A new start for ELCA refugees- or another ELCA waiting to happen?

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. --George Santayana

There's good news and there's bad news on the ELCA front.

The good news is that a group of ELCAns- those who comprise the group known as Lutheran CORE- has decided to go ahead and do the obvious: leave the apostate ELCA and form a new church body.

Obvious though this step may be in one sense, it continues to amaze me how long it has taken ELCA conservatives to realize not only that they never had a shot at influencing the direction of the ELCA, but that it's been probably a decade since that prospect has been even a particularly viable illusion. Moreover, conservative members of the ELCA continue in large numbers to talk about "staying and fighting-" most seeking to deceive themselves as well as others into believing the fiction that they have done any real fighting against the radical ELCA establishment in the past, or will do any in the future.

But the Lutheran CORE people (CORE apparently somehow stands for "Coalition for Renewal") have decided to do what every Christian is obligated to do the moment he or she realizes that it is not going to be possible to reform a heterodox denomination: leave. Leaving is an act of confession. Though comparatively few in the ELCA have hitherto understood this point, so is staying. By remaining in the ELCA, its members are publicly giving their blessing to the decision to embrace unrepentant homosexual activity, whether that is their intention or not. They are validating Bishop Hansen's absurd claim that endorsing a behavior which, according to Scripture, deprives one of justifying faith if persisted in and excludes one from the Kingdom of God can be anything other than inherently church-dividing.

So three cheers for the Lutheran CORE folks, who- after incomprehensibly planning to take a year or so to decide to take a step which should have followed immediately upon the ELCA's decision to leave the Great Tradition and endorse homosexuality- have changed their mind under pressure from the laity and decided that the time to act is now.

Well, two and a half cheers, anyway. Even now, they're planning to take until August of next year before actually forming their new church.

And maybe only two cheers. Or fewer. These would-be confessors apparently haven't learned nearly as much as one might have hoped from the experience of the ELCA. Prominent among its leaders are ordained women- who are forbidden the pastoral office by Scripture just as emphatically as are practicing homosexuals:

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first,then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. (1 Timothy 2:11-14, ESV)

As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you the only ones it has reached? If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. (I Corinthians 14:33b-38, ESV)

In the first of the passages above, Paul himself answers the objection that the restrictions he places on the service of women are culturally conditioned by giving God's will as expressed in creation itself as his reason. In the second, Paul explicitly states that these restrictions are a dominical mandate- and while he does not expand upon his point that those who deny this "are not recognized," I, for one, don't like the sound of it! Certainly he anticipates the arguments of those who advocate women's ordination today, as well he might: he was addressing his arguments to those who espoused the same viewpoint in his own day!

Yes, that's what I said. The fact of the matter is that the argument that Paul's prohibition of leadership roles for women cannot have been culturally determined, because- contrary to the assumption of those who claim otherwise- female religious leadership was not only generally accepted in the Graeco-Roman world of the First Century, but the norm rather than the exception! Remember, Paul is not writing here to a primarily Jewish community, where role limitations based on gender might have been expected. Rather, his audience was a congregation consisting primarily of former pagans in Corinth, whose frame of reference was the cults of the various pagan gods and especially goddesses whose clergy were priestesses as often as priests. If Paul had wanted to accomodate the culture, he wouldn't have prohibited female leadership. He would have endorsed it.

"But God has blessed the ministry of women pastors!," some object. A subjective observation, that- and a claim one might also be made about gay pastors, were one so inclined. I'm afraid there's no way around it:  the point which many Missouri Synod types have made is quite valid. There is no argument for disregarding what the New Testament says about women as pastors which cannot be, and in fact is not, also cited as an excuse for disregarding what it says about homosexuality. In fact, once the decision was made to set aside the teachings of Scripture in one case, there was no longer a consistent basis for excluding the other. Once the decision was made to ordain women, the decision to ordain practicing homosexuals was, as a practical matter, inevitable. That the Lutheran CORE folks do not realize this raises the great likelihood that the theological deterrioration which blighted the ELCA will also infect the new church body they are in the process of founding, and makes it unlikely that they will in the long run be able to defend the ground upon which they are leaving the ELCA. Their own theology contains within itself the very virus which killed the ELCA as a living branch of the Church catholic.

