Rediscovering the Issues Surrounding the 1974 Concordia
Seminary Walkout, ed. Ken Schurb (CPH, 2023)
This book is not a historical tome, but deals with the root theological issues that led to the division and seminary walkout—which still trouble the LCMS to this day. Some were dealt with in an outward way, and many were not substantially addressed. Though this book consists of essays by various authors, there is abundant insight and theological clarity in them all.
At the bottom of the issues of the last century in the LCMS, as also with broader Christianity, has been the authority of doctrine, specifically as established by the Holy Scriptures. Different worldly paradigms and the diminishing of authority in relating to God (and others) have sprung up from rational, philosophical ideals. All have minimized the bare of authority of God in His Word. Many theories sound quite nice, but concrete doctrine needs a concrete source and arbiter. Without Scripture doctrine floats unanchored to the daily life of common Christians, who form the church on earth. Professors and academic scaffolding do not maintain the church—rather these have mostly been the impetus for undercutting the faith in the modern era.
Dr. Ken Shurb, in the first essay, details the fascination of the future seminex LCMS professors for the high-minded rationalism and academic credibility of liberal European theologians. In a sense, the personality, slickness, and gravitas of sinners (who had rockstar status) possessing earthly reputation replaced the simple, accessible words of Scripture. But this problem has not changed substantially, though we are 50 years from the walkout itself. Dr. Jeffery Kolha’s infamous “Plastic Text” essay presented to a group of theologians in Germany in 2013 illustrates the divide between “real, academic” theology and the more palatable, traditional verbiage served publicly to soothe basic Christians. The academic camp regulates rigidly and operates with great hubris, as a whole—and mostly cannot bear to be under the total authority of God’s bare Word.
We must be careful, then, as now, to not just listen for faint praise of Scripture in an unassuming way, but judge the doctrine of our teachers carefully with the authority of Scripture. The move to a functional view of Scripture was made before the walkout—to neuter its ability to judge and correct: “Biblical authority was cast strictly in terms of what the Scriptures do” (19). Schurb points out what this thinking leads to: “the church as potential determiner of doctrine,” distortion of “Old Testament prophecy concerning Christ,” and “‘This-worldly’ expressions of the Gospel,” especially in social terms. This happens still today; for example: “Simply put, the phrase, ‘authority of Scripture’ can only make theological sense if it is understood in functional terms.”; “Authority is not so much an ontological property of the biblical writings . . . but it is an activity of the Triune God” (Peter H. Nafzger, These Are Written: Toward a Cruciform Theology of Scripture, St. Louis: Wipf and Stock, 2013, 25, 135). This man, who espoused this seminex-type theology fairly recently concerning the written Word of God is now an Associate Professor of Practical Theology at the St. Louis seminary.
The relation between Gospel and Scripture and how each judges respectively is critical to get right. The Seminex mistake is still with us in the elevating of the Gospel, in abstract, at the cost of minimizing the Scriptures, the very source of it. But for Christ there is no contradiction between the factual, historical, normative authority of Scripture and the power of the living Word to save. When these are pitted against each other in the slightest—both are altered. “The Gospel does not float above the biblical text”.
Just as the Gospel has been used against the Scriptures, so the Lutheran Confessions have been used against the clarity of Scripture. When it is said that one cannot be Lutheran, or arrive at those doctrinal conclusions, without the Confessions—the very articulation the first Lutherans endeavored is nullified, which was only possible because they believed that the Scriptures were clear. The revealed words were assumed to directly communicate and therefore should be applied in the present to all doctrinal division and confusion. Any contradiction or friction (suggested by Herman Sasse and later also by Dr. James Voelz, etc.) between the divine and human aspects of Scripture—poses a non-existent philosophical problem with God speaking in human language.
The historical critical method, before the walkout, and even today, is quite misunderstood. This intricate set of assumptions was made to sound like a neutral tool, when it reality it embodied a corrosive attitude towards God’s voice, one of pride and disobedience—all in the name of scholarly objectivity. These “faith-destroying presuppositions” were promulgated by the supposed teachers of the church, acting truly as wolves in sheep’s clothing. This insistence on the neutrality of method, allowed even Dr. Jeffrey Gibbs, now an emeritus professor of the St. Louis seminary, to treat Scripture as fiction (or in more formal academic language, with the narrative critical method) in Jerusalem and Parousia: Jesus’ Eschatological Discourse in Matthew’s Gospel (CPH, 2000).
