concerns and avant-garde "spirituality."

This deep spiritual sickness is precisely the kind addressed by the Old Testament prophets, Elijah, Jeremiah, and Hosea. We face a First Commandment problem; we are worshiping other gods. For this we need a prophetic solution. The call must be: "Repent and believe the Gospel."

TROUBLE NUMBER TWO

We are having trouble with the AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE. Cod's book is not faring much better than God. Even referring to the Bible as "God's book" sounds specious in a church now shaped for decades by a principle of Bible-suspicion. In a church searching for other gods, it is not surprising to find a search for other books. We are driven not by "Holy Book" promotion, but by "Holy Book" demotion. Biblical illiteracy and ignorance are pervasive; biblical authority is up for grabs; Bible usage is sparse. Why use, why bel ieve, why trust, why put ourselves under a book that is simply another human document?

What can we expect but unbelief toward the Bible when for at least three decades we have been teaching in such a way as to provide our college and seminary students with reasons not to trust or believe it? Think back on all the efforts in Lutheran colleges and seminaries to knock the stuffings of pietistic or fundamentalistic views of the Scriptures out of students. We have had thirty years of critical overkill that has produced predicable results: skepticism, cynicism and rank unbelief about the Bible. Who will hand down our holy faith as teaching, as doctrine, as dogma, as Confession and as Scripture to be believed?

A generation of clergy shaped and frozen in this hypercritical disposition toward the Bible, now pastor our congregations. A biblically illiterate laity increasingly fills our membership rosters as "paper members", who warm our pews less and less. Those resembling "pietists" or "fundamentalists" – the twin enemies of this enlightened (!) ELCA – are on the endangered species list. Many have already taken a long hike to other churches. After ten more years offunerals in our congregations, the ranks of the stubborn faithful will be very thin indeed.

There is one thing we can count on in this church when it comes to doctrine and the Bible: there is openness, openness as long as the positions espoused are of the left. No wonder one sees more and more references lo the Bible as, at besi, "a guide" tor the ELCA. Compare that to such words as" inerrant", "infallible", or as "the" norm in all matters of failh and life."ù all words used for millennia in the Church to describe the Scriptures.

Should we be surprised that the Bible is a book into which preacher and lay person feel free to read their own predilections? In this world of the "counseling view of truth"ùhow 1 feel about the Bible and what it means – is just as good as how anyone else feels.

Even Luther himself has been enlisted in what might be described as a battle against the Bible. The Luther who exalted the authority of Scripture, who laid his own reason, heart and soul prostrate before Scripture, is forgotten. Likewise the Luther who was a man of constant, fervent prayer and devotion.

It is my deepest conviction that had the spirit of the present church, the ELCA, prevailed in the days of my youth, I would scarcely have become a Christian. I most certainly would not have become a pastor. I did not learn the Bible at my mother's knee, nor did I learn the faith from my father. Family prayer and devotions were not a part of my upbringing. Being a pastor would have ranked quite a bit below a used-car salesman on my list of aspirations.

But I came in contact with pastors who had a passionate love for Jesus Christ and who believed others should know him by faith as well. None of those poor souls knew studies in Bible Criticism. Some of them were certainly "Pietists;" maybe even some were "Fundamentalists." In a wondrous way, through that Book that was believed in by others, Christ came alive to me, and the desire to follow him, do his will, to use the Bible and to pray, was born.

For two years I entrusted my life to teachers in a Bible school. All had likely been ordained while subscribing to a statement of faith which said this book was "inerrant and infallible." Imagine the dangers to which they exposed me! Furthermore, I memorized Bible verses, even the whole book of Philippians. I learned how to talk to other people about Jesus Christ and learned to meditate and pray for one or two hours a day.

Subsequently, at a Lutheran college all my religion teachers opened their classes with prayer, a practice also followed by ail my seminary professors. When we studied Irenaeus and Origen in Latin and Greek I was treated with respect for recognizing Bible quotations that were not referenced. Later at the University of Muenster the radical critical approach of Professor Will Marxsen did not put me into a tailspin because I had come to know the Bible as a book of faith in a church committed to teaching the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible.

By contrast I now find myself to be part of a church where ultimately the Bible is trashed more than trusted – pious rhetoric not withstanding – and belittled more than believed. The same church that is filled with rebellion toward God is filled with rebellion toward God's book. Again the call: "repent and believe the Gospel."

TROUBLE COMES IN THREES

From the above it follows that we are in trouble over FAITH, both the faith which is the content of what is believed and the faith by which we believe. This too is a problem of authority. The church does not have or (does not know how to exercise discipline over what il believes and teaches. Under the influence of the twin ideologies of inclusivity and diversity, both of which are rooted more in the Enlightenment than in the gospel, there can be no strong, hard and fast norms. Inclusiveness has come to mean including almost any doctrinal or moral position.

