Full Text for Report of the synodical president to the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod : in compliance with Resolution 2-28 of the 49th regular convention of the Synod held at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, July 9-16, 1971. (Text)

REPORT OF THE SYNODICAL PRESIDENT to The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod In compliance with Resolution 2-28 of the 49th Regular Convention of the Synod, held at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 1, 1972 July 9 -16, 1971 GONC(}f(U11'. Upon receipt of PROGRESS REPORT OF THE BOARD OF CONTROL OF CONCORDIA SEMINARY, ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, Relative to its action taken on the basis of the report of the Fact Finding Committee appointed by the Synodical President IiIIIi.L, CONTENTS 1. Preface 2 2. Historical Introduction 4 3. Summary of the Findings 21 4. Table of Divergent Positions Held by Various Members of the Faculty 26 5. The Findings by Topics 32 a. The Holy Scriptures 32 b. The Inerrancy of the Scriptures 41 c. The Authority of the Scriptures 45 d. The Gospel 52 e. The Historical-Critical Method 57 1) A General Statement 57 2) The Historical Value of the Biblical Accounts 65 3) The Determination of Intent of the Biblical Authors 71 4) The Interpretation of Miracles 72 5) The Authenticity of the Words of Jesus 75 6) The Interpretation of Messianic Prophecy 77 7) The Doctrine of Angels 83 8) The Question of Authorship of Biblical Books 85 f. Permissiveness 87 1) Miracles 87 2) Christology 88 3) Creation and Fall of Man 90 4) Virgin Birth of Christ 96 5) Physical Resul'l'ection of Christ 105 6) Lord's Suppel' 112 7) Seminary Curriculum 115 g. The Ordination of Women to the Pastoral Ministry 118 h. The Third Use of the Law 120 i. Commitment to the Lutheran Confessions 123 j. The Seminal'Y's Responsibility Toward the Synod's Doctrinal Stance 128 It. Conversations with Seminary Students 130 6. The Report of the Board of Control of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri a. The Report of the Board of Control b. The Minority Report of the Board of Control c. Letter by Individual Member of the Board of Control 7. Statement by the Synodical President a. To Sum Up b. Further Action 8. Epilog Appendices Ia. Declaration of Members of the Faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missolll'i, November 3, 1970. lb. An Explanation to Our Brethren, Five Faculty Members of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, November 4, 1970. n. The Gospel, Our Confession, and Doctrinal Statements, Novembel' 24, 1970. III. A Lettel' to the Members of The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod, March 3, 1972. IV. A Statement of ScriptUl'al and Confessional Principles, March 3, 1972. V. An Opinion of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations on the Interpretation of A Review of the Question, "W'tat Is a Doctrine?", May 24, 1971. VIa, Portion of Address of May 17, 1972, by Synodical President at Faculty Meetin\t. VIb. Response of Faculty to May 17, 1972, Meetmg. VIc. Response of Dr. Tietjen to May 17, 1972, Meeting, Letter of June 12, 1972. 133 133 138 142 145 145 146 148 150 150 150 150 151 152 156 157 159 160 1. PREFACE To the Members of The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod: Congregations, Pastol's, Teachers: The following report is herewith submitted to The Lu­theran ChuI'ch -Missouri Synod in compliance with Reso­lution 2-28 of the 1971 convention of the Synod, held in Mil­waukee, Wisconsin, Those who attended the Milwaukee convention will re­call that many delegates called for immediate release of the report of the committee appointed by the synodical Presi­dent to determine facts concel'ning doctrine and life at Con­cordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. They will also recall that the Synod resolved to grant the Board of Control a year to review the report of the Fact Finding Committee and take whatever action might be appropriate. Resolution 2-28 of the Milwaukee convention called for a report by the Board of Control of the seminary to the synodical President and the Board for Higher Education at the end of one year. The synodical President in turn was instructed to report to the Synod. The seminary Board of ContI'ol submitted its report to the synodical President on June 22, 1972. It included a re­view of the boat'd's activities for the yeal', complete copies of transcripts of the interviews with the professors (cor­rected by the professors themselves to take into account clerical errors), and responses by the professors to sum-2 maries of their interviews prepared by the Fact Finding Committee. The following report to the Synod by the synodical President undertakes to present a complete picture to the Synod. It is lengthy because a study of the theology of·a seminal'y is no small task. The report contains evaluations by the synodical Pt'esi­dent. This is implicit in Resolution 2-28 and in his consti­tutional responsibilities for the supervision of the doctrine of the Synod (Al'ticle XI). In fairuess the summaries of the interviews of the indi­vidual faculty positions prepared by the Fact Finding Com~ mittee are not included in the synodical President's report to the Synod. Some of the professors took exception to some of the statements in the summaries. Hence they are omitted, as are the responses of the individual professOl's to the sum­maries. Instead long sections al'e quoted from the actual interviews themselves and hom essays 01' aI'ticles. In each case it is believed sufficient matel'ial is presented in this report to aSSUl'e the preservation of adequate context. In l'eading samples of the transcl'ipts under individual headings, please keep ill mind that these are from tape re­cOl'dings of the interviews, Hence the language of questions ----oii'oI and answers alike cannot be expected to conform to the customal'y smoothness usually found in a written essay. This is to be expected, Note also that each professor was given the option of changing or adding to his testimony if he so desired. Also, the tJ'anscripts quoted are from copies corrected by the pro­fessors themselves, Despite great cal'e, it is inevitable that el'rors will creep in. However, every effort has been made to minimize this. COl'l'ections, if validated, will be freely made. Attention has also been given to preserving the ano­nymity of the professors. Where articles are quoted, a dif­ferent code designation is used ("XX" in every case), so that one cannot identify the author of a public article with an intel'viewee in a transcript. Perhaps this precaution was not necessary, for we are dealing with positions openly espoused in the public class­rooms of the seminary, However, it was felt best not to point to particular individuals at this time. Where there are doctrinal aberrations, the individuals will be dealt with as individuals with all the rights involved in due process and under procedures outlined in the Bylaws of the Synod. Outsiders may find this type of activity in The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod unusual and perhaps difficult to understand. Such a response is to be expected in a secular age when even Christians often do not take the Holy Scrip­tures sel'iously. But the Missouri Synod is a Lutheran body that is grateful that God has preserved it as a Biblical and confessional church. It takes matters of doctrine and life seriously. This is in the best tradition of the Christian church throughout the centuries. We pl'ay to God that it may always be so with us! The reader will find abundant references to the Lu­theran Confessions in some of the sections of this report. It is our conviction that the teachings of the seminary on controverted points al'e best judged in the light of how the Lutheran confessors understood the Scl'iptures. For all agree on this, that we must determine what it means to be truly Lutheran. Please remember also that although this report deals in great part with doctrinal problems, we have many fine pro­fessors on our seminary faculty, and we have great agree­ment among all that the task of the pl'eacher is to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ and His suffering and death for our salvation, We must thank God for the Gospel witness that has been made on the campus of Concordia Seminary. Many fine things can be said about the seminary through­out its long history. But as this report will make abun­dantly clear, we do have problems at the seminary which have increasingly threatened the unity of our Synod. We have enjoyed a great degree of agreement among us which has aided us as we have carried on our mission. It is the hope of restoring this unity both of faith and of objective that prompted the synodical President to embark on the fact-finding procedme. The objective is the healing of the Synod, not its further division 01' fragmentation. We have been divided too long. We, have fragmented con­stantly. It is the prayer of your President that in getting down to an open and forthright discussion of the problems which trouble us, we will under the guidance of the Holy Spirit be able to reach consensus on the basis of God's Word and our Lutheran Confessions. We will then emerge from this ordeal a stronger, more united, and more com­mitted church. As one aid to the achievement of this goal, the Com­mission on Theology and Church Relations has been asked by the Milwaul.ee convention and also by the President of the Synod to embark on a program of study of the issues which trouble us. This program, which will extend over the winter months, will embrace the congregations, circuits, and Districts of 0\l1' church. Study guidelines are being prepared. They will set forth the issues and will attempt to provide opportunities for all sides to be heard. This Pl'O­cedure should be helpful as the Synod prepares itself for important clecisions at the New Orleans convention. Above all, we hope by this process as well as by this l'eport to move ft'om discussions of procedures and personalities into discussion of the issues. With reference to this report, as you read, take heed as to how you hear and how you read. This l'eport· is not issued in order to stir up controversy or to make life un­pleasant for individuals. It is intended as part of a process of healing and l'econciliation on the basis of the Word of God and the Lutheran Confessions. We are a family -a family of Lutheran Chl'istians, a family which has long enjoyed fellowship in our common loyalty and our con­fessions of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to remember that membel's of families sometimes disagree. But we dis­agree in love, and we seek in every possible way to restore peace within our family. While the issues are many and complex, the St. Louis Seminary faculty and the synodical Pl'esident at a meeting on May 17, 1972, agreed that the basic issue is the relation­ship between the Scriptures and the Gospel. To put the matter in other words, the question is whether the Scrip­tures are the norm for our faith and life or whether the Gospel alone is that norm. Please keep this in mind as you read this material, because it will shed light on many things that are said. This report is herewith submitted to our beloved Synod in sincere Christian love and with the prayel' that it may help to l'estOl'e peace and concord. The only solution to our differences, under God's blessing and with His power, is to be truly faithful to His Word and the Lutheran Confessions. In this way alone will we both preserve the Gospel in its fullness and purity as well as unite in proclaiming it to the world. We all long for the time when our full enerJ!ies will he devoted to the positive work of the great mission our Savior has given us. God's Word is our great heritage And shall be ours fOl'ever; To spread its light from age to age Shall be our chief endeavor. Through life it guides our way, In death it is our stay. Lord, grant, while wOl'lds endure, We keep its teachings pure Throughout all generations. Amen. In the name of Jesus, J. A. O. Preus, President The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod 3 """ 2. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION The November 1, 1970, issue of the Lutheran Witness Reporter carried the announcement that the synodical President had determined to appoint a commit­tee of five men to inquire into doctrine and life at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. In taking this step the President of the Synod set forth ·five objectives for the committee of inquiry. They read as follows: Since we are bl'ethren of our Lord, members of the body of Christ, we live under the words of Jesus to Peter: "Strengthen thy bl'ethren." Therefore, the purpose of this committee, created under constitutional powers granted the presi­dent in his supel'vision of doctl'ine and life, has as its objective: 1. To strengthen our synodical bond by consulting with the brethren who have been called by the Synod to prepare men for the Gospel ministry; 2. To protect the seminary against unfounded criticism and charges in the area of doctrine and life; 3. To ascertain facts underlying the criticism; 4. To make certain that our seminary stndents are taught the Word of God in its truth and purity, that they are firm in their confessional subscription, and that OUl' Synod, reassured of these facts, may continue to move fOl'ward in its pl'oclamation of the Gospel; 5. To share with the president of the Synod the findings of this fact-finding committee. He in turn will make his report and possible recommendations to the board of control. A report will also be made to the Synod. This report was received in various ways by various groups. In a world where many no longer tal.e seriously either the Holy Scriptures or the teachings of the Christian Church, it was greeted with cries of derision and with references to "heresy trial" and "witch hunting." Within The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod itself there were many who felt the action of appointing a fact finding com­mittee constituted an over-stepping of the powers of the Synodical President and that, indeed, such an inquiry was unnecessary. On the other hand, there were many who felt that such action was long overdue and constituted a proper func­tioning of the synodical President under the constitutional provision which calls upon hon to supervise the doctrine of the Synod (Article XI B, 1, 2, 3).* Viewed in proper historical perspective, however,the appointment of the Fact Finding Committee will be seen to be a necessary step in a long process in which The Lutheran Church -Missouri Synod has been wrestling with doctrinal and theological problems and in particular in these later years with the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures itself, It is the purpose of this historical introduction to trace the developments which led the synodical President to the appointment of the Fact Finding Committee. It will also delineate the activities of the committee itself as well as the subsequent action of the Synod at the Milwaukee convention and the report of the Board of Control to the synodical President in the summer of 1972. Concern fOl' Pure Doctrine A study of the history of 1'he Lutheran ChDl'ch -Missouri Synod will reveal that the Synod has always heen concerned about its doctrine. Indeed, the Consti­tution of the Synod, in the third article, lists as the first object of the Synod: "The conservation and promotion of the unity of the true faith (Eph.4:3-6; 1 Cor. 1:10) and a united defense against schism and sectarianism (Rom.16:17)." In seeldng to remain faithful to this object the Synod has reflected the spirit of the Lutheran confessors who in the Formula of Concord declared: * XI B. Duties of the President 1. The President has the supervision regarding the doch'ine and the administration of-a. All officers of the Synod; b. All such as are employed by the Synod; c. The individual Districts of the Synod; d, All District Presidents, 2, It is the President's duty to see to it that all the aforemeutioned act in accordance with the Synod's Constitution, to admonish all who in any way depart from it, and, If such admonition Is not beeded, to report such cases to the Synod, 3, The President has and always shall have the powe~ to advise, admonish, and reprove, He shall conscientiously use all means at his command to promote and maintain unity of doctrine and practice in all the Districts of the Synod. 4 --oii From our exposition friends and foes may clearly understand that we have no intention (since we have no authority to do so) to yield anything of the eternal and unchangeable truth of God for the sake of temporal peace, tranquillity, and outward harmony. Nor would such peace, and harmony last, because it would be contrary to the truth and actually intended for its suppression. Still less by far are we minded to whitewash 01' cover up any falsification of true doctrine or any publicly condemned enol'S, We have a sincere delight in and a deep love for true harmony and are cordially inclined and determined on our part to do everything in our power to further the same. We desire such harmony as will not violate God's honor, that will not detract anything from the truth of the Holy Gospel, that will not give place to the smallest errol' but will lead the pOOl' sinner to true and sincere repentance, raise him up through faith, strengthen him in his new obedience, and thus lustify and save him forever through the sole merit of Christ, and so forth. (FOl'1nula of Concord, Solid Dec­laration, Article XI, "Election," pp.95-6. Tappert Edition) Conventions 1950-69 Conventions of the Synod for the last two decades were constantly requested to apply the Word of God to doctrinal questions which were troubling the church. There can be no doubt concerning the intention of our people to remain faithful to the Scriptures and the historic creeds of our church. During these years the Synod was called upon to answer questions as to what was truly Scriptural doctrine with reference to creation, revelation and inspira­tion, the historical reliability and truthfulness of the Scriptures versus the concept of the Bible being marred by human limitations and by the embellishment of traditional stories, the immol'tality of the soul, the physical resurrection of the body, It was called upon to answer questions about the authorship of the Pentateuch, of Daniel, of Isaiah; the authenticity of the New Testament books; the manner and extent of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in Jesus Christ; the historicity of the Jonah account; the proper use of the historical-critical method; the new hermeneutic and its applicability to the Scriptures; the binding nature of the witness of Jesus to the Old Testament; the historicity of Adam and Eve, of the fall, of the flood, etc. It is important to note that it never was the purpose of the Synod to create doctrine. It strove only to faithfully recognize the teachings of the Scriptures. Cleveland Convention The study of convention proceedings from 1950 to 1969 demonstrates several important points. First, the Synod felt perfectly free in convention to declare itself and to enunciate its doctrinal stance on the basis of the Scriptures and the Con· fessions. For example, the Cleveland convention in 1962 was concerned with the doctrine of Scripture and resolved: That we l'eaffirm our belief in the plenary, verbal inspiration of SClipture, the inerrancy of Scripture, and that Scripture is in all its words and parts the very Word of God, as taught in the Scripture itself (2 Tim. 3:16~ 2 Peter 1:19-21) and in the Lutheran Confessions; That we reaffirm the Scripturally implicit hermeneutical principles that the Bible does not contradict itself and that the clear passages of Scripture must interpret the less clear; That we confess unequivocally that all true theological statements and prop­ositions must be in accord with the above stated Biblical principles. (Proceed­ings, 1962, p. 104, Resolution 3-16) Detroit Convention During the 1965 convention in Detroit the Synod reaffirmed its belief "that the Old Testament prophecies of the Savior find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of sinners." (Proceedings, 1965, p. 100, Resolution 2·26) The same convention also reaffirmed the historicity of the Jonah account. The resolution reads: That the Synod affirm its conviction that the events recorded in the Book of Jonah did occur as shown by-a) historical data in the book itself; b) our Lord's reference to Jonah and Nineveh in the New Testament (Matt. 12:38-42; Luke 11:29-32); That the Synod urge the reader and interpreter of the Book of Jonah to treat the literary and miraculous details of the book in such manner that the specific prophetic message of Jonah for the church in our time is emphasized. (Pl'oceedings, 1965, p, 100, Resolution 2-27) 5 ~ The same convention resolved: That The Lutheran Church -Missouri Svnod reaffirms its belief that Adam and Eve were historical persons who fell in-to sin and were l'edeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ, and that it abide by its official pronouncement regarding these matters as expressed ill the Formula of Concord, Epitome, Art, I; Formula of Concord, Thorough Declal'ation, Ad; I; Brief Statemeltt, paragraphs 5, 6, 7. (Proceedings, 1965, p. 101, Resolution 2-29) With reference to the authorshill of the Pentateuch and Isaiah, the Detroit convention resolved: Resolved, That the Synod answer these questions by appealing to what the Scriptures themselves say, as for example: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; for he wrote of Me, But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My wOl'ds?" (John 5:46, 47; cf, Luke 24:27), "And He stood ;, Rom. 15: 4) and for other religious ends. He did not give us His revela­tion to satisfy our curiosity (even about spiritual things) or to give us information about the subject matter of secular disciplines like geography, mathematics, history, astronomy, physics, and genealogy. Prof. XX Fonn and Meaning of the Full Nun'utive Concordia Seminary Print Shop, St. Louis, Mo., 1965, p. 26 The author takes the position that the writer of Genesis 2 and 3 is writing centuries after Moses. He is relating the traditions of the fall of man to his own day. The author further assumes the principle that miracles are not to be multiplied. Therefore he concludes that the author searched the traditions as a historian and as did Luke (Luke 1: 1-4). It is evident that he concludes that there was no miracle, i. e., no revelation from the Spirit of what actually happened in the garden. Indeed in the book he makes clear that he believes there was something that happened, but we cannot penetrate back to the events themselves. He takes the Genesis 2·-3 account to be symbolic rather than "annalistic." It is not, in his opinion, to be regarded as a historical report. 