Marquart Not Bonhoeffer

Marquart Not Bonhoeffer
Vol. 49, No. 7, February 14, 2011

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod schools in the LCMS’s Concordia University System both LCMS seminaries and Concordia Publishing House should be promoting the writings of Kurt Marquart and not Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Pastor Herman Otten said during the speech he presented on February 3 at Concordia University Wisconsin.

Concordia Publishing House has been prominently displaying Bonhoeffer’s books. A full page in the latest CPH catalog features 10 books by Bonhoeffer. Concordia Semi-nary, St. Louis has said that Bonhoeffer is perhaps the greatest Lutheran theologian since Martin Luther. The Lutheran Witness claims that Bonhoeffer was a confessional Lutheran and Martin Luther King a “committed Christian.” Bonhoeffer and King – Their Life and Theology Documented in Christian News 1963-2010 shows that both Bonhoeffer and King denied such Christian doctrines as the resurrection of Christ and claimed the Bible contained myths. The subtitle of the book is “A Fifty Year Battle vs. Intellectual laziness.” It is now available from Christian News for $11.95.
Otten noted that Concordia University Wisconsin awarded Kurt Marquart a D.D. degree. The move was enthusiastically endorsed by LCMS President A.L. Barry and Dr. Edwin Suelflow, former president of the South Wisconsin District and member of the CUW Board of Regents.

Fight for the Faith
The title of the CN editor’s speech is “A Twenty-First Century Platform for Concordia University, Wisconsin, Other Schools In the Concordia University System, and the Youth of America – FIGHT FOR THE FAITH.” Part I appeared in the February 7, 2010 Christian News. It was distributed at CUW when the editor spoke. Part II was also distributed. It will appear in Christian News when space permits.

The editor listed sixteen reasons why a Twenty-First Reformation is needed. He mentioned the worldwide uprising against sex abuse within the Church, particularly the Roman Catholic Church. He displayed the cover of the 1300 page The Rite of Sodomy by a Roman Catholic scholar who shows that leading Roman Catholic Bishops, including Pope Paul VI, were homosexuals. Otten noted that even Roman Catholic scholars estimated that half of the Roman Catholic priests and seminarians may be homosexuals. Otten said that “Christendom today is in a far greater need of a Reformation than it was 500 years ago.” He showed that the destructive notions of biblical higher criticism have infiltrated not only most of modern Protestantism but Roman Catholicism as well. He had photos of the covers of Rome’s Jerusalem Bible and massive Jerome Biblical Commentary reviewed in Christian News together with the 15 volume 15 million word New Catholic Encyclopedia which say the Bible contains myths, fiction and legend.

He showed articles from the Christian Century reporting that both the Christian Century and the Wisconsin Council of Churches were sponsoring another seminar by Jesus Seminar scholar Marcus Borg. The Jesus Seminar says that Jesus never said about 80% of the statements attributed to him in the Bible. It claims that Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin and did not rise from the dead.

The Christian Century and Martin Marty
The editor told the students and faculty that anyone who wants to check the record of the Christian Century should check the index of the Christian News Encyclopedia. It shows some 75 citations for the pro-abortion and pro-homosexual Christian Century. One of the covers of the Christian Century Otten had showed “A Muslim, A Christian, and A Jew in Ministry Together.” The Christian Century maintains Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the same God.

Dr. Martin Marty, who has been associated with the Christian Century for more than 50 years and says he agrees with the editorial position of the Christian Century, recently spoke at Concordia University Wisconsin. When Marty spoke at a theological symposium at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, a group of California laymen including a California congressman attempted to arrange a debate between Otten and Marty at the seminary. Neither the seminary nor Marty were interested in any such debate. Otten accepted the invitation to debate. Marty was to argue why Lutheran seminarians should attend an ELCA seminary and Otten why they should attend an LCMS seminary. Then each was to be given an opportunity to question the other on anything either wrote.

