“Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Failed a Big Test” is the title of a July 28 Christian Newswire story in this issue (p. 15).
The August 2 CN noted that the reaffirmation of resolution 3-09 of the 1973 LCMS convention may have been the most significant action taken at the convention. Now let’s see how the “40 of 2010”, Jesus First and Daystar respond to the letters published in the August 2 CN which were sent to them for their reaction. Will the “40 of 2010”, Jesus First, and Daystar come to the defense of Matthew Becker, “the intellectual leader” of the new left in the LCMS, if he is removed as the liberals came to John Tietjen’s defense in 1974? Note what CN said in “Wanted Men of Integrity, Both Liberals and Conservatives” in the August 2 CN.
Becker has long boldly championed evolution and the ordination of women. This issue includes a letter CN sent to Rev. Paul Linnemann, president of the LCMS’s Northwest District and Becker’s immediate ecclesiastical supervisor. If he continues to defend Becker as Becker’s ecclesiastical supervisors did during the Kieschnick administration, then charges will have to be filed against him. This is what the editor said he would do if the ecclesiastical supervisor of Dr. Paul Bretscher, also of Valparaiso, Indiana where Becker now teaches, would take no action vs. Bretscher.
The editor filed these charges vs. Bretscher as the pastor of a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregation just as he filed the charges vs. Becker published in the August 2 CN. CN had been protesting vs. Bretscher’s false doctrine for almost 30 years. In 1992 Bretscher sent a 13 page pamphlet to all LCMS congregations titled “Christian News and Me.” Bretscher, like Becker, denied the inerrancy of the Bible, supported evolution and promoted critical notions of the Bible which CN said would lead to a denial of the deity of Christ. In 2001 he published “Christianity’s Unknown Gospel,” in which he clearly denied the deity of Christ. LCMS officials remained silent. However, when CN said CN would file charges vs. Bretscher’s ecclesiastical supervisor and those who defended Rev. Theodore Strelow, author of the preface of Bretscher’s Christianity’s Unknown Gospel, Strelow then left the LCMS and Bretscher was finally removed after CN’s decades long battle vs. him.
This was not the first time CN registered concern about the teaching of evolution at Valparaiso. An essay by Carl Krekeler, who is on the LCMS clergy roster, is published in the online Daystar Journal. Becker’s Daystar group defends Krekeler. Krekeler, who formerly taught at Valparaiso University, is the author, together with William Bloom of Valparaiso of General Biology, a biology textbook used at Valparaiso University. Krekeler and Bloom write: “There can be no denying the fact that there is evidence to support the hypothesis that man evolved physically, from prehuman ancestors” (457).
Commenting on Darwin, the LCMS churchmen wrote that “his general interpretation of man’s relationships seems to have been basically correct.” The Valparaiso professors supported the hypothesis that “man was evolved mentally also from prehuman ancestors” (457). CN photographed 4 pages from General Biology in the August 26, 1963 Lutheran News. They are in Missouri Today, a special 64 page issue of CN sent to all delegates to the LCMS’s 1969 convention to show them that LCMS President Oliver Harms was protecting liberals and evolutionists, opposing a heresy trial or action vs. the evolutionists and liberals.
When CN expressed concern about evolution at Valparaiso some 50 years ago, Valparaiso University President O.P. Kretzmann invited the editor to visit him. The editor accepted the invitation and took Kurt Marquart, Ken Miller, and Walter Otten with him. Kretzmann eventually admitted that evolution was being taught as fact at Valparaiso University. John C. Baur, who served as Valparaiso University’s acting president for its first ten years and helped to get it accredited, was a member of the editor’s congregation for his last years when he was a regular writer for Christian News. This former VU acting president refused to continue supporting Valparaiso because it was promoting evolution as fact and denied the inerrancy of the Bible, exactly what Becker now does. During the entire history of the LCMS no one has been removed from the LCMS clergy roster for promoting evolution or the ordination of women. The LCMS’s Council of Presidents even appointed an outspoken evolutionist to the LCMS’s CTCR.
Now it remains to be seen if the LCMS’s new administration sees to it that action is finally taken against the outspoken “intellectual leader” of the new left in the LCMS. Jacob Preus, who ran as a conservative against the moderate Oliver Harms, who took no action vs. evolutionists and liberals in the LCMS, changed after he was elected. True, a few district presidents were removed for violating a human by-law but no evolutionists and liberals were removed for denying God’s Word. Preus remained a church politician and became a typical church bureaucrat. When CN refused to obey his order to cease publication, he tried to destroy CN financially. He had the big money on his side. He wanted to control the press.