5c. The Findings Concerning The Authority of the Scriptures All members of the faculty teach that the Gospel is the key that. ()pe~s the door to the correct understanding of Scripture, but a majority also Jilaip" tains that the Gospel makes the Scripture authoritative. They do notsp¢aIC: of any other content being authoritative simply because it is found ill the;; Scripture. .' ..••... 0:. ,il; Thus the authority of the Bible is based not so much on its divin~ orijJill but on the fact that the Gospel is "the power of God unto salvation." InpraC~ tice, then, the Gospel becomes the norm, or standard, for theology. For some members of the faculty the authority of the Scriptures is lbn~ ited to what is connected with the doctrine of salvation throu~h Ch!~~J (soteriology). Biblical texts not directly related to salvation are conside:r~4: outside the area where doctrinal agreement is necessary. In this viewr.f~l> example, to deny the reality of man's fall into sin is wrong only bflClt.tl~~ it impinges on the Gospel, not because it contradicts the Biblical text;:l,t is, however, not considered wrong to question the literal and historical:rta,.·.:' ture of the Genesis 3 record. Divergent views on the historicity ofclle.arlt~;-­revealed Biblical texts are permitted so long as the Gospel is not impaired in the process. . .. 45 5c It is also asserted that it is "un-Lutheran" to ask, "What does the Bible say?" A study of the transcripts demonstrates a paucity of the answer: "It is written." The point commonly made by the majority of the faculty is that the Scriptures derive their authority exclusively from the Gospel. The proposi­tion that the Gospel as God's Word does not derive its authority from the fact that it is given to us in the inspired Scriptures is thought to negate the prop­osition that the Scriptures have authority in themselves because they are inspired by God. Thus a "both/and" is changed without Biblical basis into an "either/or." Lutherans have always taught that the Scriptures are ,authoritative both because they are bearers of God's own Gospel word of pardon and because their entire content is God's inspired Word. Scripture alone (sola Scriptura) is at the same time all of Scripture (tota Scriptura). Gospel or Scriptm'e? It is important to observe that the Lutheran Confessions ask two ques­tions concerning a given doctrine or practice: 1. What does it do to the Gos­pel of God's free grace toward sinners in Christ Jesus? 2. Does it have Bib­lical foundation? The Apology rejects invocation of saints both on grounds that it robs Christ of His honor (XXI, 14) and on grounds that it is "without proof from Scripture" (XXI, 15, 10). Luther rejects conflict with the chief article of our faith (Smalcald Articles, Part II, II, 1). But he holds that in the Lord's Supper the bread remains bread simply on grounds that this teach­ing "agrees better with the Scriptures," namely, 1 Cor. 10:6 and 11:28 (SmaZ-' card Articles, Part III, VI, 5) When there are clear testimonies of Holy Scripture, "we must simply believe it" (Formula of Concord, SD, VIII, 53 -German: "Das sollen wir einfiiltig glauben.") While the symbols are always concerned about how a doctrine relates to the Gospel, nevertheless, in establishing doctrine they do not hesitate to ap­peal directly to the Scriptures for proof. They know that a doctrine firmly founded on the Scriptures cannot possibly be inimical to the Gospel. They are confident that Scriptures given to us for the sake of the Gospel do not teach doctrines contrary to the Gospel. Whatever is Biblical is in harmony with the Gospel. Whatever disagrees with the Gospel cannot be Biblical. EXCURSUS ON THE LUTHERAN POSITION ON GOSPEL AND SCRIPTURE An extended treatment of the relationship between the Gospel and the au­thority of the Holy Scriptures is demanded by the fact that this topic forms one of the principal issues arising from this investigation. First let all understand that there is no doubt on the part of anyone that the Lutheran Confessions contend consistently that all Scripture should be divided into two chief doctrines: the Law and the Gospel. See the following quotations from the Confessions: Apology of the Augsburg Confession, AI't. IV, 5, 6: "All Scripture should be divided into these two chief doctrines, the law and the promises. In some places it presents the law. In others it presents the promise of Christ; this it does either when it promises that the Messiah will come and promises forgiveness of sins, jus­tification, and eternal life for his sake, or when, in the New Testament, the Christ who came promises forgiveness of sins, jUstification, and eternal life. By 'law' in this discussion we mean the commandments of the Decalogue, wherever they appear in the Scriptures. For the present we are saying nothing about the cere­monial and civil laws of Moses." Apology, Art. IV, 372: "Whenever law and works are mentioned, we must know that Christ, the mediator, should not be excluded. He is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4), and he himself says, 'Apart from me you can do nothing' (John 15:5). By this rule, as we have said earlier, all passages on works can be interpreted. Therefore, when eternal life is granted to works, it is granted to the justified. None can do good works except the justified, who are led by the Spirit of Christ; nor can good works please God without the mediator Christ and faith, according to Heb.Il:6, 'Without faith it is impossible to please God.''' Apology, Art. IV, 388: "As much as was possible here, we have pointed out the sources of this conflict and have explained those issues on which our opponents had raised objections. These will be easy for good men to evaluate if they reo member, whenever a passage on love or works is quoted, that the law cannot be kept without Christ, and that we are not justified by the law but by the Gospel, the promise of grace offered in Christ." 46 ~,A .~ I 5c According to Holsten Fagerberg, a Swedish authority on the Lutheran Con­fessions, Melanchthon's purpose in mentioning Law and Gospel at the beginning of his treatise on justification is to provide a bacltground for the chief doctrine of the Reformation. "Melanchthon returns to the same theme later on in the fourth article of Ap (IV 183 ff.) and also in Ap XII 53, where he discusses the Evangelical doctrine of penitence. In these sections. he is not talldng about the authority of Scripture, and neither is he referring in the first place to the interpre­tation of Scripture in general; what he does have in mind is the Reformation's major doctrine, justification by faith alone, sola fide (Ap IV 73). The validity of this doctrine is under discussion in articles IV and XII of Ap. Melanchthon there­fore sets up two aims for himself. He wants to demonstrate, first, that the Reforma­tion doctrine of justification is Scriptural and, second, that it is consistent with the many seemingly contradictory statements in the Scriptures concerning the place of good works in the Christian life. Both of these views of the doctrine of justification go together naturally; justification is important because of its basis in Scripture, and it makes good sense of what Scripture says about salvation. But this doctrine is not a general key to the Scriptures. Instead of being the sole principle for the interpretation of the Scriptures, it provides the basic rule which clarifies the Scriptural view concerning the relation between faith and good works." (Holsten Fagerberg, A New Look at the Lutheran Confessions (1529 to 1537) [St. Louis: CPH, 1972], p. 36) The Lutheran Confessions hold that the entire Bible deals with salvation through Christ (Apology IV, 83; XII, 65 ff.; XX, 2). The whole of Scripture is looked upon as a uniformly divine Word. The distinction between Law and Gospel, while highlighting the two principal teachings of Scripture, is not used by the Confessions to limit the questions one may address to the Scriptures. Fager­berg refers to the "unfettered view" of the Bible in the Lutheran Confessions. The confessors ask the Bible about the Lord's Supper, about the doctrine of the min­istry, about marriage and celibacy, as well as matters of Christian vocation (Fager­berg, ibid., pp. 39-40). All of these matters are settled on the basis that God's Word, the Scriptures, are authoritative because they are God's Word to man. There is no hint of the use of the Gospel as an interpretative, limiting principle. It is rather a presupposition that in the Scriptures one will find Law and Gospel and that they must be rightly divided. In short, the concept that the Scriptures derive their authority from the Gospel is foreign to the Confessions. The whole of the Scriptures are regarded as authoritative and "unfettered." Note also that the Reformers make crystal clear that the Gospel is found in the Scriptures and nowhere else. It is indeed the Gospel of God's mercy in Christ that the Lutheran Reformers stress even as we do today. But the Confessions make it crystal clear that we learn of the Gospel through the Scriptures. Apology IV ("Justification"), 86 tells us: "Thus the Scriptures testify that we are accounted righteous by faith." In the same article, section 107, Melanchthon writes: "It is surely amazing that our opponents are unmoved by the many pas­sages in the Scriptures that clearly attribute justification to faith and specifically deny it to works .... Do they suppose that these words fell from the Holy Spirit unawares?" A little later in Section 117 the author states again: "What we have shown thus far, on the basis of the Scriptures and arguments derived from the Scriptures, was to make clear that by faith alone we receive the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake." * Again in section 188 of the fourth article of the Apology, Melanchthon states: "We must see what the Scriptures ascribe to the law and what they ascribe to the promises. For they praise works in such a way as not to remove the free promise." It is inescapable that Melanchthon is appealing to the Scriptures as authori­tative. Justification by faith is correct as the Lutherans teach it because the Scriptures "testify," "attribute," "ascribe." They are the "basis," and "arguments" are derived from them. Note the Formula of Concord on this topic: "Our intention was only to have a single, universally accepted, certain, and common form of doctrine which all our Evangelical churches subscribe and from which and according to which because it is drawn from the Word of God, all other writings are to be approved and accepted, judged and regulated." (FC, Solid Declaration, Rule and Nonn, 10) The Reformers do not separate the power of the Scriptures and the Gospel, for their power is one. See the Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration, Art. XI, "Election," 76): "It is indeed correct and true what Scripture states, that no one comes to Christ unless the Father draw him. But the Father will not do this without means, and He has ordained Word and sacraments as the ordinary means or instruments to accomplish this end." Cf. also Luther in the Large Catechism (Ten Commandments, 101): "When we seriously ponder the Word, hear it, and put it to use, such is its power that it never departs without fruit. It always awakens new understanding, new pleasure, and * Italics added in quotations from the Confessions. 47 5c a new spirit of devotion, and it constantly cleanses the heart and its meditations. For these words are not idle or dead, but effective and living." The Formula of Concord sets forth the matter with its usual clarity and crisp­ness: "To this end, in his boundless kindness and mercy, God provides for the public proclamation of his divine, eternal law and the wonderful counsel con­cerning our redemption, namely, the holy and only saving Gospel of his eternal Son, our only Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Thereby he gathers an eternal church for himself out of the human race and works in the hearts of men true repentance and knowledge of their sins and true faith in the Son of God, Jesus Christ" (FC, Solid Declaration, II, 50). Nor is it true that the Reformers regard all items in Scripture as requiring connection with the Gospel to be authoritative. For example, compare the following citations from the Lutheran Confessions, where it is quite obvious that the authority of the Scriptures is resident in simply this, that it is God's Word. Augsburg Confession, XXII, 1: "Among us both kinds are given to laymen in the sacrament. The reason is that there is a clear command and order of Christ, 'Drink of it, all of you' (Matt. 26:27). Concerning the chalice Christ here com­mands with clear words that all should drink of it." Augsburg Confession, XXIII, 8-9: "Since God's Word and command cannot be altered by any human vows or laws, our priests and other clergy have taken wives to themselves for these and other reasons and causes." Augsburg Confession, XXVII, 58-9: "That is a good and perfect state of life which has God's command to support it; on the other hand, that is a dangerous state of life which does not have God's command behind it. About such matters it was necessary to give the people proper instruction." Augsburg Confession, XXVIII, 28: "St. Augustine also writes in his reply to the letters of Petilian that one should not obey even regularly elected bishops if they err or if they teach or command something contrary to the divine Holy Scriptures!' Augsburg Confession, Conclusion, 5: " .•• we have introduced nothing, either in doctrine or in ceremonies, that is contrary to Holy Scripture or the universal Christian church." Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XXIII, 11: "Let us therefore keep this fact in mind, taught by Scripture and wisely put by the jurists: The union of man and woman is by natural right!' Apology, XXVII, 60: "Besides, examples ought to be interpreted according to the rule, that is, according to sure and clear passages of Scripture, not against the rule or the passages." Smalcald Articles, Part II, Art. IV, 14: "When the teaching of the pope is dis­tinguished from that of the Holy Scriptures, or is compared with them, it becomes apparent that, at its best, the teaching of the pope has been taken from the im­perial, pagan law ..• !' Smalcald Articles, Part III, Art. I, 3: "This hereditary sin is so deep a cor­ruption of nature that reason cannot understand it. It must be believed because of the revelation in the Scriptures." Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, 92: "Accordingly, I constantly repeat that all our life and work must be guided by God's Word if they are to be God· pleasing or holy." Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, ll6: "If God's Word and will are placed fil'st and observed, nothing ought to be considered more important than the will and word of OUI' parents ... .', Large Catechism, Ten Commandments, 3ll: "Here, then, we have the Ten Commandments, a summary of divine teaching on what we are to do to make our whole life pleasing to God. They are the true fountain from which all good works must spring, the tl'ue channel through which all good works must flow. Apart from these Ten Commandments no deed, no conduct can be good or pleasing to God, no matter how great or precious it may be in the eyes of the world." Large Catechism, Lord's Supper, 31: "Although the work was accomplished and forgiveness of sins was acquired on the cross, yet it cannot come to us in any other w~y than through the Word. How should we lmow that this has been accomphshed and offered to us if it were not proclaimed by preaching, by the oral W?rd? Whence do they know of forgiveness, and how can they grasp and appro­priate It, except by steadfastly believing the Scriptures and the Gospel?" See, th~ following excerpts for documentation of the tendency on the part ()f~ ~aJorIty of the Seminary laculty to limit the Iluthority of the Scriptures to t eIr Gospel content and function. In view of the Biblical and confessional wnyj(}.f.relating the Bible and the Gospel, the Synod must decide whether it ,JsliQs~o ~av~, the authority of the Biblical Word diminished by the Gospel ~~~p:cbO,msm practiced at the St. Louis Seminary. {'l~!~~~~ Appen~~x IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Prin. ctt•··.h ... P ................... e .... t .. ·.·.'.· .•.•.. · ..•.... · .. ·.ef ...... c ... ShO~ IV, C. The Gospel and Holy Scripture," and "D. The Au­p:ny o· CrIpture." 48 ~ Documentation Prof. XX "Scriptural Authority Among Lutherans" Lutheran Forum, Oct. 1968, pp. 13-14 Luther and the Confessions based the authority of the Bible not on a theory of a unique literary origin of the Bible but on the content of the Scriptures, namely, Law and Gospel. For Luther and the Confessions the Bible is authority because it judges and it pardons, it kills and it quickens. To recognize the authority of this book is to let oneself be judged and pardoned by its content. Jesus Christ in His life and death and resurrection vouches for the pardon and life promised in the Scriptures. Anyone who needs a further guarantee of the truth of the essential content of the Bible -say in a doctrine of a special origin -should ask himself why Jesus does not suffice. It is tempting to reject the term "verbal inspiration" be­cause of the magical, unevangelical connotations with which it is freighted. However, "inspiration" in some form has a long history reaching back to the Bible and has become common coin both inside and outside the Lutheran Church. If we do not reject the term, we must interpret it in another way than the scholastics, Flacius, Calvin, Philo, and Plato have done. 1 Corinthians 12: 3 leads in the right direction: "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." To the natural eye and mind Jesus of Nazareth with His cross is foolishness and weakness. But the Holy Spirit works, creates, "inspires" the conviction that this Jesus is none other than the Lord -the power of God and the wisdom of God. That notion is too scandalous to be arrived at by a logical and rational argument. When a person believes in his heart and confesses with his lips that Jesus Christ is Lord of all-that man's faith and words are inspired. Prof. XX Essay: "Authority of the Word" (1970) II. Scripture and the Doctrine of the Gospel Let's turn now to the second variation of our theme. We look again at the authority of the Word, this time by con­sidering the relation between Scripture and the doctrine of the Gospel. In the confessional article of Synod's constitu­tion we affirm that the Scriptures are for us "the only rule and norm of faith and practice." That is, they are the means by which we determine what we teach and believe and how we put our faith into practice in our lives. As the Formula of Concord puts it} the Scriptures are "the clear fountain of Israel," the well trom which we draw the spiritual water of our teaching. What is it about Scripture that makes it normative for our faith and practice? Put briefly, the Scrip­tures are normative because they present the doctrine of the Gospel to us. Prof. R Transcript pp.l0·11 PROF. R: The example I have in mind (and this gets close to home so that we all recognize the pertinence of it for our own synodical work) is the example of Resolution 2-31 from the New York synodical convention. One reason I choose that, that is the resolution that deals with the Genesis ques­tions, and one reason I fix upon that example is that that is a resolution I was in on at least for part of the discussion of the Committee on Doctrinal Affairs. Let me begin by recapping as well as I can remember how the various clauses of that resolution are spelled out. COMMITTEE: Excuse me, with all due respect I was just kind of noticing that 45 minutes have gone by. If we could be a little more succinct. Now naturally you have to say what you have to say, but if we could be a little briefer in re­sponse, I think we would get a little more dialog in. But go ahead. I don't want to restrict you. PROF. R: I may have bitten off a bigger example than I can be succinct with. But I will try. In this resolution -and I pick it not only because I had some involvement in it but also because it's a neuralgic point in controversial dis­cussions within our Synod; the creation, the six days, the fall, the subsequent corruption of man and so on -in this particular resolution the first "whereas" says something 5c about whereas God in His almighty power created all things in six days by a series of creative acts -something like that. And the second one goes on to say something about man being the principal creature in this creation of God. And the third one says something about whereas man was cre­ated -excuse men -whereas Adam and Eve are real his­toric individuals, the first people of the human race created in the image of God. Another whereas goes on to say that whereas man fell and this' was