Kurt Marquart opposed Marty’s liberal theology for some 50 years. Otten told the students and faculty:

This evening dear students and faculty members of Concordia University Wisconsin, I tell you the same thing I told those from former Captive Nations. You made the right choice attending or teaching at a confessional Lutheran University, which clearly proclaims the central doctrine of the Christian faith, justification by faith alone in the saving merits of Jesus Christ and the other fundamentals of historic Christianity, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the virgin birth, deity, vicarious satisfaction, bodily resurrection of Christ, the inerrancy and historicity of the entire Bible in all matters, a school which also affirms a six 24 hour day creation, a young earth, and teaches that Christianity is the only faith which is founded on solid historic evidence and not myth and fairy tale. In this age of relativism and universalism, when many deny objective, propositional truth and say your god is whatever you make him, you are attending a school which insists that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and all other religions are false and lead only to Hell as Jesus says (John 14:6), “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me.” Peter confesses (Acts 4:12), the Athanasian Creed affirms: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic (i.e., universal Christian) faith. Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.” “This is the catholic faith; except a man believe faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved.” All schools in the Concordia University System are expected to affirm the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod’s Statement on Faith and Scriptural and Confessional Principals affirmed by the LCMS in 1973 at the height of its great Battle for the Bible: “We believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven and that all who die without saving faith in Him are eternally damned.” Today some fail to recognize that the LCMS’s great Battle for the Bible involved far more than the inerrancy of the Bible, the ordination of women, evolution, homosexuality, the historicity of Genesis and Jonah, but also the vicarious satisfaction of Christ, the teaching that Jesus paid the ransom price to God the Father for the sins of all, and the doctrine that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven was also involved.

Otten urged the students and faculty not to waste time and to make good use of their library. He noted that Nicholas Carr in his recently released book What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains: The Shallows, writes: “The Net’s cacophony of stimuli short-circuits both conscious and unconscious thoughts, preventing our minds from either thinking deeply or creatively.”

Birth Control and Real Church Growth
In a section on “Birth Control and Real Church Growth” the editor noted that “Christian News has often said in this day of all kinds of church growth schemes that the best answer to improving church growth is a return to what the Bible, Martin Luther and the founding fathers teach about birth control. Time did not permit him to show the photos of “The Young Family” in this issue (p. 8). “Pro-abstinence ‘Love Fest’ to feature Bristol Palen,” a story from LCMS news on page 1 of the February 7 Christian News reports that Bristol Palen will be speaking at a Lutheran church on pro-abstinence. Otten says that having Dr. and Mrs. Young speak at CUS schools would be a great encouragement for youth to want many children and raise them as solid Christians. Otten emphasized that there should be no sex outside marriage and that the LCMS, unlike other major denominations, is showing true love when it insists that homosexuality is a sin and that homosexuals who make it public that they are homosexuals should not be communed or permitted to serve as pastors. Otten claims that those who commune and ordain homosexuals are encouraging them to continue in their sinful lifestyle and continue on the road to hell.

Faculties No Warrens of Trembling Rabbits
Otten reminded the faculty that Kurt Marquart said that seminary faculties “should not be warrens of cowering rabbits but men of God speaking their convictions regardless of image.” He listed some of the overtures the faculty of Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne submitted to LCMS conventions when Marquart was on the faculty. Since very few LCMS congregations now submit overtures to LCMS conventions Otten listed some suggestions for overtures the faculty of CUS could consider submitting to the next LCMS convention.

Otten said:

Publish Marquart Writings
10. Publish Marquart writings. The 2010-2011 CPH resource catalog has a full page promoting some 10 books by Dietrich Bonhoeffer and one book about him. It lists no books about Kurt Marquart and only one book by him, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, The Church and Her Fellowship, Ministry and Governance. The hundreds of Marquart writings listed in Marquart’s Legacy should be published in a series of volumes. They have more popular appeal and are far more helpful than Bonhoeffer’s writings, which undermine historic Christianity. Marquart wrote an entire series for a Lutheran youth publication. Your faculty could petition the next LCMS convention to ask CPH to publish Marquart’s writings and rather than giving Bonhoeffer so much space in CPH’s display room, give Marquart’s writings the prominence they deserve. The book on Bonhoeffer and King Christian News plans to publish will clearly show that Bohnoeffer denied such doctrines as the resurrection of Christ.

A Twenty-First Century Reformation
Above all as the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation approaches in 2017, faculties in CUS should call for a 21st Century Formula of Concord and 21st Century Reformation. CN has published many reasons for such a 21st Century Reformation and 21st Century Formula of Concord. Unfortunately, among the tunnel vision minded organized conservatives and in the LCMS bureaucracy little interest has been expressed in a 21st Century Reformation and Formula of Concord which speaks to the issues of our day. My book, Walter Maier Still Speaks – Missouri and the World Should Listen, includes a tentative 20th Century Formula of Concord (pp. 296-316), I presented to the International Council of Churches meeting at the University of British Columbia. Sections on Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Millennialism, etc. could be added. There is no reason why your theology department with its solid Lutheran chairman could not get the ball rolling for such a 21st Century Formula of Concord. It certainly would arouse more interest than something coming from a person who has just been a country pastor since he graduated from the St. Louis seminary in 1957.