In the Constitution of the ELCA we have rather strong declarations about what is to be believed by clergy and members. But how will this church make doctrine slick in concrete situations? What kind of doctrinal discipline can really be exercised with clergy and seminary teachers, for example?

Recall that in the late 1 950s there was actually a heresy trial conducted within the United Lutheran Church. Two Wisconsin pastors were charged with false teaching, one for – as I recall – denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the other for denying the Virgin Birth. It is beyond my imagination lo consider such a possibility in the ELCA today. In the early sixties the charismatic phenomenon hit mainline churches including the ALC. Out of concern for sound doctrine and the way false doctrine may destroy or corrupt faith, investigators were sent out to one of the major congregations where this phenomenon was manifested.

Were the same spirit of concern present in the ELCA today and were some of the same criteria of evaluation used – namely, judgments made on the basis of biblical doctrine – we would not have enough investigators to keep up with demand. Suppose the content of preaching were evaluated across the church or at conferences such as a recent one at which Sophia was exalted and addressed in prayer. Suppose that belief in the resurrection and Virgin Birth were to become our concern for orthodoxy. How far-reaching would such an investigation have to go?

Of course, "inclusivity" does not allow for everything. This is a one way street for drivers in the left lane. Several times in the past five years I have had contact with conservative seminarians who are concerned about getting past certification committees if they admit to believing that the Bible is inerrant or infallible. Plain and simple, we are in a serious crisis about the content of the faith that is to be believed.

The same is true about the faith by which we believe. The urgent Reformation concern about the sola fide has been lost in favor of an ideology of "grace as a principle". Ours is without question, a "cheap grace church". Faith that relates to new life and discipleship (discipline) has been drowned like a child's whistle by a marching band.

Much church practice, teaching and preaching seem to be rooted in a Creation-Universalism which claims that all humans are by nature saved children of God, or in a baptismal theology which says, "Once baptized, always saved." In either case, being related to God through faith may be of little or no consequence.

Faith that trusts Christ, faith that involves a new life in Christ and a walk by the Spirit, is most certainly not the stuff of church membership these days. Not a few of our parishes, especially those where cultural Christianity still has a hold, are full of "paper members", content with a church that baptizes, marries, and buries. It is a church life that reflects an embarrassment about Jesus. We are ashamed of him. Any resemblance between the dynamic discipleship and powerful witness of the early Christians as seen in the Book of Acts, and this present church, is purely coincidental.

Tinkering with structure and organization will not address these deep troubles. Abolishing the quota system, or shutting down the ELCA's Office of Governmental Affairs In Washington to save $536,000, would only get at symptoms. Trouble – with the authority of God which manifests itself as rebellion; trouble – with the authority of Scripture which produces relativism; and trouble – with the authority of the Church to exercise discipline - these must be dealt with at a deep spiritual level. Repentance and faith that respond to God's judgment (Law) and God's Gospel in Christ are needed.

FINDING THE WAY OUT

This call is not only directed to a select few members of an arrogant, triumphalist bureaucracy. Il comes to us all, lay and clergy. Together we need to cry out, "God have mercy; for Christ's sake forgive us; renew us by the power of your Holy Spirit through your Holy Word and the Holy Sacraments."

Given the sickness of the ELCA, and searching for a wise way to be of help to the church, I am persuaded the time has come to establish a non-geographic, churchwide synod, a New Partner Synod. No, not another denomination based on confessional grounds, but a synod where those committed to church renewal and an evangelical vision can band together as congregations, pastors, and laity.

This would not create schism, but would rather ward it off. Such a synod would provide a sense of community and fellowship for the conservative evangelically minded who arc being marginalized, isolated and alienated in this church. A wise ELCA leadership might see such a synod as a positive, saving possibility.

This synod could help the whole church set new priorities, for urgent matters such as starting new congregations, and doing world and local evangelization. It could also direct crucial resources to those seminaries responsive to the above-stated concerns. It could bring together in common cause larger congregations seeking independent opportunities to do mission.

This synod would have its own clergy roster, exercising some genuine discipline in matters of doctrine and belief. Clergy could join this synod, and congregations in the call process might have some assurance of being able to contact pastors who believe more than, "God is love, and God is nice, and Jesus his loving son, is even nicer." This synod could make biblical learning, discipleship and evangelization high priorities. It could even position "a house of studies" at several of the seminaries in order to encourage spiritual formation of its pastors.

Negatively this would assist those seminaries in coping with the authoritarianism of radical feminism and political correctness which is fast becoming the norm at some institutions.

Establishing such a synod would restore much hope lo those congregations, clergy, and individuals who have wholly or partially given up on the ELCA, and who are dropping out while staying in. Our times of crisis can become an opportunity. We are called to make a courageous witness not just in the world, but in ihe church and for the church, by being willing in a spirit of repentance, to stand against the church.

* EICHHORST is pastor of St. John Lutheran, Jamestown, N.D, and former president of the Lutheran Bible Institute, Seattle. This article is edited from and primed by permission of Lutheran Forum, vol. 28: 3.