a historical event and, sub­sequent to his fall, the fallen sinner has been penalized with corruptibility. And then it goes on to the last whereas, before the "resolveds" begin. And it says, Now whereas all these previous whereases (whereas God created man in His own image and whereas man fell and was subsequently turned over to corruption because he fell) "therefore be it resolved." Now I recall in the deliberations of that larger committee at New York, when the subcommittee reported this resolution out of the larger committee, I remember the discussion, and the question was raised from the floor to the chairman of the subcommittee, Why is it when you come to that last whereas and you say, Whereas God created man in His own image and whereas man fell and was subject to mor­tality because he fell, why didn't you in that kind of review, summarizing "whereas," pick up the points also of the six days, the historicity of Adam and Eve, the historicity of the fall? Why didn't you say about them what you did say about the other things, namely, that they are (now I quote) "essential to the pure and clear teaching of the Gospel"? You do say that whereas God's creating of man in His own image is "essential to the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel." And you say that man's fall into sin and his subsequent mortality is "essential to the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel." But why don't you say that the six days are essential to the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel? Or why don't you say that the fall as a historic event is "essential to the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel"? When the chairman of the subcommittee which had framed this resolution was challenged by that question, he said, "Oh, we could do that if you would like." And the people from the floor of the larger committee said, "Why don't you?" Well, those of us who had the prestigious title of being "theological consultants," when the committee went into ex­ecutive session, were excused from the chambers of the committee. So the next thing I knew about this resolution was when I was sitting out on the floor of the convention and it was being reported out to the plenary body. And do you know that as the resolution came out, it came out unchanged. There was no word about relating the six days 01' the historicity of Adam and Eve or the historic event of the fall to "the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel." Not to mention that the overtures to which this resolution was supposed to be the answer had (most of them) asked that some resolution be framed regarding the 24-hour lunar day. And the resolution doesn't say anything about that, about the 24-hour day. Now I have my own explanation of this; I might be wrong. But I suspect that one reason we didn't link the six days, the historicity of Adam and Eve, the historicity of the fall to "the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel" was that we didn't know how we would do that. We could do that with God's creating man in God's image; that we could relate to "the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel." And we could relate man's fall into sin and his subsequent corruption to "the clear and pure teaching of the Gospel." But we didn't know, at least at this point in our theological vitality, we didn't know how you would link the other things to the Gospel. Now I don't say this -not at all, and I hope you don't misunderstand me -I don't say this at all in the spirit of ridicule. I do say it in the spirit of criticism. But it is a criticism under which we would all come, because I think it represents one of the dilemmas in which a church body also like ours finds itself that it wants to say the Biblical thing, that it also -and for this I would say, Gott sei Dank! -it also feels under evangelical obligation to say what it is the Scripture does say only if you can show how what the Scripture says is relatable to "the clear and pure 49 5c teaching of the Gospel." Now that I would take (and I am still speaking to your question), that I would take to be one of the fundamental projects of systematic theology. Another classic case of the very same thing would be our Lord's virgin birth. Prof. R Tl'anscl'ipt pp,7·9 COMMITTmE: In connection with your introductory remarks about the possibility of systematics in the future, what about sola Scriptura as formal principle? Do you think these terms that we have used, formal principle and material principle for justification, are still worthwhile? I am maybe going to heap a few questions, and you can kind of pick the wheat out from the chaff if you will. Is the primary question as we approach systematics: What do the Scriptures say, or how does this relate to the Gospel of Christ? Are these two things mutually exclusive? I am thinking of very practical things now confronting our own church as far as the ordina­tion of women is concerned. I have heard, and this is not from anybody on your faculty, but a fellow pastor of mine said, "Well, to me the question is not whether the Scriptures plainly teach for or against the ordination of women, but does this impinge upon salvation?" Now I am asking I guess to go back to the original thing -how do you see sola Scriptura? Is this still a valid thing, formal principle? How does this get practicality in approaching dogmatics? PROF. R: It certainly is practical. I would take the two questions with which you started and link them together­"What does the Scripture say?" with the question "What does the Gospel say?" -as being inseparable questions. They are not really two questions. But you could make one question out of that and say, What does the Scripture in­formed by the Gospel say? Then we are off and away. And if in the face of that kind of question you would say, Is the sola SC?'iptm'a question essential, is it primary, is it practical'! I would say yes to all of those. Maybe the other question, where you used the example of the ordination of women and asked, does that impinge on salvation? I think I would be inclined to turn that around and say (because at least offhand I see no immediate way in which that does impinge on salvation), I would turn it around and say, Does salvation impinge on it? Does the Gospel of Christ, as that Gospel is rehearsed in the ScriptUres of Old and New Testament, have implications for such things as the ordination of women? I would say it does. COMMITTEm: So many of these things, though, have a quite indirect relationship to the whether I maintain faith in, whether you are talking about capital punishment or civil obedience or a host of other things, if you qualify your state­ment on sola SC?'iptura, I don't recall just exactly what you said in the Gospel, the Scriptures, in the light of the Gospel or whatever, aren't you in danger of changing the formal or the material principle, changing them around? PROF. R: I don't know where that distinction between formal and material principles originated. COMMITTEE: That was my original question. Do you still think this is a valid -? PROF. R: I am not so sure I do. First of all, I don't think the terms mean much to people today: this old Aristotelian dis­tinction between form and matter. If we could be sure that the people with whom we are using such terms did under­stand the (let's say) Aristotelian roots of those terms, then I would feel a lot more at ease using them, because one of the first things that any good Aristotelian would have said is that you can never have form without matter or matter without form. Now as long as we could be sure that all of the parties to the discussion would understand that that in other words you can't have Scripture (if that is the forma) for Christian theological purposes, you can't use Scripture without letting it be informed by the matc?'ia, which in this case is, say, the doctrine of justification by faith alone -O. K., then I would grant the validity of that kind of language. Off hand I don't know of any better language. That raises the question, Is the distinction still important: to distinguish between the Scriptures and the Gospel, which gives them their life? I don't know: in the history of the­ology distinctions are always made for some purpose. And 50 I would have to answer that question, Is the distinction still a worthwhile distinction? by cross-examining and counter­asking, What is the purpose you have in mind for making the distinction? Then I could say maybe, maybe, the dis­tinction is valid. My own reading of the situation is that right now what we need like we need a hole in the head is to distinguish the Scripture from the GospeL Rather what we need right now is to see a kind of symbiosis between them. You can't talk sensibly about Scripture without talk­ing about the Gospel. And you can't talk sensibly about the Gospel without talking about that Gospel which is the Gospel of the Holy Scriptures. COMMITTEE: The reason for the question that you hinted at, I said I want to know what the reason would be, would be, whether it would be possible then to enjoy within the church a diversity on a host of different things that perhaps Scriptures talk plainly but which would not by means destroy faith in the GospeL I mentioned several examples. What would be the reason for -would this mean, if we don't want to distinguish Scripture from the Gospel, that we could permit a diversity doctrinally limited only by the Gospel in the sense of the way of salvation? PROF'. R: O. K., I think I catch the drift of your question. (If I don't, you will ask it again.) A diversity "doctrinally" already loads the terms in a way in which I wouldn't feel at ease with them. The only "doctrine" that I find the Lutheran Confessions operating with is the doctrina evan­gelii, the doctrine of the Gospel. And about that doctrine there is no diversity. That is one reason I said before, I don't see the Book of Concord, for example, as being a denomina­tional document. It is meant to confess, starting with the Catholic Creeds all the way through to the Solid Declaration, it is intended to confess the doctrine of the Gospel, not a Lutheran doctrine of the GospeL We would all say, Ob­viously not that. Not even a Lutheran perspective on the doctrine of the GospeL It means to be confessing one faith, the only faith there ever was. The same one faith, one Lord, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. That is what the apostolic churches confess. So I don't feel at home with the language of "doctrinal diversity," I suppose. But on the other hand-COMMITTmE: Excuse me, just for clarification let me you are talking about the Formula of Concord and use the term Gospel. Are you using it in the sense of the Formula, the Gospel as including concept plus all of the supporting doc­trine all the way from creation through eschatology encir­cling, supporting PROF. R: Yes, the latter, the broad sense, that is right, for which the typical terminology of the confessors is to refer to these as "articles." These are articulations, specific artic­ulations of one dimension or one sector rather than another of that single Gospel. Prof, 0 Transcript pp,l1-12 COMMITTEE: Can we say that Jesus did the miracles attrib­uted to Him in the Gospels in a sense that He interrupted the usual natural processes? PROF. 0: Yes. COMMITTEE: Did Christ walk on water? PROF. 0: I would see no reason to say He didn't. COMMITTEE: You would say that He did then? PROF. 0: Yes. COMMITTEE: Is it acceptable for a Lutheran theologian to deny this? PROF. 0: I would say, now you're asking exegetical ques­tions. Now personally I'm in the clear, I am not as certain as if a Lutheran theologian, going to the Greek text of the Bible and reading there that if this is the case, that Jesus was walking :;raQu. 'dlV ii<'Ll,acrcrav and he would understand that to mean "alongside," if he did not do this because he denied the possibility, but he was really convinced that the text said something else, then I would have t6 allow him that possibility. He's not denying the miraculous. COMMITTEE: Now, are you saying that the text in this in­stance is not clear, that there's a question as to what is meant? PROF. 0: I said, I'll say it very clearly. If another interpreter were convinced that the text bore that meaning, then I would allow him the right as an exegete to say that's what the text in his opinion meant, provided he is not saying it because he starts with the assumption that Jesus cannot do miracles. Am I making myself clear? COMMITTEE: All right, Dr. X, but then I want to pursue this COMMITTEE: Yes, I want to too, in this sense: What would determine whether you would permit him this? In other words, are you saying that his stance on the miraculous or the text? PROF. 0: Both. In other words, if I thought, one, that he is saying this because he says, I have a supposition that this is impossible, Jesus could not have done it, therefore the text could not mean that -that I would rule out. If he asserts that, yes, it is possible that Jesus could have done it, but as I read this Greek text, I don't think the Greek text says that. Do I make myself clear? COMMITTEE: But how would you determine -you see, this is a very clear statement as far as I know, there is no the eXE~ge'Sis seems rather straightforward. Or if you don't want to this one, take the raising of Lazarus. PROF. 0: I see no difficulty with the raising of Lazarus. COMMITTEE: Now suppose I were to tell you, though, that I would come along with some approach to the text in which I would say that I am convinced that this is a text clearly says this, I don't think there's any possibility with the text of changing it to say that it meant something else. The words are clear. But suppose I say that I believe these words are a legend that was placed in there by either the writer or a redactor later to build up the coneept of Christ as the Messiah and on that basis I would not aecept the account of the raising of Lazarus. Would you permit me this? PROF. 0: I would say, "You're wrong." I don't know if it's a question of permitting. COMMITTEE: Would you say that I can say this as a Lutheran theologian? PROF. 0: I would say that you should not. COMMITTEE: But you would still allow me the possibility of saying-PROF. 0: You are using the words, "can," understand to be," "is it," "can he say." Obviously he can say it. He does. COMMITTEE: Yes. What I mean, and I'm glad you came back with this because we want to understand each other very clearly. What I'm saying is, Can I legitimately say this as one who is pledged to accept the Word as norma normans? In other words, can I take a case where there is a very clear statement, where there is no exegetical problem (yes) but where I may on the basis of some source theory or redaction theory, perhaps draw the conclusion that this is something which is added by the community later, that this was not in fact something which happened, it is a legend, it is added. Now, suppose I take the position, can I legitimately do this as a person who said I am pledged to the Scriptures and to the sola Scriptura? PROF. 0: I guess I would ask, "What does this do to the Gospel?" to this man. What does it do to the proclamation of the Good News. Does it undercut the extl'a nos character of my salvation? Have you made it impossible to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Lord, by His life, death and resur­rection? And if he has, obviously, impossible to say that as a good Lutheran theologian. Faculty Statement to Graduates Pentecost 1972 A Parting Peace, Section II May the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father sends in Jesus' name, Bring these words to your remembrance: "HE WHO LOVES ME WILL BE LOVED BY MY FATHER." (John 14:21) 5c How like a father. No one pleases a father quite so much as someone who loves his boy. You fathers among the graduates know from experience how pleasant it is when people admire your offspring. For us faculty too it is grati­fying how congregations, districts and the Synod welcome you, our "sons." Now God our Father declares, "You are pleased with my Son, and so I am pleased with you." Why is He pleased? "Why does the Father love you?" asks Lu­ther, and answers, "Not because you ... are beyond re­proach in the righteousness of the Law." (WA XL 1, 371). It is not because we do well or formulate teachings cor­rectly, and not because of deeds performed or doctrines accepted. On that we are all agreed. We are fm'thermore agreed -all of us in the Synod -that we are the children of God because of His Son. Look what we have in common: nothing less than a gracious Father who loves us and all who love Jesus His Son. But then could a Synod like ours, bravely confessing the Lutheran Symbols, still be infected with works righteous­ness? Sad to say, the lust to be right in and of ourselves is a temptation with which each of us must wrestle. Surely no one of us teaches that a man can be saved by his good works or the correct wording of his doctrine. But a form of this false teaching crouches, ready to spring upon the most devout among us. Take for example the sentence, "Be­lieve the Bible simply because God spoke it, and you will be right." What could possibly be wrong with such a formu­lation? It sounds so good. And yet, is there not a danger here? Might not this position reduce the whole of Scripture to a law to be obeyed, as though the ScriptUres were only a set of orders issued by an Authority who outranks us supremely. Of course the Holy Scriptures are God's author­itative Word. But say we would bow to them in unthinking obedience, responding to all their statements in the same way, with the same unswerving submission. What could possibly be wrong with that? What would we have missed? The most distinctive thing of all: the biblical Gospel, the Good News of the Father who loves us supremely. That is the distinctive "authority," says Paul, "given by the Lord to build you up, not pull you down." (2 Cor. 10: 8). It is "such authority to men" as we have from God in Christ Jesus who is distinguished by His "authority on earth to forgive sins." (Matt. 9: 6,8). If we were to obscure that distinctive biblical Word then we would not only have blunted the Law's terrible accusation, but we would also have blurred the unexpected and undeserved miracle of the Good News of our redemption. We would have failed to distinguish between the words God speaks to us, failed to give the varied response God seeks from His varied words to us. We would have failed to hear the Gospel as distinct from the Law. Listen to the Gospel again. Why does the Father love us, wrong and wicked though we are? Luther answers: Be­cause this Son, "sent from the Father into the world, is pleasing to you," therefore, "the Father loves you and you are pleasing to Him." (W A XL 1, 371). Rightness with God is the free gift of the Father bestowed on sinners because of the Son. It is the Son who reconciles us to the Father and the Father to us (AC III 3; Apol., IV, 269). 