That virus is ultimately hermaneutical. The low view of Scripture which made it possible to rationalize away first what Paul wrote about women in leadership positions and then what he wrote about homosexuality appears, despite its best intentions, to remain as a practical matter in Lutheran CORE . The statement on Scripture on their website contains much that is praiseworthy, but it finally says nothing about the ontological nature of the authority it so fervently and sincerely attributes to it. The statement commendably cites the Formula of Concord (Epitome I, 3) in calling Scripture "the only judge, rule, and norm according to which all doctrines should and must be understood and judged,” but beyond commending the Confessions to the interpreter as a guide and endorsing certain themes in Lutheran biblical interpretation ("the centrality of Christ in Scripture, the plain sense of Scripture, the distinction between law and Gospel, the relationship between Scripture and church and between Scripture and Confession, the unity of the Bible as the inspired and written Word of God, Scripture as its own interpreter, and the authority of the Bible as sola Scriptura,") the statement is anything but specific in laying out precisely in what sense Scripture is the Word of God, and what that might mean for the presuppositions we bring to biblical interpretation. To use the example already cited, if it's OK to dismiss what Scripture teaches about gender roles and church leadership because it conflicts with our modern sensibilities and the contemporary zeitgeist, why not what it teaches about homosexuality? It should not have escaped the notice of the Lutheran CORE people that the sexual revisionists in the ELCA and elsewhere have in fact advanced precisely the argument that since the ELCA does not consider itself bound by what Scripture teaches about divorce and remarriage, as well as the ordination of women, it shouldn't feel bound by what Scripture says about homosexuality, either!

Perhaps it's unfair to be too harsh in judging an attempt to develop a workable theology of Scripture which is in fact still in its infancy. Certainly the hermaneutic at work in the ELCA is not viable for anyone who takes Scriptural authority seriously in any real sense, and in a very real sense the Lutheran CORE people are starting over from scratch. But at least at this point, other than their good intentions, it's hard to see how their practical presuppositions regarding the nature of scriptural authority at this point differ from those of the ELCA- presuppositions which led to the theological trainwreck in Minneapolis which will give the new church body its birth. The Lutheran CORE folks could do worse than to ponder the musings of the sainted Dr. Robert Preus on the subject.

Lutheran CORE's Common Confession raises as many questions as it answers. Its statement on the Confessions is depressingly weak. Historically, Lutherans have debated whether confessional subscription should be quatenus (i.e., insofar as the Confessions agree with Scripture) or quia (i.e., because they agree with Scripture). While many instictively prefer the quatenus position out of a commendable reverence for the principle of sola Scriptura, as a practical matter a quatenus subscription is utterly meaningless. There is no statement sufficiently heretical or just plain evil that the most devout and orthodox Christian cannot subscribe to it insofar as it agrees with Scripture. An orthodox Lutheran could cheerfully subscribe quatenus to Hitler's Mein Kampf, Marx's Das Kapital, The Book of Mormon, the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, and/or The Satanic Bible! Conversely, the Pope (any pope!) the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or even Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could with complete integrity subscribe quatenus to the Lutheran Confessions (though in the latter case the norming scripture would obviously be different!).

The confessional subscription Lutheran CORE offers at this time certainly seems, like that of the ELCA, to be quatenus. Unable to ascribe to the Confessions any truly normative status as a definitive summary of the teachings of Scripture on the subjects they address, the Lutheran CORE statement merely affirms that "we accept and uphold that the Lutheran Confessions reliably guide us as faithful interpretations of Scripture, and that we share a unity and fellowship in faith with others among whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel." The first part is worrisome in its similarity to the weasel-worded "confessional subscription" in the ELCA constitution, which merely recognizes the Confessions as one "valid" interpretation of Scripture, presumably among others. The Lutheran Confessions are said to "reliably guide us" in the task of interpreting Scripture. Whether intentionally or not, the other shoe seems to be suspended in mid-air, just waiting to drop: might other standards, which perhaps might conflict with the Confessions at certain points, not also "reliably guide us?" In what sense, precisely, are the Confessions normative? In what sense are they confessions? How, exactly, are they unique? Or are they?