Set Up a Series of Debates
The Concordia University Wisconsin press release announcing my appearance here this evening quotes CUW President Patrick Ferry as saying: “Concordia is a place where dialog, discussion, and debate are encouraged.” Every school in CUS and the LCMS’ seminaries should arrange for a series of friendly debates. Dr. Burkee, in his Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod, which once again I encourage you to read, mentions: “My mother, Jan, who met my father for their first date, of all places, at a lecture by Herman Otten at her San Diego church, has been a life-long source of inspiration and encouragement. So too has my wife, Susan, for over twenty years.” This may have been at the time I spoke in some churches in Southern California which invited a liberal ALC theologian and me to debate the doctrinal and practical issues facing all of Christendom. Most of the 600 who attended the debate remained the entire four hours. Debates should now be held at CUS schools. First on evolution and creation, then on higher criticism of the Bible, the J-E-D-P hypothesis, etc. Debates draw the interest of students and faculty. A good start would be to have a debate on creation vs. evolution by such an outspoken defender of evolution as Dr. Matthew Becker of Valparaiso University and Dr. David Menton of the Creation Museum of Answers in Genesis or Dr. David Kaufmann of the Creation Research Society. When I was invited to participate in a debate at Westminster College on Satanism with Michael Aquino, Ph.D., the intellectual leader of the Satanists, the cite of the debate had to be moved to the schools largest auditorium because of the interest. Christian News has never opposed having a liberal such as Martin Marty speak at a CUS school provided that an articulate, intelligent, confessional spokesman familiar with the liberal’s position is given opportunity to show where the liberal, evolutionist, pro-abortionist, pro-homosexual, etc., is wrong and time to question him. Not even the 6 million figure of the Holocaust should be considered beyond debate. Our CUS youth should be taught to examine the evidence and not swallow hoaxes as fact just because a thousand books and hundreds of movies portray the hoax as fact. They should not become like such cultists as the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refuse to examine the evidence that their religion is founded on fiction and myth.

Just because almost all seminaries, including the LCMS’s, now praise Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a great Christian martyr doesn’t mean it is true. Let’s have debates at CUS schools on whether or not Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. are the great Christians the vast majority of Christian seminaries now claim. My new book on Bonhoeffer and King exposes the lack of scholarship of those who champion Bonhoeffer and King as great Christians who set a fine example for youth in both faith and practice. At the present time the most outspoken critics of Christian News who want CN to close up shop, are those hyper-euros who want the LCMS to return to the hierarchical church government the founding fathers of the LCMS left behind in Europe. Lets have a debate between John Pless of our Ft. Wayne seminary, who is a leader of the Loehe Society, and Jack Cascione, a leader of the Walther Conference. Loehe with his hierarchical notions opposed Walther’s congregationalism and defense of the rights of laymen.

In Part I of my presentation I noted that the real hero, God’s chief instrument in the LCMS’s great Battle for the Bible, about which Dr. Burkee writes in his book, was no one in the LCMS bureaucracy, no double talking LCMS president, no seminary president, no professor or anyone whose salary came from the LCMS. It was no one associated with any of the organized conservative groups working behind the scenes, planning political strategy and voting guides. “It was a highly, intellectually gifted and articulate refugee from communism. It was no ‘Johnny-come-lately.’ It was a young, highly dedicated and Christ centered, spiritually minded student who had just left his teenage years. He was ‘the brain’ behind a few students who protested in the 1950’s against theological liberalism, evolution and universalism creeping into the LCMS, particularly at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.”

I know of no one in the LCMS since the days of Walter Maier who was more highly recognized outside the LCMS than Kurt Marquart. When Marquart appeared on the Manion Forum of Dean Clarence Manion of the Notre Dame School of Law, Dean Manion commented (Manion Forum, December 3, 1967): “My friends, in my 13 years at this microphone, I have never heard a more precise and learned analysis of the conflict now raging between Communism and organized religion, namely, the churches of all denomination.”

Al Schmidt, who taught at Concordia Seminary, Ft. Wayne, with Marquart, wrote: “His presentations are understood and admired in contexts outside of the church. For several years, Kurt and I were members of the Board of Directors of the Allen County Right to Life organization in Fort Wayne. This group had a lot of Catholic members, but when Kurt spoke, the people listened. Many times I heard them say: ‘He surely knows how to discern the major issues.’ He was liked so well they even elected him as president of the organization.”