51 5d 5d. The Findings Concerning The Gospel The previous section indicated the faculty's tendency to limit the au­thority of Scripture to the "Gospel." The term "Gospel" is used in various ways by the facuIty, some of which may cause confusion. AIl members of the facuIty define Gospel as the Good News of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ and sometimes use it in its more comprehensive sense, which includes all the articles of faith. Such usages of the term "Gospel" are completely in harmony with our confessional practice. However, it should be noted that some members of the faculty have a tendency to use the term "Gospel" in such a way that the effects of the Gos­pel are fused with the Gospel itself. For example, it is claimed that the Gos­pIe is not the Gospel unless it is specifically addressed to certain social, cul­tural, economic, and political situations. Similarly, some evidently place the church's attempts to deal with social concerns on an equal priority basis with the preaching of the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. Be­cause of the sel'ious implications of confusion in the understanding of the Gospel, it is important that we understand our confessional position in this matter. On May 25, 1972, the seminary faculty adopted a 10-page farewell mes­sage to the graduating class, It was mailed out with the summer 1972 issue of the st. Louis Seminary Newsletter. It bears the title "A Parting Peace." Sections of it have been referred to earlier in this report where it seemed useful in amplifying the findings of the Fact Finding Committee report. Section I deals with the forgiveness of sins. Section VII deals with the peace of the Gospel. At several places the first section speaks of the "forgiveness of sins." Section II speaks of the Son reconciling men to the Father and re­fers to the Augsburg Confession, III, 3, and Apology, IV, 269, which con­tain beautiful statements of the Gospel. In spite of such references, there are some indications in the document that the "Gospel" is being understood in a primarily this-worldly way. The closing section (see the documentation) refers to Christ's promise: "I am go­ing away and coming back to you." The faculty statement interprets this to mean: "Peace is His 'coming back' to you. And this time He brings the Fa­ther along. Both of them have come to dwel1 with us in peace." No one would wish to challenge the truth of that statement. But is this really what Jesus was talking about? Is that all there is? The Confessions in the very spot referred to by the faculty in another section state: "The same Lord Christ will return openly to judge the living and the dead, as stated in the Apostles' Creed" (Augsburg Confession, III, 6). In view of this, is the fac­ulty's statement sufficient? Is it unkind to mention that eternal life, heaven, and hell are nowhere mentioned even as often as Chl'ist and the Gospel is referred to? In a very secular age, where many think of the Gospel only with reference to this life on earth, do we not need to proclaim the heavenly di­mensions of our salvation? Is not this the full Gospel? EXCURSUS ON THE WORD "GOSPEL" IN THE LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS In any discussion concerning the Lutheran confessors' use of the term "Gospel" it must be recoguized that it is used with three different meaniugs in the Lutheran Confessions. It is used (1) with reference to the New Testament, (2) with reference to the total context of the New Testament, (3) with reference to the promise of forgive­ness for Christ's sake. To the Christians of Luther's day, "Gospel" meant first of all the New Testa­ment writings concerning Christ. Large Catechism (Ten Commandments, 182): "This [fifth] commandment is simple enough. We hear it explained every year in the Gospel, Matthew 5, where Christ himself explains and summarizes it." The Gospel concept is used in the Confessions in such a broad way that it can be identified with Scripture as a whole. Note how Melanchthon in Apology, XII, 157, mentions "Scripture" and then says "it constantly teaches that we obtain 52 ------Documentation Prof. S Transcript 5d the forgiveness of sins freely because of Christ. ... " Then in Apology, XV, 5, he says: "The Gospel teaches that by faith, for Christ's sake, we freely receive the forgiveness of sins and are reconciled to God." Note the twofold meaning of Gospel in the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (60): "The Gospel requires of those who preside over the churches that they preach the Gospel, remit sins, administer the sacraments, and, in addition, exercise jurisdiction, that is, excommunicate those who are guilty of notorious crimes and absolve those who repent." Fagerberg states: "The expression 'the chief article of the Gospel,' praecipuus evangelii locus, always refers to the doctrine of justification by faith -but what is the Gospel? It signifies either the writings of the New Testament or, what is more probable, the teachings and instructions which these writings contain and which are continually proclaimed in the church. It is certainly in this sense that the word is used in Ap XXI, 35-36, which speaks of preaching and confessing the Gospel." (Holsten Fagerberg, A New Look at the Lutheran Confessions (1529 to 1537) [St. Louis: CPH, 1972], p. 92) The confessors also use the term Gospel in the narrow sense of the promise of the forgiveness of sins. Cf. Apology, IV, 260: "The preaching of the Gospel must be added, that is, that the forgiveness of sins is granted to us if we believe that our sins are forgiven for Christ's sake." However, the clearest distinction is made by the Formula of Concord (Solid Declaration, V, 3-6): "When we rightly reflect on this controversy, we find that it was chiefly occasioned by the fact that the little word 'Gospel' does not always have one and the same meaning but is used in a twofold way, both in the Holy Scripture of God and by ancient and modern theologians. In the one case the word is used in such a way that we understand by it the entire teachings of Christ, our Lord, which in his public ministry on earth and in the New Testament he ordered to be observed. Here the term includes both the exposition of the law and the proclamation of the mercy and grace of God, his heavenly Father, as it is written in Mark 1:1, 'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' Shortly thereafter the chief parts are announced, namely, repentance and forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4). Similarly when Christ after his resurrection commands his apostles to preach the Gospel in all the world (Mark 16:15), he summarizes his doctrine in a few words, 'Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that re­pentance and forgiveness of sin should be preached in his name to all nations' (Luke 24:46, 47). Likewise, Paul calls his entire teaching the 'Gospel' (Acts 20:24) and summarizes it under these heads: repentance to God and faith in Christ. And when the word 'Gospel' is used in its broad sense and apart from the strict distinc­tion of Law and Gospel, it is correct to define the word as the proclamation of both repentance and the forgiveness of sins. For John, Christ, and the apostles began in their preaching with repentance and expounded and urged not only the gracious promise of the forgiveness of sins but also the divine law. In addition, however, the word 'Gospel' is also used in another (that is, in a strict) sense. Here it does not include the proclamation of repentance but solely the preaching of God's grace. So it appears shortly afterward in the first chapter of St. Mark, where Christ said, 'Repent and believe in the Gospel' (Mark 1:15)." Cf. transcripts and exhibits that follow for statements on this topic. Cf. also Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles, Section I. Christ as Savior and Lord, and II. Law and Gospel. pp.l0-11 COMMITTEE: You are convinced, Prof. S, then, that your fac­ulty does impress upon the students the need for verbalizing the Gospel and that the social action is the result of that Gospel in the person's life. COMMITTEE: Am I correct in understanding you that you indicate that the response to the Gospel, which are the fruits of faith, that they are to be identified as being a part of the Gospel itself? PROF. S: In a broader sense of the term. Now obviously when we talk about good news, the kerygma, you have to talk about this good news from God comes to us. But it is also a phase of the Gospel; the life of the Christian is also a part of the fruit; you can't separate the fruit from the tree. Obviously you can't have fruit without a tree, but a tree that has no fruit is no good either. It is a total picture. PROF. S: Yes. The two together should be really called the Gospel also in a certain sense. COMMITTEE: This is one of the things that we are concerned about in the field, which you can appreciate that the young men who come to us, I do not have one like that, I have one who knows how to lay the foundations, for every fine social action. He had taken involvement in a prison, hunger marches, getting involved with the poverty problem. The whole range of it and to have a young man, he graduated in 1966, which is quite recent, my associate, and you have been able to steer around that cliff where they equate social action with the Gospel-PROF. S: No, I have no qualms about that in the least, that anybody believes that, going off the deep end in that way, as far as the faculty is concerned. Prof. XX Essay: "The Meaning of Gospel" Eastern Missouri Pastoral Conference, Oct. 15-17, 1968 In our day, this age-old tension between the idea that Christianity is primarily the bestowal of divine stability and permanence and the view which sees Christianity as God's involvement in the fact of man's historicity (that is, the problem of change with all this implies) takes the form of 53 5d a debate. The issue was stated succinctly at the National Council of Churches 1967 meeting and at the World Con­gress on Evangelism in Berlin. "Is the Gospel aimed at the conversion of individuals or at the problems of political, social, economic and cultural life?" Sparked in part by Harvey Cox and Colin Williams, some Christians are affirm­ing that the Gospel takes on meaning only as it presents a challenge to social structures (Ecumenical Review, XX, [1968], 114). As one reads the history of Christian thought, one becomes aware how these two emphases, the individual and the cor­porate character of the Gospel, have always struggled with each other for dominance. We happen to belong to a theo­logical culture which has deemphasized the social aspects of Gospel. We have difficulty appreciating the other tradition, and those who stress the social concerns of Gospel have dif­ficulties respecting our emphases: However, the moment one says, "the Gospel has a social character," one can read the life of Jesus Christ and see it reflecting social concern at every turn. He is in almost constant conflict with the power structures of His day, for the Pharisees represented both religious and political action on the part of the Christian. Gospel has a dialogical character and it manifests this in relationship to social, cultural, economic and political situa­tions. Gospel does something more than create agencies and institutions of social welfare. It calls the Christian to be an informed critic of every aspect of life, and it calls him to participate in these areas, always seeking to call the orders and structures of life to conform more fully to the virtues which our Lord said belonged to those who walked accord­ing to the Spirit in the Kingdom of God. It appears that one challenge to pastors today is to keep the individualistic and social character of the Gospel in crea­tive tension. We can go so far as to say that Gospel is not truly and fully Gospel unless this is done. Each generation apparently has to take this assignment on anew, for history suggests that one or the other emphasis always fights its way through to dominance the life of the Church. Thc splendor and the resiliency of Jesus Christ, our Gos­pel, is brilliantly reflected in the various definitions and em­phases which have marked the church's understanding of its central possession through the ages. Each age not only claims its solemn task but once; it also develops an under­standing which communicates the salvation' of Jesus Christ most effectively to its contemporaries. Our age is marked most noticeably by a guilty conscience about its social trans­gressions and by a determination to do something about in­justice. It is, in the second place, characterized by an in­creasing conviction that there has to be something better than that which most people now know. Black riots, student riots, and the continuing spread of communism are adequate evidence of this latter need. Man needs the presence, the gracious presence of God, more than ever before. To these needs, the Gospel is again the answer and its definition and shape must correspond to the language, the fears, the dreams and the needs of Man the Contemporary. Pl'of. XX "The Gospel and the Theological Task" CTM Special Issue, June-July-Aug. 1969, pp. 438-40 Beginning the Theological Task So then, theology is for the gospel. In fact it is an artic­ulation of the gospel in a relevant, self-consistent system. How does one go about creating or composing a theology? Some theological system-makers begin with the gospel. They choose a major biblical thematic expression of the gospel, such as justification, love, life, kingdom of God, and then develop the theme into an overall system by spelling out its implications for the traditional areas of Christian teaching in terms that are designed to be relevant and mean­ingful. Because the Lutheran Symbols call justification by grace the chief article of Christian doctrine and because many Lutherans have come to label it ~the article by which the church stands or falls," some people have assumed that for Lutherans justification must be the organizing principle of theology -the hubs from which all specific teachings radi­ate. Such theology was indeed valid at the time of the Ref­ormation. But does it provide the most effective and relevant means for proclaiming the gospel today? Certainly we can­not simply transfer Reformation theology from the 16th to the 20th century without accommodating it or applying it 54 to 20th-century conditions. But must we begin with justi­fication at all? In fact, do we begin the theological task with some basic thematic expression of the gospel? No! Not if we want to assure a relevant proclamation of the gospel! For theology to be relevant, the theological task has to begin not with the gospel but with the situation to which it is to be addressed. The first step in theology form­ulation is to analyze the conditions of the world for whose sake the gospel is to be proclaimed. "The world writes the agenda," we are being told these days. True as that may be in other areas, it is true also for theology. The situation in our world should help shape our theology. Why? Because there is no "gospel in a vacuum." The gos­pel cannot be dealt with by itself apart from the situation to which it is addressed. It is ever so much more than a set of religious propositions, spiritual truths, or divine principles. If it were only that, it could be passed on unchanged from generation to generation. The gospel must always be ad­dressed to particular conditions and circumstances. There­fore, it cannot be formulated in terms enduringly valid for every age and condition. Each formulation of the gospel is conditioned by the situation to which it is addressed. What the situation is determines how the gospel is said. The gospel is not gospel unless it is addt'essed to a situa­tion or condition. Good news! That's what the gospel is. The term has many implications. It implies that communi­cation is intended, that there is something to say, that the situation of those to be addressed is "bad news," and that what there is to say will be good news to those who hear it. If the gospel is indeed to be good news, it must be addressed to a particular situation and the theological task must begin with an analysis of the situation of those to whom the gospel is to be spoken. Some features of the human situation are so basic that they are common to every period of history. Man is man, no matter what the in which he lives. Many of his needs remain unchanged. looks for life in place of death. He longs for fellowship in the midst of lonely isolation. He can­not figure out how to insure consistent justice and prevent exploitation. Because the human condition is so much the same from age to age, theology today will be similar to the theologies of other eras in many of its basic emphases. Yet eaeh age has its own characteristics and its distinct condition. Our age does not share the same concerns as the 2d, 12th, 16th, or 19th centuries -not even those of the early 20th century. For Luther's time a chief problem was to find a mel'dful God; in our age people ask whether there is a God. The situation in our day is enormously different from preceeding periods of history. And so it is not possible merely to reproduce a theology of the past. It does not speak the gospel to our situation. Therefore the first requirement in the theological task is to analyze the condition of our present age to determine what the situation is to which the gospel is addressed. What is our condition? Secularism is a dominant characteristic; we have learned to do quite well without God. The outlook is materialistic; we hunger for things and never fill up. We are for the first time inextricably bound together as one world, living under the shadow of "The Bomb" in an en­vironment in which any war flirts with global suicide. World hunger and poverty are serious problems, confronting the world with catastrophe. Our life together is torn apart by serious racial antagonisms. Technology is undercutting our basic human values. My list is far from exhaustive, but it contains enough to show how special the condition of our age is. When the analysis is done, the theological task can move on to formulate the gospel in terms that will speak relevantly and meaningfully to our present situation. In fact the an­alysis itself will help to elicit meaningful articulations of the gospel. That is not to say that the content of the gospel issues from the world's needs. The basic content of the gospel issues from God's revelation and His saving action in Israel and in Jesus Christ. But the world's needs should deter­mine the form and shape in which the gospel is expressed. The human situation should be a major determining factor in theology. That's because theology is for the gospel and because the gospel is good news. Gospel and Scripture If the human situation. determines the shape of theology, where does theology get Its content? It gets its content from ~ the Scriptures. For Lutherans the Scriptures are "rule and norm" of faith. They are our source for the gospel as orig­inally proclaimed, The Scriptures are the written witnesses to God's sel£­revelation and to His saving action in history presented by those who shared in the experience by faith. The Old Testa­ment writings proclaim the gospel by witnessing to God's relation to the Israelite nation. The New Testament writ­ings proclaim the gosoel by witnessing to God's saving action in Jesus Christ. The gospel enunciated in the Scriptures is rooted in certain events, and its proclamation is based on them: an exodus, the establishment of a kingdom, an exile and a return, a man's birth, his death and resurrection, a Pentecost experi­ence. But the gospel as proclaimed in the Scriptures not only reported the events; it affirmed that they were revela­tory and saving acts of God. (In Exodus God brings the Israelites out of Egypt; in Luke Mary's son is the Son of God.) In addition, the gospel proclamation in the Scriptures specified the significance of God's actions for the situation and condition of the people to which the proclamation was addressed. (Jesus Christ "was put to death for OU?' tTespasses and raised fm' OttT justification." [Rom. 4: 25]) Prof. AA Trallscript pp.9-10 COMMITTEE: Speaking before about the misapplication of the two kingdoms to see the role of the church only in preach­ing the Gospel, and somebody else is going to have to feed them and clothe them, now granted that we want the full­ness of the mission of the church in both areas, do you think it's correct on the basis of the New 'restament and Jesus' commission and so forth, and words in Matthew 16: What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? to say that the primary task of the church is to save souls? Can we lift one side without neglecting eithet· side? Can we lift the one above the other, New Testamentally? PROF. AA: At the risk of being misunderstood, I would say no. Now just let me clarify. The two kingdoms, for instance, does not in my understanding suggest that the church has the ministry to feed or to -and to clothe; in fact it sees that God feeds and clothes all kinds of people by many means other than the church as an institution ministering, so that, you know, that's one point. I just want to make sure it's clear. Now whether or not, r think to me, that is not help the advance of the Gospel when the typical sermon, and I've preached on it some times past and I hope not too recently, but where I have said, God wills that the poor be clothed and the poor be fed and the sick healed and such, but more and above everything else God wills that the Gospel be preached. I'm not sure, I have not in the studies I have, I think that what we try to do, I know that pastors are trying to do what I was trying to do, but I think in that I also cheapened the Gospel, and I think the genius will of the Spirit's coming to us in the word is to see that it's one God, who really, truly in mercy redeems me and you, and in that whole experience, not chrono­logically, even, but that He's a God who really is seeking in this time, indeed, penultimately, but that's the word where He's living in us now, right now, where we're living in Him, that He seeks seeks justice, mercy, for all men, and I think homiletically we've got to work at this, of not putting down, you know, I'm not sympathetic with any guy who says, O. K., now we've got to correct a bad practice in the past, we've got to elevate social justice beyond the Gospel. That's just as bad and improper. COMMITTEE: I'm thinking especially of that Matthew 16 pas­sage. How would you relate that in putting these two things together? PROF. AA: Well, I others that would balance. Indeed, sage in it's only that passage along with to be looked at in some kind of the kingdom of God, this pas-COMMITTEE: Well, that's Matthew 6, but the other one was yes, either one. PROF. AA: The kingdom, if you seek the kingdom of God that is an awareness in Christ and all that means that the God who you know there is then also the God who is vitally involved in everything. 