What does it mean to say that the Confessions are "living documents?" Does the term mean the same thing as is commonly meant when that description is given of the U.S. Constitution- that it is not the words and their native meaning, but some sort of interaction between the words and the issues which arise over time, which holds authority, so that the meaning of the words changes as time goes on? If so, it is hard to see any sort of subscription to such "living" documents as having any real or lasting substance beyond the fads and foibles of the moment.

These questions, of course, are not asked in a vacuum; the sorry history of the ELCA testifies to where such ambiguity can lead. In the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the ELCA, together with the rest of the Lutheran World Federation, declared its essential agreement on the doctrine of justification with the Roman Catholic church- a church body whose own definitive doctrinal statements, including the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, still anathamatize the Lutheran and Pauline understanding of justification, and declare it to be heresy! This was, of course, possible in large measure because participants on both sides of the dialog found it convenient to simply ignore the rather telling fact that the words "justification," "grace," and "faith" all have different meanings in Lutheran and in Catholic theology, thereby rendering a mere agreement on a formula utilizing these words without defining them ultimately meaningless!

Having sold out on the doctrine of justification (a matter which is largely passe' for many in the ELCA, who have in any case adopted some form of the ancient heresy of universal salvation), the ELCA did the same with the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper. When it declared intercommunion with several church bodies which deny the Real Presence, at the very least it confessed by that action that the Real Presence isn't very important- and is not essential to the celebration of the Sacraments in conformity with the very Gospel which is embodied in the Sacrament of the Altar as nowhere else. Luther saw the Lord's Supper, in which Christ personally gives His body and blood to the sinner as a pledge of the efficacy of His sacrifice for the particular sins of that particular believer, as "the naked Gospel." It necessarily loses that quality where the bread and wine are seen as merely symbols of His absent body and blood, and human actions undertaken in obedience rather than the reception of an ineffible, divine gift of grace. Needless to say, the Sacrament of Holy Baptism is not administered in agreement with the Gospel where it is seen primarily as a human pledge of allegience to God, as it is in many of the churches with which the ELCA practices intercommunion, rather than as "the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5 ESV).

Apparently, then, in the ELCA view full communion with other church bodies is appropriate where the Sacraments are not celebrated in agreement with the pure Gospel, as AC VII requires!

Where does Lutheran CORE stand on intercommunion with those who deny the Real Presence and baptismal regeneration? Its confession doesn't say explicitly. The confession states that

We accept and uphold that the Lutheran Confessions reliably guide us as faithful interpretations of Scripture, and that we share a unity and fellowship in faith with others among whom the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached and the sacraments are administered in accordance with the Gospel

.
Its appeal to AC VII (from which the last part of the statement above is a direct quotation) seems logically a repudiation of the ELCA position on the matter. But then, the ELCA claims to subscribe to AC VII, too. If this is anything more than ELCA- style hypocrisy concerning the foul lines established by AC VII, the confession precludes pulpit and altar fellowship or any other fellowship in sacris with those who deny the Real Presence, baptimal regeneration, divine monergism in salvation, or other truths directly impinging upon the conformity of proclamation and practice to the substance of the Gospel. But it is by no means clear that individuals whose theological consciousness was formed in the ELCA necessarily think in terms of the theological consequences of confessionally promiscuous ecumenism, and the Lutheran CORE confession really doesn't provide any clues to whether or not its subscribers have thought through the implications of their committment to AC VII. Like the ordination of women, ecumenical involvments of questionable integrity are so much a part of the experience of those who make up Lutheran CORE that we probably won't know how this all plays out until the matter is officially addressed.