The divorce of public academic writing and teaching from personal conviction and official church confession has become part and parcel with the standard scholarly treatment of Scripture—much at odds with early Lutheran confessors. They did have a method, but fought for the truth, and were willing to die for the sake of their convictions. Modern scholars see great openness in interpreting Scripture, divorced from confessional thinking: “Scriptures for the exegete are fenceless prairies where he may roam, and so he is the envy of those whose goals are predetermined by tradition and official boundaries” (David P. Scaer, “Reformed Exegesis and Lutheran Sacraments: Worlds in Conflict” Concordia Theological Quarterly 64:1, 2000: 3–20). This academic freedom, detached from norming truth, which Scripture reveals, must erode the basis for what we believe, since God’s verbal Word is the very source of it. The ongoing historical critical approaches of redaction and narrative criticism, along with openness to post-modern theory, continue to plague the highest levels of academia in the LCMS.
The issue of confessional subscription is superbly illuminated by Dr. Scott Murray. Although every ordained and called church worker in the LCMS makes a formal confessional subscription, this does not mean the confessions are a living, useful book to all who confess them officially at their installation. The very idea of being normed by old words is anathma to some. It is my impression that many pastors would rather get a root canal than try to glean something from the old words they vowed to uphold. It is not that they disagree with them, but they can’t even fathom how they could be useful and practical in a modern church setting. For those who walked out of the St. Louis seminary, the confessions were fine, but seen as practically useless in guiding our present understanding of God’s Word. But behind this thinking is more than a wrong opinion, since “The Confessions stand or fall on their reading of the Bible” (94).
The chapter entitled “The Mission Staff Walkout” by Roy S. Askins is of particular note, since it illustrates the mission divide still prevalent in the LCMS today. Implicit in the loaded word “missions” is often a doctrine (or denial) of the understanding and practice of church fellowship. The mission task has become all-encompassing, almost its own religion, so that the ends (missions, however broadly defined), justify the means (changing worship, open Communion practice, clowns, etc.). A seminex professor (Kretzmann) is cited for evidence: “The Confessions state the truth of the Scriptures for their day, even as we must state it for ours” (130). The practical task of proclaiming the Word takes on a life of its own when detached from the doctrinal norm of Scripture, and can be used to justify almost anything. In the 1969 words of John Tiejten: “For theology to be relevant, the theological task has to begin not with the gospel but with the situation to which it is addressed…” (131). This approach allows missions to be god-like, as long as it presumes to do missions—note the circular logic—regardless of doctrinal substance or lack of churchly practice. This fascinating history of “missionex” is detailed for our benefit by Askins.
Dr. Cameron MacKenzie deals in this book of essays with the direct topic of church fellowship, which new understandings of missions and openness to cooperation with other church bodies certainly impacted. Termed the “minimalistic prescription for church fellowship,” the very nature of confessional subscription is also undermined by faulty views of church relations (150). Joint prayer and Benke’s participation in the 9/11 prayer service show that these issues have not been adequately addressed in a faithful way. The Gospel, generally defined and not limited at all, took the place of the Scriptures as the basis for outward church fellowship. But defining the Gospel in this way required denying the very Gospel itself Scripture gives us—for the sake of outward unity! “Biblical authority had been defined in terms of the Gospel,” which has already been untethered from any earthly connection (158). That meant either there were no boundries to fellowship or acceptable church practice, or that the so-called “Gospel” must have in-built rules to regulate these things, becoming practical, ceremonial law in the process. This issue is still quite troublesome in the divide over closed Communion. Many pastors do not even see this as a church/pastoral issue, but simply a private, personal one—completely ignoring the public and churchly implications of receiving Christ’s holy body and blood together in a public service. “If these doctrinal errors do not matter for Communion, they can hardly matter anywhere else” (164.)
My only critique of this book is the infrequent optimism expressed about the condition of today’s LCMS, specifically its seminaries and professors. Many of the basic theological disagreements are still on-going and have not been fully resolved (and perhaps will not be until Christ returns). To think the issues behind the walkout were “solved” by the fact that a few did leave or by the lengthy number of intervening years is naive. But this book does show the way to address them—by preaching and teaching in a careful, Scriptural manner the truth of God. Every essay has practical questions to guide discussion and a list of resources for further study. Other essays also detail the doctrinal relations impacted by modernism, along with the altered academic thinking, for example, upon “Creation and the Fall” and also the supernatural.
This is an impressive and extremely helpful book. It provides just enough history and context to help even those born after the walkout understand the issues, while focusing on the timeless doctrinal aspects that the church today still faces. The living and vital issues related and explained in a clear and readable way in this book will tell the history of the LCMS going forward, as much as they show where she has gone astray. —ed.
Christian News 