5d PI·of. I Trallscript pp.4-5 several times in your discussion the Gospel. Are you using Gospel in the wide or narrow sense? PROF. I: In the sense in which it is used in the Confessions. In the broad sense, actually I use it directly out of the Augsburg Confession, where they say this is our doctrine of the Gospel, here it is, we are telling it to you right now, and then come 21 chief iu·ticles of the faith, which is the presentation of the doctrine of the Gospel. COMMITTEE: So you are using it in the broad sense? PROF. I: Right. COMMITTEE: Including more than justification by faith in Christ. PROF. I: Yes. COMMITTEE: Before that, 21, help me out there, I have for­gotten the number. PROP. I: 28, COMMITTEE: What about these others? PROF. I: The others are specifically called something dif­ferent. They are the first 21 are entitled articles of faith and doctl'ine, and the next seven are called articles about matters in dispute in which an account is given of the abuses which have been corrected. They are really dealing more with practical matters here. COMMITTEE: So you could say indirectly too they are part of it but not expressly? PROF. I: Right. Prof. Z Tl'allscript p.22 COMMITTEE: What does it mean to you to interpret Scrip­tures in the light of the Gospel? PROF. Z: What it means to me to interpret Scripture in the light of the Gospel in my educational work with the students is to use the Law-Gospel model, that you must help the person become aware that he is in an existence of death and fear and anxiety and that then, after you have helped him to see what his own situation is, then you begin to work with him in terms of the Gospel so that he may ap­propriate the Good News to his own situation, and then let there come from him the response of faith, whether it be thanksgiving or help to the brother or whatever it might be. So my hermeneutical principle in terms at least of my edu­cational courses with the students has always been kind of the do-Law-Gospel approach. From experience through re­flection on the Scripture back again to experience. That is sort of the way we go. COMMITTEE: Would you restrict it to that, or what would you add as additional principles that would guide you? PROP. Z: Well, I think for educational purposes that would be the primary one because I am trying to move a person to recognize his need. Prof. R Transcl'ipt p.9 COMMITTEE: The reason fOl' the question that you hinted at, I said I want to know what the reason would be, would be, whether it would be possible then to enjoy within the church a diversity on a host of different things that perhaps Scriptures talk plainly but which would not by means de­stroy faith in the Gospel. I mentioned several examples. What would be the reason for would this mean, if we don't want to distinguish Scripture from the Gospel, that we could permit a diversity doctrinally limited only by the Gospel in the sense of the way of salvation? PROF. R: O. K. I think I catch the drift of your question. (If I don't, you will ask it again.) A diversity "doctrinally" already loads the terms in a way in which I wouldn't feel at ease with them. The only "doctrine" that I find the Lu­theran Confessions operating with is the doctTina evangelii, the doctrine of the Gospel. And about that doctrine there is no diversity. That is one reason I said before, I don't see the Book of Concord, for example, as being a denomina­tional document. It is meant to confess, starting with the 55 5d Catholic Creeds all the way through to the Solid Declara~ tion, it is intended to confess the doctrine of the Gospel, not a Lutheran doctrine of the Gospel. We would all say, Obviously not that. Not even a Lutheran perspective on the doctrine of the Gospel. It means to be confessing one faith, the only faith there ever was. The same one faith, one Lord, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. That is what the apostolic churches confess. So I don't feel at home with the language of "doctrinal diversity," I suppose, But on the other hand-COMMITTEE: Excuse me, just for clarification let me you are talking about the Formula of Concord and use the term Gospel. Are you using it in the sense of the Formula, the Gospel as including concept plus all of the supporting doc­trine all the way from creation through eschatology, en­circling, supporting-PROF. R: Yes, the latter, the broad sense, that is right, for which the typical terminology of the confessors is to refer to these as "articles." These are articulations, specific articu­lations of one dimension or one sector rather than another of that single Gospel. Faculty Statement to Gl'aduates Pentecost 1972 A Parting Peace To the Graduates: You are leaving us and yet you are joining us. We re­joice that you will now be sharing in the ministry of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ with us and more than 61000 other pastors of our Synod. Our parting word is, tnerefore, a word of welcome. We welcome you as our partners in a common mission. Our parting word, our word of welcome, is a word of peace. Not just any peace! It is what our Lord called "my own peace," the hard~won peace of the cross. That peace unites us with God and with one another. It is our common bond and must always have top priority in our teaching and in our life. The following seven reminders about repentance, about Sonship, about inspiration, about historical facts, about prophecy, about mission, about peace -are suggested by the Holy Gospel and Epistle for the Feast of Pentecost. With these reminders we bear witness to our faith and proclaim to you again the blessed Gospel which unites us in Christ's own peace. His peace we leave with you, The Faculty. May the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father sends in Jesus' name, Bring these words to your remembrance: "REPENT, ... FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF YOUR SINS." (Acts 2: 38) To repent, men need to be more than merely sinners. They need also to be believers. They need the divine Law, yes, and the Law in the fullness of its criticism. How else could they be contrite? But to be truly contrite, to be free enough to take the criticism of the Law, sinners need more. They need the Gospel. "For human nature cannot bear [the divine wrath] unless it is sustained by the Word of God," that is, the Gospel. (Apology XII, 32). So the call to repentance is not only judgment. It is also the promise of help. "What are we to do?;' cried the audience at Pentecost, pleading for help. Peter's answer, "Repent," was the help they could trust. Faced with our current synodical prob­lems, you and we and the people of our Synod ask the same question: "What are we to do?" The answer at Pentecost is still our trustworthy help. "Repent and be baptized, everyone of you, in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." We all resist repentance like the plague, preferring not to notice who it is who calls us to repent: the Lord Himself. Instead we play the judge ourselves and shift the blame to others. Some blame everything on our synodical or theo­logical leadership, while others blame those who blame that 56 leadership. Both attitudes are, at best, half right. Both evade their own obligation, and their own opportunity, to repent. So do those who consider our current problems trivial or call themselves neutral and loftily declare, "A plague on both your houses." To say "Repent" is no evasion of the hard social and political realities. God uses precisely the realities of history to summon us to repent. And we make bold therefore to call you and all in the Synod -ourselves included -to hear God's call: "Repent." Let us repent, we ourselves first of all, and receive from God the power to walk together In His paths again. If we find it difficult to repent, that difficulty has been mounting for a long time. It has long roots in our common synodical past. For what penitent sinners need most is faith, faith in God's promised mercy. Only by faith can they accept His judgment without being destroyed by it. "For faith makes the difference between the contrition of Peter and that of Judas." (Apol., XII, 8). Only by faith can sinners profit from God's judgment, and even run with it. "Filial fear can be clearly defined as an anxiety joined with faith, ... whereas in servile fear faith does not sustain the anxious heart." (Apot, XII, 38). But have we in our Synod, any of us, always remembered that that is what faith is for: "for the forgiveness of your sins," as Peter promised, so that "you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit"? Haven't we instead, far too often, prized our faith for its own correctness, rather than for its hold on that Father who forgives our incorrectness? Or perhaps out of scorn for just such a position, or out of a desire to accommodate our faith to a skeptical culture, have we minimized the reality of the miraculous, forgetting that all the' miracles point to that one miracle, "the forgiveness of your sins"? In short have we Missouri Synod Lutherans so discouraged faith that we lack the boldness and confidence, the sheer audacious cour­age to repent? Yet faith is still among us. That we know, for the Word is still among us, both Law and Promise, written and preached and sacramental. We are all of us baptized­"baptized," as Peter reminds us, "for the forgiveness of your sins." And isn't our Baptism itself a sign for our repentance, signifying "that the old Adam in us, ... should be drowned by daily sorrow and repentance and be put to death, and that the new man should come forth daily and rise up ... "? (Small Catechism, Baptism, 12). Isn't that sign enough of God's persistent mercy? And where God shows mercy, there is faith; and where faith, repentance; and where repentance, "the forgiveness of sins" and "the gift of the Holy Spirit:" We heartily desire these gifts by which God will transform our very conflict into an oppor­tunity for new beginnings. We acknowledge our own need for repentance and pray the Father for the strong faith that will enable us to repent. Faculty Statement to Graduates Pentecost 1972 A Parting Peace, Section VII May the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father sends in Jesus' name, Bring these words to your remembrance. "PEACE IS MY PARTING GIFT TO YOU." (John14:27) As we your teachers and now your colleagues bid you farewell, we wish you the Lord's peace. What kind of peace? "My own peace," Jesus calls it, "such as the world cannot give." This peace is His because He gives it, but more than that, He achieved it. "Peace" is that great prize for which He did battle with the world and which He now bestows upon His people. We welcome you as fellow theo~ logians to the lifelong task of interpreting His peace and of distinguishing it from the world's peace. We your colleagues in the ministry of the Gospel of peace appeal to you and to all our brothers in our Synod to remember that we are called of God to struggle not against each other but against the world for the sake of the world. Does anyone of us really need to be reminded that the world is present also even in our own hearts and lives? We have the world in common, and better than that. We you and we and all God's people have the Lord's own peace established and strong in our hearts. His peace has the shape of the cross. The Father did not bestow it as a direct celestial infusion straight out of heaven into all believers. He gave it in and through the Word made flesh, in Jesus born of a Jewish mother, in Jesus cru­cified on Golgotha, in Jesus opposed by the powers of dark­ness who could not overcome Him, in Jesus whom God raised on the third day. Through these great acts the peace of God was won, the unworldly peace the world needed. Note that this peace is "unworldly" not "other-worldly." It is not an escape from the world any more than His gain­ing of that peace was a flight from the world and its evil powers. And now He gives us that peace as we struggle where the world is most worldly, and where the Gospel is under attack. He gives it to us who, as He himself was, are burdened with specific historical and worldly burdens. There will be days when you are tempted to complain "Why can't we be your people and enjoy your peace without all these extras, all these historical burdens? It is heavy enough, Lord, being a Christian, but why Missouri Synod Lutheran? Why must I be caught in this controversy about the priority of the Gospel?" It may even seem like mockery to hear someone greet you and say, "The peace of the Lord be with you." Yet that is precisely the word that we who are besieged by the world need to hear. He has won the peace and bestows it freely on His own; While His Gospel is under attack we need to speak that message of peace to the at­tackers and to ourselves. With the enemy at the gates he 5e says, "Set your troubled hearts at rest and banish your fears." Easier said than done? But it has been done I How? By His "going away." For His going away 'was not only to death but to a victorious reunion with the Father. And more than that, He promises "I am going away and coming back to you." Peace is His "coming back" to youl And this time He brings the Father along. Both of them have come to dwell with us in peace. Being His people, being the place of His dwelling the being identified with His Gospel will inevitably mean con­flict with the world. But it will also mean a rich measure of His peace. That is His'promise. Being Lutherans in the current debate over the nature and function of the Gospel makes that conflict even sharper. But as theologians in that struggle we wish you His peace and more. We pray that a double measure of His Spirit may be yours so that you may discern ever more clearly how all questions of life and faith in our church and our ministry must be posed anew and reconsidered in the light of the priority of the Gospel. In that work we are one, for the Gospel has made us one. The Gospel is our agenda! As we undertake this mission we bear our burdens and we bear with our brothers, remembering that our brothers also bear with us, and that Christ bears us all. Thus it is that as we bid you farewell we offer you this parting peace, which is His peace. And we speak that word with you as we have spoken it with each other at every campus com­munion, "Peace, Brothers!" 5e. The Findings Concerning The Historical.Critical Method The Fact Finding Committee explored the USe of the historical-critical method at the St. Louis Seminary. It occupies a large portion of the inter­views because of its use in the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, as well as the controversy it has precipitated in the Synod. Because it is a matter essentially unfamiliar to many of the readers of this report, the findings are prefaced by a general statement about the method and its presuppositions. After the general statement there follow a number of sections dealing with theological topics affected by the use of the method. A study of these sections provides a rather comprehensive view of. how the majority of the St. Louis Seminary professors view and use the method. 5e, 1. A General Statement -The Historical·Critical Method The historical·critical method received a major portion of the attention of the Fact Finding Committee. It is the principal method of interpretation of the Holy Scriptures in use at the Seminary. All but a minority of pro­fessors indicate approval of the method. The president of the Seminary has indicated publicly that it is not possible for a seminary professor to teach courses in Biblical interpretation at the seminary level without using his­torical·critical methodology.* Because the Holy Scriptures are to serve as the only fountainhead and source of doctrine in the Lutheran Church, proper Biblical interpretation is crucial to the entire theological task. On that account, it is essential to under. stand how the historical. critical method is used at Concordia Seminary. Considerable confusion exists as to what the historical·critical method really is. Many in the church tend to confuse it with the historical·grammati'o cal method, which has long been in common use in the Christian church. In­deed, advocates of the historical·critical method commonly expound the his­torical.grammatical method when they speak to pastoral conferences and lay audiences on the topic of historical·critical method. * March 6, 1972, "Statement to the Seminary Community." 57 { 5e, 1 The historical-grammatical method seeks to expound the full meaning of Scripture on the basis of a careful examination of the text of Scripture. The historical setting, the context of the surrounding passages of Scripture, the meaning of the words used, the nuances of grammatical structure and literary type, the overall teachings of Scripture on the topic in question, and particu­larly the fact that the two principal doctrines of Scripture are Law and Gospel -all this must be carefully investigated by the Biblical interpreter. And all this is in hannony with the approach to Scripture used by confessional Lu­therans from the days of the Reformation down to our day. It is the method of Biblical interpretation taught at our seminary prior to the introduction of the historical-critical method in recent years. These factors are also included in the historical-critical method. But a new dimension is added. The words "historical" and "critical" both provide a key to understanding the newel' method. The word "criticism" comes from the Greek vocable tt(llVEIV, which means "to discriminate," "to discern," and "to judge." The method judges history. It is based on a philosophy that sacred history is to be judged on the same basis as secular history. Facts are im­portant for their own salte. The quest is to find out what actually happened. Historical principles are applied to the Bible as though it were an ordinary book or set of documents. Historical critics then frequently assert that "what actually happened" and what the Scriptures assert may be very much dif­ferent. The method conceives of history as being like nature: only what is veri­fiable by the criteria of scientific historical research can be considered to be true. These criteria in turn are determined by the acceptance of the cause­effect chain as being the only structure within which historical verification is possible. The term "critical" occurs in the combination "historical-critical" because the practitioners of the method hold that by the devices of literary criticism (i. e., form, redaction, and tradition criticism) it is reasonably possible to get behind the wording of the canonical text to some conception of what may have actual1y happened, for example, in the ministry of Jesus. When that point is reached, an approximation of truth has been achieved. In principle, such a view of sacred history is tightly bound to a closed naturalistic or positivistic world view. Such a view leaves no room for the living God of the Bible, for the action of God in human affairs, for miracles large or small, including the miracles of the incarnation and the resurrection of our Lord. Although this view of history underlies the historical-critical method as it is commonly used, it should also be noted that not all users of the historical­critical method, which is based on these assumptions, accept these conclusions as part of their personal theology. There is no way of verifying a miracle by means of the criteria of scientific historical investigation, because miracles occur as interventions into the cause­effect chain of occurrences. The only certain thing, therefore, that can be observed with respect to miracles is that the primitive church believed them. Or, it is said by practitioners of the historical-critical method, that the peric­opes which offer miracles are literary devices to teach truth, quite apart from the question of what actually happened, if anything at all. Here, for example, is Wilbert F. Howard's conunent on the miracle of the raising of Lazarus. It is found on page 649 of volume 8 of The Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1952): "The difference between revival imme­diately after death, and resurrection after four days, is so great as to raise doubts about the historicity of this story, especially in view of the unimagin­able story in Luke 10:38-42, and the grief of Jesus as He drew near to the tomb hasimpressed itself upon the imagination of successive generations of readers." Th!n,what are we to make of this account according to the practitioners of th~.historical-critical method? Many commentators have considered it to be call:al~~;o,\'!~aldevelopment of the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Here ~zl:lr~~J~.{~aid to rise from ,the dead, but unbelief on the part of the Jews b~s!l.$~trong as ever. Others conceive it to be a story (legend) to make f;Jh~tJesusisLIFE not only hereafter but right now. Such interpre­:t:esa~d.t9beverifiable,because there are (allegedly) parallels in other ~pf.tp..~~ay.,(1,Jpt actual parallels are seldom, if ever adduced, mostly .11ttle.,lite~~ryevidence has survived, if it ever existed.) 