Crisis in Christendom – Seminex Ablaze, p. 130.

When Kurt Marquart died, Hon. Tom McVeigh of the Australian parliament referred to him as “America’s gift to Australia” (Christian News, January 8, 2007. “He came to us on the ‘Darling downs, Australia, like a great searchlight from across the Pacific Ocean.”

I wish that this evening he would be speaking to you instead of me, and that then every school in the Concordia University System would invite him to speak. What a tragedy that when Kurt Marquart was running for the presidency of the LCMS shortly after your school awarded him a doctorate, the organized, tunnel vision conservatives refused to support him for LCMS president. When Christian News tried to get these organized conservatives to back Dr. Marquart for president, they totally ignored Christian News. They did not share Dr. Marquart’s broad vision, including his promotion of a Twentieth Century Formula of Concord and Reformation. Their focus was often only on the LCMS. Dr. Marquart, who was always a strong champion of C.F.W. Walther and his defense of congregationalism and the rights of laymen, lost the support of the Loehe supporting hyper-euros in the LCMS when he opposed their sacerdotalism.

The organized conservatives ignored the wishes of many congregations. They were not going to support someone who made it clear that if he were elected president, evolutionists and supporters of the theology of Seminex and women pastors, would get removed from the LCMS. Marquart wrote in his statement for the Lutheran Witness when he was on the LCMS presidential ballot:

“The single most crucial issue facing our Synod, in my view, is the progressive loss of doctrinal unity. There is, for instance, the acceptance of evolution by some within the Concordia University System and there is the neo-Pentecostalism of ‘Renewal in Missouri.’” (Lutheran Witness, May, 2004. Christian News, May 17, 2004).

Now finally, as one who has had all his years in the ministry not been sitting in some ivory tower but baptizing infants, confirming youth and adults, being with them in their dying moments and finally made that walk with them to the grave, permit me to tell you that these issues we have been talking about concern the most important matters all men must face: “Where did I come from; why am I here and where am I going.” May God grant that all of you here, students and faculty trust only in the merits of Christ for your eternal salvation and in Him who said: “I am the resurrection and life, he that liveth and believeth in Me though he were dead yet shall he live.” Each day as I take my regular 4 a.m. morning walk (formerly run), I have a program of first praying Luther’s morning prayer, then for my wife, myself and each one of my seven children, their spouses, and all the grandchildren, etc. Then I go into a pattern of singing in my mind some of the hundreds of hymns I have memorized during my years in the pastoral ministry, many of them on my former 16 mile weekly run to the Christian News printer in Washington, Missouri to set up Christian News. About the time I pass a cemetery on the border of Camp Trinity, I’m praying the last verses of “O God, Thou Faithful God” TLH, 395.

They are:
Let me depart this life
Confiding in my Savior;
Do Thou my soul receive
That it may live forever;
And let my body have
A quiet resting-place
Within a Christian grave;
And let it sleep in peace.
And on that solemn Day
When all the dead are waking,
Stretch o’er my grave Thy hand,
Thyself my slumbers breaking.
Then let me hear Thy voice,
Change Thou this earthly frame,
And bid me aye rejoice
With those who love Thy name.

Any athlete knows that as the years go on he becomes slower and weaker. There was a time that I could easily beat all of my children in running, biking, and swimming. A daughter, when she was about 6 complained about the heat while running with me on a hot summer day. She asked for an umbrella. Some years later she became the National College Marathon champion in Los Angeles. It won’t be long and her children will beat her even though she is a cross country and track coach. Now some of my grandchildren pass me in all events. Several times at the closing award banquet at an Iron Man triathlon, I’ve told the athletes, who come from all over the U.S. and a good number of other nations, that regardless of their training program, good nutrition, and all the gimmicks various groups pedal at such events, they are all going to slow down because of one three letter word: S-I-N. All men are sinners. The wages of sin is death. But thank God the Christian who trusts only in the merits of Jesus Christ has eternal life.

May you leave CUW after your years at the largest and best Lutheran University with a firm conviction of faith in Christ, His resurrection and eternal life in heaven forever with all those who love His name. Fight for the true Christian faith until the grave as Dr. Kurt Marquart did.

x x x

Both Parts I and Part II of the editor’s speech at Concordia University Wisconsin are in Bonhoeffer and King – Their Life and Theology Documented in Christian News 1963-2010. The subtitle is “A Fifty Year battle vs Intellectual Laziness.”