47 Years Ago Today
Today is the Anniversary of Concordia Seminary in Exile. Have a look at some of the archival footage here.
Of particular interest is Dr. Martin Scharlemann, at the 9:07 mark, responding to a question seeming to be what specific false doctrines the Fact Finding Committee had found were being taught by the faculty majority. Dr. Scharlemann responded by giving the three identified by 1973 New Orleans Convention’s Resolution 3-09.
1. The Authority of Scripture
2. Gospel Reductionism
3. The Third Use of the Law
The Resolution condemned the false doctrines taught by the faculty majority with the words of the Formula, “That the Synod recognize that the matters referred to in the second resolved are in fact false doctrine running counter to the Holy Scriptures, the Lutheran Confessions, and the synodical stance and for that reason "cannot be tolerated in the church of God, much less be excused and defended" (FC, SD, Preface,9). This resolution and its accompanying 3-12a, ”To Deal with Dr. John Teitjen Under the Provisions of the Synod’s “Handbook”, lead directly to Dr. Teitjen’s suspension, the student moratorum, and finally the Walkout itself, 47 years ago today.
It is worth your time to read the whole resolution linked above, but these words below from the 3-09’s Preamble still have great importance in our day. Read them and when you hear that the Synod's concern for doctrinal discipline is "Law" and "legalistic”, when you are told that we must always deal "pastorally with one another," or "evangelically," or that the "Gospel alone must rule”, remember that our Fathers in the faith boldly confessed and did the hard things. They held to the “old paths”, and so must we.
These three areas of concern are sufficient to demonstrate that the theological, doctrinal stance of the faculty is at variance with our Synod's teaching. Other specific points of deviation could be listed (e.g., the eroding of the doctrine of original sin by a de facto denial of the historical events on which this doctrine is based), but these have already been accounted for in the President's A Statement and the Fact Finding Committee's "Report." The validity of this charge, that another theology has intruded into our Synod through the faculty majority's stance, is borne out by their own documents, which corroborate and underscore the specific points at variance.
It now becomes evident that by: (1) the subverting of the Scriptural Word as the formal principle, or touchstone, by which all teachers and all teaching are to be judged; (2) by introducing a Gospel-reductionism (by whatever definition it is considered); (3) by adopting neo-Lutheranism's rejection of the third use of the Law; the faculty has in effect and in fact put itself in opposition to Article II of the Synod's Constitution. While subscription of that article is professed — and in given individual instances may indeed still be true and real— the fact remains that by the de facto denial of the formal principle, sola Scriptura, by the establishing of the "Gospel" as the "governing principle" in theology, and by all the attendant aberrations and reductions of Scriptural teaching which follow upon such methodology, the end result is that Article II has been effectually, but sadly, eroded. The faculty majority exults in the "freedom of the Gospel," but the documents show another course of freedom: not merely that two sides are talking past each other, or that so-called allowable variations in theological opinion are at issue, or that unwisely the faculty has accused Dr. Preus, the Commission on Theology and Church Relations, et al. —all who have expressed their support of A Statement and its supporting evidence — of being unLutheran, un-Scriptural, unConfessional; but also that the faculty itself has opted for neo-Lutheran theological stance which allows historical-critical methodology to dictate given judgments, both against Scripture and also against the Confessions. To claim at this point that the Synod's concern for doctrinal discipline is "Law" and "legalistic," and to plead that we must deal "pastorally with one another," "evangelically," and, with a wringing of the hands, to claim that the "Gospel alone must rule," is to confuse the issue. As the apostle Paul makes sharply plain in Gal. 1:8-9, the Gospel, and all of the facts and acts of God that belong to it, are, if anything, even more intolerant of deviation than the Law. The "freedom in the Gospel" does not allow us to depart from the "old paths" spelled out by our Constitution in Art. II with its unequivocal upholding of and subscription to the Scriptures and the Confessions.