58 I --i 5e, 1 The search for the Sitz im Leben Jesu (life situation of Jesus) is intensi. fied by the consideration that as apostles and evangelists interpreted what happened, so the reader of today, the interpreter, living in the church as an "inspired community," is free to offer his own interpretation of what he finds to have been the nature and structure of the original occurrence. For example, Joachim Jeremias (Parables of Jesus) lists arguments for his belief that the explanation of the parable of the tares among the wheat comes from Matthew, not from Jesus (p.85). In fact, he believes that the real point of the parable has been lost in Matthew's interpretation. As JesJls told it, the parable teaches patience for those who are impatient. That's the point of it, and that is not taken up in the explanation. (This parable is in Matt. 13:24-30; the explana­tion is given in Matt. 13:36-43.) Thus the p:.;actioner of the historical-critical method feels free to recognize Matthew's "mistake" and start over, more correctly, from the way Jesus is thought to have told the parable itself dur­ing His ministry. In the historical-critical method the community (Israel or the primitive church) is thought to have created the theology of the written texts given in canonical Scriptures, thus introducing a sociological notion into theology. In point of fact, a community as such can create nothing apart from the creative individuals within it. According to Lutheran theology, the "creative spirit" who gave us the theology and doctrine offered in the canonical text of Scrip­ture is none other than the Holy Spirit, who inspired His chosen prophets, evangelists, and apostles to bear witness to Jesus Christ. For that reason, our own Synod has warned: "To attribute to the church a creatively formative part in the witness to the event is to fly in the face of all that is revealed con­cerning the activity of the Spirit; such an attribution introduces an intolerable synergism at a crucial point in the saving work of God." (Proceedings, 1969, p. 88, Resolution 2-16) It is generally recognized that the historical-critical study of the Bible is a product of Protestant liberalism. Its major premises and assumptions reflect a rationalistic attitude that the Bible is to be treated as human literature rather than as the inspired and inerrant Word of God. Even in more recent years, leading practitioners of this method have also been exponents of exis­tentialist theologies which have a tendency to divorce the kerygma, or message of the Gospels, from the historical fabric of the Bible. In the hands of such exegetes, a great deal of uncertainty was introduced into every phase of the Biblical account of salvation, thereby undermining the substance of the Bib· lical revelation itself. It is vital for Lutherans to recognize that Christianity is a historical re­ligion grounded in the great acts of God in the Old Testament and culminating in the mighty salvific acts of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. True as it is that God's great message of the Gospel carries its own power (Rom. 1:16), it is a message of something that God actually did in Christ. One cannot say of sacred history that it is a matter of indifference or that it does not matter. Faith is indeed a gift of the Holy Spirit offered and effected through the Gos­pel. But this acceptance and trust in Christ's redeeming work involves also the knowledge of historical revelation. In a discussion of all this, one must distinguish between the historical­critical method as such and certain tools it has developed. Some of these tools are useful to the interpreter, provided he does not use them according to the presuppositions of the method itself. For example, form criticism has shown that almost every Gospel pericope (unit) is pretty much self-contained; i. e., all by itself it testifies to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Again: tradition criticism has made us take seriously st. Paul's statement (1 Cor. 15:1-8) that the most important items of the Christian faith came to him by way of "tra­dition," that is, were passed on to him. Cf. also the words of institution (1 Cor. 11:23). Such remarks not only justify us but encourage us to ask: How did the work of transmitting such things take place? The issue that the church faces at the Seminary is: Does the hermeneutical method in use -the historical-critical method -do justice to the sacred text to be interpreted? Is the method as used the master or the servant of the Holy Scriptures? The majority of men at the Seminary approve of the historical-critical method. They assert that the negative, destructive aspects have been purged 59 5e, 1 from the method by their USe of "Lutheran presuppositions." They ,state that they believe the method to be as neutral as a box of tools. * Pl'esuppositions of the Historical-Critical Method The controls imposed on the historical-critical method are said to be the Lutheran presuppositions of the Biblical scholar. Although the Fact Finding Committee was not presented with any clear listing, such "Lutheran pre­suppositions" as the following were expressed: -A belief that the Holy Spirit would lead into the truth. -It is prohibitive to cut down the authority of the Gospel. -Confessional subscription protects us. -The Scriptnres are the Word of God. -Good scholarship will correct itself. It might also be obsel'ved that some members of the faculty occasionally made reference to the document prepared by the Conunission on Theology and Church Relations entitled "A Lutheran Stance toward Contemporary Biblical Studies." However, the controls mentioned in that document were only infrequently alluded to by these professors. Thus, there was little ex­plicit reference to such Lutheran presuppositions as the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of Holy Scripture or the need to avoid interpreting the Bible in such a way that its uniqueness is lost sight of and the canons of secular historians are employed uncritically. In fact, in the transcripts of the interviews and in essays it becomes quite evident that in practice the Seminary professors practice the historical-criti­cal method in the same manner and with virtually all the presuppositions that are inherent in the method itself. These are assumptions without which the so-called method could never have arisen or developed. Very definitely one such presupposition is that the historical method can stand in judgment over the authenticity and/or truth­fulness of Biblical assertions. Thus, for example, it is said that the fall account of Genesis 3 stresses a spiritual truth but not a literal, historical truth. It may also be held that one may quite frankly disagree with an apostle, e. g., on the role of women in the church. Very definitely another such presupposition, wherever form criticism, redaction criticism, and content criticism are used, is that there are divergent and contradictory tlleologies in Scripture. "The canon, looked at in the totality of its writings, does not present a unity of content," Kasemann says (Essays on New Testament Themes [London: SCM Press, 1960], p. 57). One of the prime purposes of the method is to isolate, trace, and explain these alleged divergent and contradictory theologies in the New Testament. Thus, with one stroke the very possibility of a single, pure doctrine in the church, based on Scripture, is vitiated, and confessionalism, as we have known it throughout the history of our Synod, is rendered an impossibility. And of course, the inerrancy and verbal inspiration of Scripture, as we have understood and con­fessed these articles of faith in our Synod on the basis of Scriptnre, are denied. Now what has happened by the advent of this method of approaching Scripture in our Seminary and Synod? The authority of Scripture has been challenged, nothing less! And this means that Lutheran confessionalism is challenged as well. Peter Brunner does not speak too strongly when he says: "If the New Testament no longer harmonizes, if in the canonical writings of the New Testa­ment a consensus is no longer heard regarding the Gospel that is to be pro-* Tools in themselves are neutral. A saw per se is neither good nor bad. A saw can be used for construction or destruction. Everything depends on the purpose for which it is used. But granting this, another factor needs to be remembered. If a man, given a choice of tools, deliberately selects a certain khld of saw to do a job, he has already indicated a prior persuasion purpose about the type of material hc is going to be worldng on. If he deliberately selects a hacltsaw, let Us say, it is quite obvious that he is of the opinion that h" is about to work with metal and not with wood (unless he is woefully unskilled!). The application of this to Biblical studies seems quite clear. A conscious choice of tools reveals the presuppositions with which the student approaches the Bible and begins his worl<. A man who genuinely believes that the Bible is God's own ln1mutabJe Word, inspired by the eternal, omniscient Spirit and therefore free from the relativity that characterizes mere human specu­lation about God, and men, and history, and things-such a man will hardly select a tool forged intentionally for the study of ordinary human writings for the expressed purpose of separating what is historically conditioned interpretation from what is basic reality, what is fact from what is fiction, what is etiological embellishment from what is a dependable report, what is a multilayered com· posite of conflicting tradition from what really happened or was spoken. 60 ..-...Ii J 5e, 1 claimed, then a confessional commitment has become' fundamentally impos­sible" (Springfielder, 33,3: Dec. 1969, p. 7). To attempt to avoid the implica­tions of Brunner's statement by a sort of Gospel reductionism is simply impossible. To avoid the issue, as Kiisemann does by saying: "The authority of the Bible is the derived authority of the Gospel" (op. cit., p. 57), is the very opposite of the case. For Lutheranism, the Scriptures are our canonical au­thority for what the Gospel is; that is the meaning of sola Scriptum for the Lutheran. Kiisemann shows his hand when he immediately proceeds to say: "In itself the Bible has no authority other than that of a venerable and in­formative historical document" (ibid.) -a complete denial of Biblical au­thority in the Reformation sense of sola Scriptum. And just this is the result of the historical-critical method. For statements from the fact-finding interviews covering the historical­critical method in general see the following transcripts; d. also Appendix IV, A Statement of Scriptuml and Confessional Principles, Section IV, "I. His­torical Methods of Biblical Interpretation." Documentation Prof. H Transcript p.5 COMMITTEE: Excuse me, just to clarify a little bit, and then I will give it right back to you. These people you say who head off in the wrong direction for a variety of reasons­can you just list some of those reasons that you think lead them off the wrong rabbit trail, and some of the things you have to watch, some of the caveats you have observed in your own teaching? PROF. H: Sure. But only in a most general way perhaps, most briefly because I think it is primarily for myself that I will speak rather than attempt to explain anybody else's position. But the paper does mention a couple of things, and they are rather general, but perhaps for that reason I could attempt an answer to it. Leonard Goppelt, for ex­ample, who is at the University of Hamburg in Germany, or was at least the last I heard. It speaks thaI the historical­critical method is used internationally and inter-denomina­tionally. But people continue to come up with different re­sults as they apply the method. Why does that happen? He says it is because they begin with different ecclesiological as­sumptions and with different theological presuppositions. And that is true. It is not the method in and of itself which leads anybody necessarily anyplace. But the method is a tool in the hands of a man. The method is like a carpenter's tool­box. It is a complex set of tools. And practitioners do a better or worse job, practitioners come up with different results partly because of their difference in skill but partly because of the difference in their set of presuppositions. I use the historical-critical method, but who am I? I am baptized, I am Christian, I am Lutheran, I am committed to the Lutheran Confessions, the ecumenical creeds, the Sacred Scriptures as a Lutheran, and those are ecclesiological and theological presuppositions, and they do make a difference. Prof. H Transcript pp.12-13 COMMITTEE: Could you translate this same thing concerning the resurrection of Christ? I suppose you could say that Bultmann regards that as an exegetical question, and he then gets around to the point where he says that he is con­vinced that the dead don't come back. He doesn't see any reason for making an exception with Christ. Now would you say that the resurrection of Christ is an exegetical ques­tion? PROF. H: I am not sure that you have correctly given me the gist of Bultmann's exegesis of the resurrection. But it is a fact that there are many matters even regarding the resur­rection which are exegetical questions. That Jesus was res­urrected on the third day, that the tomb was empty, that He was raised up from the dead by the power of the Father, I cheerfully confess. COMMITTEE: You confess. Would you allow someone else as a good Lutheran, let's say on Scriptural grounds, to make a different confession? To say that the tomb was not empty? That Christ in fact, that His body still was there or had been stolen or whatever? That there was no vivification? Is there anything in the method, or let's say method properly applied, that could leave this as an open exegetical question? PROF. H: To my mind, when people come to negative con­clusions about the resurrection of Jesus, they come to those conclusions not because they are applying the historical method, not because they are using historical criticism, but because of their theological, philosophical, ecclesiological presuppositions. COMMITTEE: The question arose though because, why would you make the distinction between the resurrection narrative and the cursing of a fig tree or the John the Baptist thing? Aren't they all-if one is exegetical, is not that also exe­getical? PROF. H: Every part of the Bible may be studied. Every part of the Bible may be studied according to the historical­critical method. I study primarily the New Testament by means of the historical-critical method. The conclusions to which a person comes are not determined by the use of the historical-critical method. It is very much a set of tools used with more or less kill, used with a variety of presup­positions, and the presuppositions determine far more than the method itself the kinds of conclusions to which people come. Prof. I Transcript pp.4-5 PROF. I: Well, what I said specifically at most of the District conventions -I suppose the wording varied from place to place -I tried to speak as the occasion offered; I said that I felt that probably one of the reasons for the difficulty which the seminary was experiencing in connection with some of the pastors of the Synod was over our use of his­torical-critical methodology. I think that we, you and I, went to the seminary at a time when there were very nega­tive criticisms that were made by faculty members against what was called higher criticism, and I think that as one of the, particularly the older, pastors of the Synod hear about some of the things that maybe even some of our younger men at the seminary are doing, though it is not limited to them, they may be wondering whether it isn't in fact the intrusion of what they knew to be higher criticism now at the seminary. I wanted the people to understand the truth of the situation. That has been our policy. That has been my policy, and I think that the only way to deal with any situation is to talk about things as they are. And the way things are at the seminary is that the people in our exeget­ical department -all of them -make use of historical­critical methodology. That, I think, needs to be distinguished from what people understood to be higher criticism. But that is the point. They made use of historical-critical meth­odology with Lutheran presuppositions, that is, they begin with the basic affirmations about the Scriptures as being the Word of God and the source and norm of faith and of prac­tice and the Scriptures as being authoritative for our doc­trine. And they hold Scriptures to be the inspired Word 61 5e, 1 of God. Then, of course, there are other presuppositions that are included; I didn't try to spell out the whole busi­ness for them; I was simply making a generalization about the fact that historical-critical methodology is used and that it is used with basic Lutheran presuppositions. Prof. I Transcript pp.l0-11 PROF. I: Well, what I meant by distinction between higher criticism and historical-critical methodology is to try to dis­tinguish between a negative connotation and a neutral con­notation. Historical-critical methodology is that: it is a methodology. It is a procedure by which to get at the nature of historical writings. The Bible is a product of history. It is based on events in history. It talks about events in history. It is written by historical human beings. It came about in a way in which writings come about. Therefore you use the methods that we have been able to develop, particularly in recent times, to get at how these writings came to be and at -specifically at what these writings therefore mean. Higher criticism carried with it, for our people particularly, all kinds of negative connotations. And rightly so, because the earlier higher critics, many of them, were not men of faith. They were functioning with preSUppositions different from the presuppositions that you have when you are a man of faith. And they brought their presuppositions with them to their task. Presuppositions, for example: miracles don't happen; there never has been a resurrection from the dead, so there can't be one. That is a presupposition. And they brought that kind of thing with them, and it did indeed have an effect on their work; so therefore, if there cannot be a resurrection from the dead, then somehow you must explain the reports of Jesus' resurrection and His appear­ances, and they have found ways of explaining it. O. K., that is their presupposition. But I think that the task of the Biblical exegete is indeed to use historical-critical method­ology that is one task; he has lots of other tasks, but that is one task in order to determine what the text is. Those peo­ple who have worked -let's take the New Testament for example, let's take the synoptic gospels, just plain synoptic problem -those people who have worked on that question have, I think, ascertained for us this hypothetical "Q," or they have helped us to understand that there are, there were circulating probably nobody knows for sure, haven't got them but there were circulating probably collections of stories which reported the miracles of Jesus and stories that reported other acts of Jesus, stories or collections of sayings of Jesus. Now, that is the raw material that was around there in the early church. They were anxious to proclaim the good news about what Jesus had done. They used it in connection with their weekly gath:!rings, their daily gather­ings at worship, and somewhere along the line people like Matthew and Mark and Luke set to the task of putting this stuff down in writing. Prof. I Transcript p.14 COMMITTEE: He is indeed reporting. But suppose someone said he is not, that their study leads them to believe that what is reported concerning Jesus there is something which Jesus couldn't possibly have said or wouldn't have said, that it is building up Him as a Messiah, that it is put into His mouth by the later community. Would you tolerate such a teaching? PROF. I: Well, I think it would have to be dealt with on its own terms. The only way to deal with historical criticism is with historical criticism. That is, you have to get -to do the hard job of scholarship to show the other person what is what. That is, I think, what indeed has happened in con­nection with the scholarly world. There is a marvelous community of self-criticism, when somebody gets too far out on the limb, it gets sawed off by the community, and people come back to understand one another again. We have moved from all kinds of suppositions about Old Testa­ment and New Testament to a situation where much of those theories have gone the way of all fl\!sh. My more important concern would be: Do you believe Jesus is the Messiah? Prof. I Transcript p.16 PROF. I: Why sure, the only purpose of using historical­critical methodology is because you are so concel'tled about the record! You don't use it because you don't give a darn about it. You want to be sure what it is that God has put 62 < «;<A~<0i*0'<'«"«« there for you. That is what you are doing it for, to be sure that God's Word is going to come through to you. Now, as a Lutheran preacher I address a text also with completely other purposes in mind. I have other resources rather that I bring to thc text in addition to this historical-critical method apparatus, trying to find out what the text is, what the words mean, what the background was, and all this stuff. I also come to it and that is where the Lutheran Confes­sions are critical I also come to it as a Lutheran recogniz­ing that what is important in any text of the Bible, any text of the Bible, is Jesus Christ. It is the good news of what God has done in the Person of Jesus Christ. That is the heart and core of the Bible, and that had better be there in my explication of any text of the Scripture from Genesis 1 to Revelation 21. So I bring that to bear, and when I am telling people, what text shall we take, take the text that X re­ferred to here, Matthew 11, John the Baptist's question to Jesus. The critical question is not: Did He use all those words in exactly that way? Could He have said < that? Sure, He could have said that. He could have said it just because all of those words appeal' in the Old Testament; He could have said it. Prof. U Transcript pp.9-11 COMMITTEE: Yeah. The question, though, was: Can a whole narrative be made up and introduced, be introduced, can you view this as a viable option? In other words, I'm doing my exegetical work here, form and redaction criticism and all this sachkritik; I come to a particular point, and I will say (I'm just quoting from memory now) that Marxen, and I think is quoted by Perrin in his book, where he says with reference to John the Baptist, that this is quite obviously a sort of reenactment as it's described of Israel being in the wilderness, and he says it's very possible that John the Baptist never baptized in the Jordan, it's very possible that he never wore this camel's hair or had this funny diet and went out and preached in the wilderness; as a matter of fact, maybe he never left Jerusalem. And he says that as far as he is concerned this is a viable option. One may, as a result of his studies, reach this conclusion, looking and saying, Well, this is a reenactment, the church probably imaginatively developed this story. So we are talking about the matrix of something that happened, and of course you can also say that in order, with reference to John or with reference to Christ, the church imaginatively -I'm not talk­ing about little variations, I'm talking about the whole ad­dress that Christ, in order to put in the mouth of Christ something that was so Messianic consciousness and so on, would say that the church would inaginatively invent this particular. I am asking you, When you deal with Scripture yourself, personally, do you think that it's legitimate for you to come to such a conclusion as a result of your scholarly study? PROt'. U: O. K. I think again, there are really two questions that I'd like to address myself to. One is the limits -which is really not a confessional statement at all is the limits of our ability as historians. As you are well aware, Julius Wellhausen said that the covenant, for example, since it is not mentioned in a number of the prophetic books, must have been a late development in Israel, in fact postexilic. George Mendenhall, who teaches at the University of Michi­gan, at Ann Arbor, under whom I studied for a brief time anyway, has shown, I think, from ancient history that is manifestly absurd and that the covenant in fact would only be conceivable as a form in