Shortly after Preus’s election in 1969, Preus, attorney Glen Peglau and the CN editor, several times discussed ways of removing Richard John Neuhaus from the LCMS. Neuhaus denied the inerrancy of the Bible, the scriptural doctrine of justification alone, promoted evolution and was a universalist who said no one was in Hell. The editor filed a fully documented formal statement of charges of false doctrine vs. Neuhaus. It was about 30 pages. It quoted directly from some of Neuhaus’s many writings. Such Neuhaus defenders as Paul McCain and contributors to the ALPB and John the Steadfast blogs appear to be almost totally ignorant of the false doctrine promoted by evolutionist and liberal Father Neuhaus who joined the Roman Catholic Church. During Neuhaus’s student days CN predicted that Neuhaus and other followers of Arthur Carl Piepkorn, who rejected the inerrancy of the Bible, the historicity of Genesis, and opened the door to evolution, would join the Roman Catholic Church.
It would have done no good to file charges vs. Becker during the Kieschnick – Diekelman administration. When the CN editor testified at an open hearing of an LCMS convention committee considering the teaching of evolution in LCMS colleges, CN offered to place into evidence The God Who Cares by Harold Roellig whose views were defended by Becker. Roellig boldly championed amoeba to man evolution and billions of years. William Diekelman, the convention committee chairman, simply was not interested in any of the evidence CN offered to present.
With the exception of LCMS Vice-President Paul Maier, all the others on the new LCMS’s Praesidium taking office in September affirm the inerrancy of the Bible and oppose evolution. To show CN where he stands on women serving as pastors, Harrison gave CN his book Women Pastors? The Ordination of Women in Biblical Perspective. He edited this collection of essays of Women in Biblical Perspective with John Pless in 2008.
Harrison and Pless rightly insits that “it is becoming increasingly important for faithful Lutherans to be able to articulate why authentic, genuine, historical Lutheramism, because of the teachings of Holy Scripture, does not ordain women to serve as pastors.” (7)
Daniel Preus showed in his great essay “The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Holiday From History: The 25th Anniversary of the LCMS Walkout” (Christian News, June 14, 1999) that he recognizes the important significance of 3-09. Preus’s essay is in Crisis in Christendom – Seminex Ablaze, pp. 117-124 together with 3-09 and the seminary majority’s Faithful to Our Calling and the Brief Statement and A Statement on Scriptural and Confessional Principles.
Vice-President John Wohlrabe makes his position clear in “Doctrinal Integrity and Outreach Within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod,” pp. 155-202 of Crisis in Christendom – Seminex Ablaze. He opposes both Jesus First and Daystar for supporting women pastors and theological liberalism.
CN has been regularly publishing a good number of Scott Murray’s excellent columns. He obviously is a great thinker. Hopefully, they persuaded at least two convention delegates regularly receiving CN to vote for Murray who defeated Jesus First candidate David Buegler by two votes. Having Murray as a vice-president rather than Buegler is extremely helpful for confessional Lutheranism if the now LCMS administration is to see to it that evolutionists and supporters of the ordination of women are finally removed from the LCMS clergy roster.
The position of LCMS Vice-President Paul Maier, a candidate of Jesus First and a member of the “40 of 2010” who urged all delegates to vote for Kieschnick rather than Harrison, is documented in “Chapter XXII – Paul Maier” in “Walter A. Maier Still Speaks – Missouri and the World Should Listen” (pp. 357-390). This chapter shows that Maier has long waffled on the inerrancy of the Bible and evolution. He can’t be counted on to work for the removal from the LCMS clergy roster of any promoter of the theology of Seminex, women’s ordination, and evolution like Becker. He wrote that he disagrees with his conservative brother on the inerrancy of the Bible and that the LCMS should not use the term (pp. 374-375). Already in the February 24, 1964 Lutheran News, Walter E. Lammerts, chairman of the Creation Research Society, expressed concerns about Paul Maier’s Test Tube Theology published by CPH (p. 357). The fact that Paul McCain of CPH now regularly praises Maier does not mean Maier is the kind of theologian who will take a stand vs. Becker. McCain also asked David Benke to write for CPH. If Paul Maier defends his membership on the “40 of 1945” by arguing that his father would have signed the “44 of 1950” see “The ‘44’, Maier, Jesus First, the ALPB and Unionism” in Walter Maier Still Speaks, (pp. 362-367). The book is available from CN for $16.95.
The LCMS will soon find out if the new LCMS Praesidium will have the courage to see to it that an outspoken defender of evolution and women pastors is removed from the LCMS and if 3-09 is finally implemented as Kurt Marquart, Paul Burgdorf, Robert Preus and other consistent Lutherans of integrity urged.
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