The group's statement on the doctrine of the Church (elucidated here) is certainly an improvement on the ecclesiological confusion of the ELCA's attempt to impose a "top down" polity with a theological tradition which by its very nature is "bottom up-" a confusion which once actually resulted in my own bishop making the outrageous claim that the ELCA as such was a divine institution! There are no synods or church bodies in the New Testament, and while as many in the ELCA as in the Roman Catholic or Anglican or Eastern Orthodox traditions would be surprised to hear it, the episkopoi or bishops spoken of in the New Testament are nothing other than local parish pastors. It wasn't until later that the Christian population grew to the point where the pastoral office had to be divided between those involved in the work of administration for all the churches within a geographical area, and actual Word and Sacrament ministry.The monarchial episcopate was a purely human, historical development which obscured the point that it is in the congregation that the Word is preached, the Sacraments celebrated, and where the Church subsists. The congregation is a divine institution; synods and church bodies are the inventions of human beings- useful and even perhaps necessary, but nevertheless purely human.

As the pastor of an independent Lutheran congregation I don't absolutely agree with Pastor Ulring's statement that "independent Lutheran is an oxymoron." The congregation is the Church- in fact, virtually the Church catholic in loci. Nevertheless I do agree that the present unaffiliated state of my own congregation is anomalous, regrettable- and hopefully temporary. But this is not the same thing as recognizing any sort of tension, de jure divino, between the authority of a divine institution- the individual congregation- and of the human hierarchies and alliances individual congregations cooperate in creating for the furtherance of their common mission. Certainly some sort of accountability among the congregations of a given fellowship is both necessary and proper. But although the Lutheran CORE statement is an improvement on the ELCA's hierarchy, it remains fuzzy on this point, and at least seems to imply that an entity created by individual congregations in the furtherance of their own missions might properly exercise an authority of its own over those congregations, rather than merely hold each accountable in the name of the others.

Probably the low point of my career as an ALC seminarian was the moment when I asked a professor who was tossing the word "Gospel" around with wild abandon to actually tell me the Gospel- only to have him prove unable to do so, beyond defining the term as "the good news of Jesus Christ." What that "good news" was, he couldn't or wouldn't say. The prevalence of a belief in universal salvation, or at least its acceptance as a legitimate theoretical possibility, in effect removed any necessity for the Gospel as the Lutheran tradition has historically defined the term. It seemed, as a practical matter, to turn out to be feminism, or Liberation Theology, or whatever agenda happened to be fashionable in the seminary community or the church itself at the time. So it is no small thing for me to discover, with joy, that the Lutheran CORE folks, despite the other shortcomings of their current position, at least realize what the Gospel is:

We believe and confess that all human beings are sinners, and that sinners are redeemed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God alone justifies human beings by faith in Christ – a faith that God creates through the message of the Gospel. As ambassadors for Christ, God uses us to speak his Word and build his kingdom

The trouble is that all those years in the theological confusion of the ELCA and its predecessor bodies has crippled them in their ability to build upon that foundation. As things stand, sadly, the new church body stands to be born an ELCA waiting to happen. The very confusion with regard to the nature of Scriptural and confessional authority which left the ELCA epistomologically rudderless and tossing to and fro with every wind of doctrine and social or political fad seems, at least at present, to continue to infect the organization known as Lutheran CORE. As someone who fought the fight they are fighting for twelve years as a pastor first in The ALC and then in the ELCA before realizing that what happened in Minneapolis last summer was inevitable and that nothing I could do or say would change that, the fate of this new church body is a matter of no small concern to me personally. My fervent prayer is that adopts a theology of scripture which enables it to consistently apply the same standards to all other issues- including, conspicuously, the ordination of women to an office which God forbids them just as surely as He declares sexual relations between members of the same gender to be sin- that they have to the apostasy which culminated in the abomination the ELCA perpetrated in Minneapolis last summer.

There are other issues of concern, to be sure. Where will the new church stand on abortion and other end-of-life issues? Will its conservative inclinations overcome the dynamic of its present rather loosey-goosey concept of scriptural authority? But even that is not really the ultimate question.

My real question about the nascent church body the Lutheran CORE folks definitely plan to eventually get around to forming is whether, whatever commendable positions they may take at present, those positions will survive an epistomological foundation indistuguishable from the one which proved inadequate to keep the ELCA within the bounds of historic Christianity.