the Mosaic period. So we can argue, you know, on I think the arrogance of scholarship at times, the limitations. That obviously is not the question that you are asking but is one to keep in mind, that just because one uses form cdticism does not mean at all that he accepts everything the form critics do, even from a schol­arly point of view. I would go on to that and say that if such a judgment, let's say, about the authenticity of a saying or not, would in any sense cut down the authority of the Gospel, it's clearly prohibited for me as a Lutheran exegete and that I constantly -I have to keep asking myself this question: Is there any discipline that I use, is there any approach, does it highlight the Gospel? And if it down­grades it, or if it shortcircuits it, I obviously stand in need of forgiveness. COMMITTEE: Would I understand you correctly then that, suppose I were doing this, just what I was talking about, I ---""iL but I said I still believe in Jesus Christ as Son of God and my Savior and my salvation comes only through Him, and I say as far as I am concerned, this doesn't downgrade the Gospel, if you believe that somebody else put something into Christ's mouth or somebody else developed a story about something which He never did, this doesn't bother me I then have permission to do this is this what you are saying? PROF. U: I'd rather keep it in my own words. I said if what I do in any way downgrades the Gospel or undercuts its authority, or if I do this as part of my disobedience, then manifestly I am not affirming the Gospel as I should. COMMITTEE: But you can conceive the possibility that this might be done without downgrading the Gospel? PROF. U: Well, that's a judgment you're drawing. COMMITTEE: What criterion would you set for an activity like that as to whether or not, in the instance I've given you, the Gospel is being downgraded or not? How would you decide? PROF. U: Well, if the Gospel will lose its power to convince, to create faith, to testify to Jesus Christ, to convey the for­giveness of sins, to support people in their doubts and un­certainties. If it did any of these things or a dozen others, I don't want to leave anything out by inadvertance, then it would be downgrading the Gospel. Prof. U Transcript IIp.18-19 COMMITTEE: Well, trying to tie it together, maybe some of the things, the examples that X asked about and X asked about, we have all confessed the Scriptures as the written Word of God. What are the presuppositions that you bring to that confession, that would keep you from where others in using the historical-critical method have gone far be­yond the example X mentioned, or that X mentioned to deny, say, the very resurrection? What presuppositions would keep you in the historical-critical method as a Lu­theran theologian from this? PRm" U: I suppose that one would say that's where one's confessional subscription would come in. One couldn't say the Apostles' Creed without affirming the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and that speaking strictly now from this kind of faith posture, I think there are a lot of other methodological reasons that could keep you away from such an assertion, let's say that plainly, people like Willie Marxen and others have gone beyond the limits of their discipline. I don't want to argue that point. I don't know Marxen that welL But that I would feel that my subscription to the Confessions, as well as my belief in Jesus who rose, maybe that's even prior, that I am absolutely persuaded that Jesus rose from the dead, because I have been convinced of that over the years a number of times through the announce­ment of that piece of good news to me; and that if my con­clusions would lead me to another direction, I guess I would say I'd better examine my conclusions. Prof. G Transcript pp.24-25 COMMITTEE: Several times in the CTM in introducing articles you have mentioned the use of historical-critical method and some in some claiming this method you know would deny the historical aspect of certain portions of Jesus' min­istry, whcther the cursing of the fig tree (no reference to anyone in St. Louis or anyplace in particular), but would deny certain aspects of Jesus' ministry as having a historical basis. Others claiming the same method go to deny quot­ing the same method -deny the resurrection. Now A would not do this because he says this is vital to the Gospel. My question is what Lutheran presuppositions are there that kcep you or me or anyone using this method from taking step B? PnoF. G: How much time do we have? It is a good question and a hard question. It needs to be faced. Number one, the historical-critical method as such is a method and you can get it's neutral. I know that X wants to challenge me on that, so I will come back to say something else; at least I suspect you do. It is like a knife: you can cut the apple with it or you can cut your finger with it. In either case you don't throw the knife away. Now so many of the 19th-5e, 1 century historical-critical theologians had some real pre­conceived ideas that they brought to their task; they were liberals, they were rationalists, etc., and these presupposi­tions I am convinced affected their outcome more than the method. Now there is a presupposition which I would argue is not built into the method, but I don't know if you want to hear me out on that argument. Let me just indicate that I am aware of the real problem here, namely, that history as defined by the 19th-century positivists assumes a closed universe and by definition excludes the possibility of mirac­ulous. I don't think that that presupposition is built into the use of the historical-Critical method per se, and if you want to pursue it further, I will be glad to talk about it further; but let me just make that statement to indicate at least that I have wrestled with this philosophical problem­Lutheran presuppositions that keep him from denying the reality of the resurrection. I think maybe here too I need to get autobiographical as well as theological, and I guess none of us want to make any clear-cut distinction between our -the way our lives develop and the way our theology developed. There are a number of factors at work here. Number one is the simple assumption that a document is to be believed as it stands unless there are good and valid reasons in the document or in its history to the contrary. When you finish First and Second Clement, then turn to Clementine recognitions and Clementine homilies, and just a wonder world -I am surprised TV script writers haven't discovered it yet. So there may be something in the docu­ment or in the history of the document that says maybe this is not to be taken literally. Number two, the warp and woof of Scripture is built pretty closely around the great promise of God, which we find in its greatest fulfillment in the resurrection. Number three, and, X, here I am back to my concept of tradition again. I am repeatedly helped when doubt assails me by either the creedal confessions of the church; the church has always believed this, and so, being a traditionalist, a conservative, my first response is to go with what the church has always believed. Or sec­ondly (and this may be proper or improper), more often than not a brothel' will come up in my moment of doubt and say, "Well, let's think again about this thing." He may speak that word of God which helps me, or he may reassure me without speaking that word. There are a number of stories (I can use that word in a very neutral sense) in Scripture which I will not consider debatable as to whether or not they happened, and there are a combination of factors which lead me to that conclusion: the text, the signals in the text, the long tradition of the church, etc. I am not able to always decide this clearly and solely on the basis of the text itself. There are times when looking at the text will leave me in doubt. This is not because of the historical­critical method, it is because the claims of the text are fantastic, I guess. Faculty Journal Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Dec. 9, 1970 STATEMENT ON EXEGETICAL METHODOLOGY The undersigned members of the Exegetical Department at Concordia Seminary, Sf. Louis, are unanimous in ac­knowledging-1) The great acts wrought by God in the course of human history for the salvation of mankind, which events are wit­nessed to in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; 2) The accusing and consoling words spoken by God through historical human beings, which words preceded, accompanied, and/or followed the events in which God acted; 3) Our obligation, as believing theologians who recognize the historical character of God's acts and God's words, to expound them with the aid of a rigorously historical meth-odology; . 4) Our regret over the misunderstandings which have sometimes arisen in regard to the methods and presupposi­tions of historical criticism, and our concern to dispel such misunderstandings; 5) Our conviction that the events and words reported in the Scriptures bear an essential message for us and our contemporaries, and our dedication to the task of bringing out and proclaiming that message in all its simplicity and complexity. 63 ... 5e, 1 In the following we enlarge on each of these points, es­pecially in regard to matters currently under discussion. 1) As a fundamental presupposition of our exegetical work we recognize that the Creator God is and always has been actively at work in his universe, most significantly in a series of specific events in the history of mankind. These include his guidance of the forefathers of the Israelite na­tion, his deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt and bringing them through the wilderness into the land of Palestine which became their possession, his anointing of a line of kings through whom he exercised his rule, and cli· mactically the sending of his Son who was born into that kingly line, lived and taught, died and rose again to found a new people of God, who have received his Spirit. We hold these to be real historical events, and we hold further that they have a historic importance far transcending the immediate situation in which they occurred. 2) God's intentions for mankind were not yet fulfilled when he had acted in historical events; he also deigned to speak to men in human language. Words from God accom­panied each of the historic, permanently significant events to which the Scriptures testify. By these words God brought men to face their predicament without him, led men to accept his action in overcoming this predicament, and helped men to conform their lives to his will. These words were spoken and written by God working through historical human beings, some of whom are known by name while others remain unknown to us. But all these words, at least in so far as they come eventually to be in­cluded in the canonical Scriptures of Old and New Testa­ments, were the very words of God to the situations in which they were first spoken or written. 3) Since God chose to deal with mankind through historic acts in human history and through the words of historical human beings, we are bound by these theological presup­positions to respect the historical character of the Scriptures which testify of him. For us whose faith requires us to take this historical viewpoint seriouslYi the intention of God in the Scriptures can be authoritative y elucidated only by a rigorous application of proper historical methodology. Anything less than this undergoes the risk of importing extraneoUs ideas and obscuring the divine intent. >I< To avoid such an outcome, a method of interpretation is needed which is critical, i. e., capable of discerning (}(QtVEtV, distinguishing, discriminating) between what is the author's and what is ours, what is original and what is later, what derives from one level and what from another. For theological reasons, therefore, we have welcomed the development, over the years, of a more and more critical and scientific methodology for the study of historical sources. We recognize both the appropriate functions and the intrinsic limits of a number of techniques which now belong to the historical-critical method. These techniques, as they apply to a Biblical text, include: (a) Linguistic study, to determine the meaning of the words and sentence constructions for the original author. Modern structural and semantic methodology can continue to make significant contributions to our understanding. (b) Textual criticism, to establish as nearly as possible the reading of the text after its latest significant redaction, assumed to be the canonically authoritative form. (c) Form criticism and stylistic study, to ascertain the genre of composition to which the unit belongs and the elements of prose 01' poetic style which characterize it. This aids in understanding the author's intent, by bringing out both the typical and the unique features of form and style in comparison with other texts. . Cd) Study of the setting, to determine both the typical situation in the life of the people that would characterize any text belonging to this genre of composition and also, if possible, the specific historical occasion which gave rise to the individual text under study. The fuller our understand­ing of the original setting, the more likely we are to re­capture the original intent of the text. (e) Tradition history, to trace, the transmission and de­velopment of the motifs or clusters of motifs (streams of tradition) from their origin to their appearance in the text under study, and even beyond. Comparative materials from • We do not wish to imply, however. that the Spirit of God can­not work through the Scriptures when they are interpreted by other methods. e. g .• allegorical. 64 outside the Bible may prove helpful either as analogies or as actual sources.' Such a study can often significantly clarify not only the ideas of a text but also the intended impact on its initial hearers. (f) Redaction history, to reconstruct the process by which the materials of the text under study were combined with other materials and edited until the book reached its canoni­cal form. Besides showing how materials were progressively re-interpreted in new situations, this branch of study assists in understanding the larger framework within which the details have their place. The purpose of employing all these techniques is to en­large our understanding of the meaning intended by the author of the canonical book in his own time, on the as­sumption (see 2, above) that this is also the meaning initially intended by God himself. The historical method as it applies to the understanding of a theologically important event begins with the list of techniques already given, since the Biblical word is cer­tainly the most important historical evidence for recon­structing the events to which it witnesses and which it interprets. This and other types of historical evidence which may be available -for example, from other ancient docu­ments or from archaeology -are then evaluated according to the normal principles of historical methodology pertaining to such evidence. The assumption throughout (see 1, above) is that God acted in the course of real human events, so that a better understanding of the historical events cannot but aid our appreciation of God's acts. Thus by reason of our faith that God has both acted and spoken In human history we are compelled to adopt a rigor­ously scientific historical methodology as we seek to make out his action just as it originally occurred and his speech just as it was originally intended to be understood. 4) Misunderstandings in regard to the presuppositions and the methods of historical criticism have unfortunately arisen at times among both its professional practitioners and in­terested observers. The very word "critical" or "criticism," which we have used in connection with the historical method, has negative connotations for some. There have admittedly been his­torical critics who practiced the methodology with pre­suppositions differing from ours. Certain scholars, for ex­ample, have come with a very skeptical world view and have allowed little or no room for God and faith. Some seem to have taken delight in promoting novelties and opposing all traditional views. We are not such men. It is not the historical-critical method in itself that brings men to such positions, but the presuppositions with which they begin. The "criticism" which we practice is motivated by presuppositions of faith, and is intended to discern clearly among the various levels and possibilities in the situation being studied. (See further in 3, above). Our ultimate evaluation of the results obtained by this critical methodology arises not from the methodology itself but from our presuppositions, which are those of faith in God through Christ rather than those of pure naturalism, skepticism, or any other world view. We recogniZe, however, that the devout application of scientific historical methodology, even under the presup­positions of faith which we bring to it, have at times led us to exegetical conclusions which surprise and disturb some observers. To this we must say that the precise re­sults of Biblical study cannot be guaranteed in advance. Any attempt to prescribe an official exegesis must be re­sisted as the imposition of an authority above that of the Scriptures themselves. As men work prayerfully and crit­ically, they may indeed uncover data or reach conclusions that are surprising, even disturbing, to themselves and others. Yet the Biblical word must be permitted an audience, even when it is disturbing. The situation may for instance occur, and has occurred, where an honest application of the historical method (3, above) appears to uncover a discrepancy between the actual course of events (1, above) and the word about it preserved In the Scriptures (2, above). Because of our presuppositions we react to such a situation with a positive openness to what God may be wishing to teach us thereby, rather than with a negative judgment that would cause us to reject either the word or the act of God. In all that we do as historical-critical exegetes, our most basic presuppositions are those of 1 and 2 above. Our appli-------cation of the methodology and our evaluation of the results arise initially from those assumptions of faith, and all other axioms are subsidiary to them. 5) Not only do we affirm that God has acted and spoken in history, we also believe that his acts and words have altered history, including our own. Thus our interest in searching the Scriptures is not a merely antiquarian one, but is enlivened by the conviction that through them God still speaks to and acts in men today, We are therefore also interested In the later steps beyond the strictly exegetical task. We are concerned about the process of extracting the Biblical message for our own day and applying it to ourselves, our fellow Christians, and all 5e, 2 people today. We are convinced that this can be done most authoritatively when full cognizance is taken of both the similarities and the differences between the setting in which any word from God was first spoken and that in which it is now to be re-applied. In the fulfillment of this task we call ufon those who are expert in the methodologies of his­torica , systematic, and practical theology to join us and add their appropriate contributions. With a spirit of mutual submission to the God who has acted and spoken we also invite our colleagues of those departments to evaluate ,our exegetical work from the per­spective of the principles we have enunciated, and we wel­come their criticism when we unconsciously depart from them. 5e, 2. The Findings Concerning the Historical-Critical Method and the Seminary View on the Historical Value of the Biblical Accounts It is important to note that one of the announced "controls" on the his­torical-critical method involves Gospel "reductionism," wherein items and events in the Scriptures not touching on the Gospel need not be defended and upheld. Another control involves a use of the Confessions in a manner that makes the Confessions the prime norm instead of the Scriptures, inas­much as the Confessions are said to protect us from allowing basic Christian dogma from being denied. The general pl'esupposition that the Scriptures are the Word of God is in effect negated by the insistence that the "human side" of the Scriptures necessarily makes them subject to every human lim­itation. The references to guidance by the Spirit, which seems "to distinguish sharply between the letter and the spirit" (Smalcald Articles, Part III, Art. VIII, 3), appears to open the door to a mystical or "enthusiastic" approach. The reference to scholarship imposes an external control on the Scriptures in that the scholarship rather than the Word itself is the criterion. But the real test of the assertion that Seminary professors use a. "bap· tized" and purified version of the historical-critical method is to be found in the answers of the men to various questions concerning how various sec­tions of the Bible are interpreted. Note first that the historic events noted in the Scriptures are frequently set aside by the manner in which the text is interpreted. This point does not have reference to kings and battles and casualty reports but to a broad spectrum of items reported in Scripture, both in the Old and in th~New Testament. In many instances it is said that the way in which the Scriptures tell a story need not be accepted at its face value, because a certain Biblical text is supposedly a part of a document written much later than the event (source hypothesis -a part of the historical-critical method) and is often said to have been written in an editorializing vein for a certain theological purpose. The final result is that one can not be certain that the events re­corded in the Scriptures as God's mighty acts in salvation history really took place at all. Nor can one be certain that the words Scripture attributes to various individuals were actually spolten by them. It is claimed that they were written centuries later as an "interpretation." In handling Biblical history in this manner, Seminary professors are following the historical-critical methodology as it is commonly practiced. By questioning or allowing the questioning of the authenticity of events and words recorded in the Scriptures, they introduce an uncertainty principle that downgrades the authority and credibility of the Bible and thus of the Gospel. The Seminary faculty states that the facts of Biblical history are im­portant. Yet the transcripts show a willingness to follow the historical-criti­cal method in undermining the authenticity of the Biblical record regard­ing the facts. When this contradiction is pointed out, they counter by saying that the important thing is not: Did it happen or didn't it? but: Did what happen? i.e.: What is the significance of the event? It is, of course, self-evident that the significance of God's action in his­tory with reference to the plan of salvation is the main point in theology. 65 5e, 2 But the seminary in its position (cf. A Parting Peace, Part IV, printed along with the transcripts following this section) appears to evade the real ques­tion at issue. The real question is: Can the significance of God's action in history and. of His words through His prophets, apostles, and evangelists con­tinue to have meaning if the action in history never actually took place or if what happened is really quite different from what the Bible tells? Can Chris­tian theology in effect be suspended in midair without its foundation on the mighty acts of God related in the Scriptures? In this connection we need to note how the Lutheran confessors handled the matter of the historicity of Biblical accounts. The plain answer is that they faced no problem in accepting both the historicity of the Biblical ac­counts and Biblical characters and at the same time relating them directly to their meaning for man's salvation. It is interesting that the Lutheran confessors speak of faith as trust. It is not enough to accept certain historical facts intellectually. The confes­sors argue that faith must cling to the promise of the forgiveness of sins. NClte, however, how Melanchthon expresses it three times in Apology IV. Faith is not "mere historical knowledge" (IV,48); it is not "simply"histori­cal knowledge (IV, 50); it is not "an idle historical knowledge" (IV, 61). Faith must be more than that. "It is a firm acceptance of the promise." Nonetheless it is also evident that the confessors presumed historical knowledge of God's saving acts. Knowledge is not enough. Faith and trust must be added. But historical knowledge is very definitely treated as a part of faith. Historical knowledge is not dispensable. See Apology IV, 50-51: "Paul clearly shows that faith does not simply mean historical knowledge but is a firm acceptance of the promise (Rom. 4:16) ...• So it is not enough to believe that Christ was born, suffered, and was raised unless we add. this article,the purpose of the history, 'the forgiveness of sins.' " (Cf. also Apology IV, 304) The manner in which the Confessions treat sacred history in general shows an acceptance of and respect for the Biblical narrative. Theyspeak repeatedly of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and his faith, of David and Saul, of Elijah and Elisha and Daniel. The fall of man, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah -the events of the Old Testament, as well as the New ---all are taken by them as historical in the sense of events that really happened and involving also people who really lived. In short, it must be recognized as beyond dispute that for the Lutheran confessors the historical nature of the Bible was accepted without question. To depart from this position, under whatever guise, is to depart from the view of Scripture held by the Lutheran confessors. In this connection, cf. Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Con­fessional Principles, Section IV, "F. The Infallibility of Scripture." For documentation see the following transcripts of interviews with the St. Louis professors. Documentation Prof. K Tl'anscript pp.l0·12 COMMITTEE: Just one more question: Would you explain what you meant by historieized credo document? PROF. K: Well, that the term I may have used it, but it doesn't strike me as my terminology but I would mean that the intent of the document was to make a statement about Yahweh and His Word shaping history rather than that the document has as its intent to recount just what happened. That term just doesn't sound like me in connec­tion with the Succession Narrative, so I don't know precisely. COMMITTEE: Professor K. you would not agree, then, with these statements, go beyond what you said you're acquainted with, I quote: "Instead of history' we have a kind of his­torical novel" -This is in reference to the Succession N ar­rative. And from the same author: "The Succession Narra­tive is a piece of political propaganda justifying Solomon's claim to be the true successor to David in a situation where this claim may well have still been disputed." Now, from what you have been saying, I would understand you to reject this out of hand and quite emphatically? 66 PROF. K: Well, I don't know. I don't use the term propa­ganda; I do attempt to point out that the author is writing this to indicate that it is Yahweh's will that Solomon be king, you know, and he's writing it for people in that situa­tion who were questioning whether you ought to have a king at all, and if Solomon rather than a descendant of Saul ought to be king, and the author is I guess a person could use the term propaganda he is making propaganda for Sol­omon, but his propaganda is that Solomon's succession is Yahweh's will. COMMITTEE: Would he make, present a historical novel rather than straightforward history to do that? PROF. K: Well, again now, historical novel isn't my term­inology; I don't use it; I don't think I do. Do you? X: I don't recall your ever saying it. COMMITTEE: Well, I'm not quoting it as having come from you, but I'm just wondering if you take exception to that kind of terminology, as well as not using it. PROF. K: I don't use it, but I think I would agree with the I ~ point that this person is making, that this is written to peo­ple to assure them that it is Yahweh's will that Solomon be king, that they should accept him as king. Insofar as that could be called propaganda, I guess I could accept that term. COMMITTEE: I'll give you another example that might give you a clearer opportunity here. You recommend in your ar­ticle Introduction to the Old Testament by Selin-Fohrer­now I'm curious as to some of the positions that Fohrer takes as to whether or not you are then in agreement with that. For example, on page 93 he talks about the narrative literary types and traditions; he says the sagas and legends were personalized and adapted to the personal element in Yahw­ism. The sanctuary legend of Bethel consequently appears as a personal experience of Jacob, and the narrative of the rape of Dinah; and subsequent revenge of Genesis 34, Shechem, who was in love with the girl, brothers enraged at her disgrace, and Jacob, who suspects trouble, are de­picted so graphically as individuals that the reader scarcely realizes that the story deals with national and tribal groups. Would you agree with that position? PROF. K: The story in Genesis 34 I think in the context of the Yahwist is trying to say something about the exclusion of the tribes of Levi and Simeon, to get to the emphasis that is laid on Judah and Joseph in the blessing of Jacob. In my teaching of Genesis 34, I say about that, and that's about all, because that's about all that I have assurance of that I understand. Now, I am not at all sure that the point that I am trying to make is specifically the point that Fohrer is trying to make here, but I guess that I come off, you know, sounding as if these fathers of the tribe were sig­nificant for the tribal, the later tribal development. COMMITTEE: I'm sorry, I didn't catch the last of that. PROF. K: They were significant in the later tribal develop­ment. COMMITTEE: What Fohrer is saying here, though, is that ac­tually this is again a saga or legend personalized, it's at­tributed to a person, Jacob for example, in reality that never happened to Jacob. Is this acceptable in your opinion? PROF. K: Well, it depends on what Fohrer is trying to say there. If he is trying to say it didn't happen and so there is no message, that is not acceptable in my opinion. COMMITTEE: So you're saying that there actually had to have been something that happened in terms of these individuals or in terms of the tribes? PROF. K: That the events in the ancestors of the tribes, the individuals had significance for the later developments, yes. COMMITTEE: Well now, again he makes a statement on page 124, at the settling in Canaan, it was by a number of different groups, such as the Moses host, the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob tribes and groups. Apparently what he does here is to take the position that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were not patriarchs as such, but these were simply names given to various groups that settled in the area, and then later on somebody writing that up historically personalizes that again. Now in your opinion, for a Lutheran theologian, would that be an acceptable way to deal with Scripture? PROF. K: Well, I think that I see considerable Biblical evi­dence for a tribal as well as a national settlement. The evi­dence that I see for this is particularly in Judges 1 and in' certain parts of Joshua 13 to 19, makes nothing of the kind of tribal development that he is referring to, you know, Moses tribes, Abram tribes, and so forth, and so I make nothing of that kind of division; I do talk about the Scrip­tures as talking, as presenting both tribal and the national development. I can't even say what century I would place the tribal settlement in; I can pretty well say in what cen­tury I would place the national conquest. COMMITTEE: How would you view the patriarchs, Abraham, Jacob, Isaac? Are these historic characters who really lived, or is this again a personalized legend? PROF. K: The earliest writer about them, as I see it, is the Yahwist. He, in his writing about them and in spelling out the entire salvation history of Israel, uses sources that have come to him in the tradition of the Israelite people. I am most interested in finding out what the Yahwist is saying and what he is asserting about God in His presence and activity with Israel as the Yahwist is saying this to his 5e, 2 readers. He uses these sources, he doesn't discuss whether he considers them historical or not, I really don't know. Now, having said that, I really don't know, I am cognizant of the fact that they describe customs that are known to be current in 16th, 17th century, not to be known at the time he is writing, and so I tend to present this, these sources as coming from that time, but having, you know, that's the evidence that I have for that, and I suppose I would prefer to answer your question by saying I simply don't know whether the Yah wist, who is writing this history to tell us about God, conceived of Jhese people as historical persons or not; if you want my opinion, yes. Prof. A Transcript pp.12-13 COMMITTEE: Just a question, Prof. A, about the Deuteronomic historian. Did the Deuteronomic historian select real his­torical events, or did he contrive some of them? As I under­stand your article, he was shaping the things for a theo­logical purpose. Now did he invent events, did he -as someone has characterized but went on there in the Old Testament -did he alter the past in the light of the pres­ent, to make his point? PROF. A: I think it's clear that we view history today and ask questions differently than has ever really been done in the past, that is, in the distant past. Therefore it is impor­tant, I think, that we beware, try very hard to use the right categories and recognize that the Scriptures are written in~ I would affirm, in the eategories of its day. That God used men to write the Scriptures, that's what inspiration says. D. K. So. Did he invent? I would say no, he did not in­vent anything, and I would also say I believe this is a term which is not terribly useful. Now, if you ask, how does the Deuteronomic historian interpret past history. There's a tremendous amount of data that he has, and he wants to tell the history of Israel, but he wants to tell in such a way that its meaning for his day, whieh is ultimately in the exile, although I think there may have been an earlier edition in Josiah's time, but in any case, he wants to tell the mean­ing of that history to his day, how does he interpret it? We, I suppose, would list as we do in a sermon first the sources and then give our interpretation. What he does is: he weaves his interpretation with comments in the midst of it, so and basically this is done through speeches and through, or his own comment like at 2 Sam. 17 at the end of the fall of the Northern Kingdom he explains why this happened. Also does it by the framework into which he sets the stories of the judges. You remember this framework that comes with each of the judges: Israel sinned, and then God handed them over to the enemies, and they cried out, and then God answered them and set a savior, raised up a judge or a savior. And then also in Kings, well enough said there. Now, I suppose the question you're getting at is best, it deals mostly with something like the speeches. Take Sol­omon's speech at the temple, at the temple dedication. I per­sonally would think it historically probable that Solomon had a speech at the temple as king and a prayer. Now is the speech that we have there, if you had one of these ob­jects over here, the tape recorder there, would it have re­corded just those words? And I would say probably not. Now why? Because the nature of the language seems to me is quite Deuteronomic and like that of the Deuteronomic historian and also because the meaning of the temple is explained in terms of what its meaning is for the people in exile. I don't doubt that by a special revelation Solomon could have done it this way; I don't think that's a question; it's whether he did. And I would say no, and in this speech the Deuteronomic historian is pointing out that the temple is a house of prayer; and he is, and Solomon in this prayer is, and the Deuteronomic historian is saying this is a house towards which we pray, God will answer your prayer when you in faith turn and pray toward the temple; He will for­give. This is an emphasis three or four times in this whole prayer, and this is precisely the need of the people in exile. They have sinned. They need God's forgiveness and then, for example, "if they sin against Thee and You carry them away captive to the land of the enemy, yet if they lay it to heart in the land to which they have been carried captive and repent and make supplication to Thee in the land of their captives, if they repent" and so forth and so forth, "then hear Thou in heaven, Thy dwelling place, their prayer and their supplication." So he is calling on his countrymen not to give up the faith even though all seems lost, but to rather, to repent, to ask for forgiveness, and is assuring 67 5e, 2 them that God will hear them in exile. To keep the faith, that is the message, repent and keep the faith. Prof. L Transcript p.21 COMMITTEE: But the question which I am leading up to in connection with this is: Would you give us your intention really with Bultmann and what it was particularly the point you want to make here and how you appraise it? PROF. L: I feel that these men, despite absorption in perhaps overmuch catering to the antisupernaturalism of our time, do have one thing going for themselves which our Lord said to Thomas eight days after Easter: "Because thou hast seen, thou hast believed; blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed." These men struck me, I have embarrassingly few volumes of Bultmann; I am not a peer of my colleagues at all in Bultmannese. It seems to me in a few places at least where he spoke and a couple of these other men, that he did seem to say (and I thought this was a valuable insight): Faith does not depend on the facts, the documentation, the buttressing, the historical accuracy of what you are building your faith on. Faith is a supernatural act. This is all that I was trying to support in this. Prof. H. TransCl'ipt pp. 9·12 COMMITTEE: Prof. H, when last year at the Council of Presi­dents I think you presented this paper or similar to it, and then at buzz sessions we had the privilege of looking at specific passages on the light of this entry into Jerusalem, cleansing the temple, and so forth, and also the cursing of the fig tree I recall was one. My question really is twofold. Number one, do you consider it legitimate for a Lutheran theologian to say that events like this, without going into a lengthy thing on the cursing of the fig tree, but events like this from the ministry of Jesus need not be accepted as having happened historically but were placed into a historical setting around one of the sayings of Jesus? That is the first part of the question. The second would be whether this possibility of doing this, whether you person­ally would do it or not, whether this possibility is inherent in form criticism. PROF. H: Let me answer the second part first. Form criticism as it developed took as one of its canons a very negatively critical point of view. It said that anything in the Gospels for which we can find an appropriate Sitz im Leben Kirche cannot be said with historical probability to go back to Jesus Himself. That is therefore a part of the history of form criticism. That kind of a negative historical judgment is part of the history of form criticism, and yet I don't think it is a necessary part of the practice of form criticism. It is a part of a it is a canon of some early form criticism which I reject. But it is not necessarily inherent in every application and use of the method. That is an answer I think to the second part of your question. And as far as the first part of the question, I feel that rather than com­menting on some hypothetical exegete it would be better if you could ask me a question about my use of the method. How I practice it for example. Could you sharpen it up in that way? COMMITTEE: Well, in practicing it I assume that you also have to then look at the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the method itself, and I am simply speaking in general terms as to whether you consider this for yourself and/or others a legitimate thing for a Lutheran theologian to say: What is placed into the historical setting in the Gospels is not necessarily historical, though certainly it proclaims the Gos­pel truth or whatever. PROF. H: Without having an example to deal with I find it hard to COMMITTEE: Take the cursing of the fig tree. PROF. H: The cursing of the fig tree. Did it happen or didn't it happen? COMMITTEE: Well, is it all right to say it didn't? PROF. H: Do I say that it didn't, or is it all right to say that it didn't? COMMITTEE: Both. 68 COMMITTEE: Say, can, a Lutheran theologian with Lutheran presuppositions say that it did not? PROF. H: It would seem to me that a question like that, Did it happen, or didn't it happen? is an exegetical question and could be discussed exegetically concerning its historical probability concerning the form of the narrative, concerning the history of that particular piece of tradition by Lutherans. It is therefore an exegetical matter rather than a doctrinal matter. COMMITTEE: Well, I am not asking that really, although I guess that you could dialog on it too; but my question then; I assume you're saying then that it is possible. PROF. H: Sure, just as it would be possible to discuss whether there was such a person historically as the good Samaritan or whether this story is a parable. It is not called a parable by Luke, but we arc told of a man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. Did he or didn't he? COMMITTEE: Did Jesus curse the fig tree or didn't he, Prof. H? As far as you are concerned? PROF. H: Yes, He did curse the fig tree as far as I am con­cerned. That is your other question. You have the question also of the legitimacy of considering whether-COMMITTEE: No, not considering whether excuse me, I guess I wasn't clear. The legitimacy of coming to the conclusion as a Lutheran exegete that this is not a historical event. PROF. H: It is not a conclusion to which I have come, but if it is legitimate to discuss whether it actually happened or not on exegetical grounds, I think it ls legitimate to dis­cuss it on exegetical grounds, but I don't think it is a doc­trinal question. Just as in the case of the good Samaritan it would seem to me that that could be discussed exe­getically, and a person mayor may not come to the con­clusion that there was actually a man who did go down about whom Jesus was speaking. COMMITTEE: Prof. H, let me try it once here. By exegetical question I think most people, at least I, to be more specific, look upon it as to determine what the text means. Now I think what X is asking is: What do you do with an indi­vidual who decides on the basis of form criticism or any allied type of activity he doesn't have any question as to necessarily what it means. The question isn't what, why did Christ do this, what lesson do we derive from it? That you would normally say I think would be exegetical activity. The question is whether in fact this took place. Now I sup­pose one might say, Is it a parable and so forth? But there isn't any evidence in the text to that. Let me give you a different example that might be easier to handle. Perrin in Redaction Criticism quotes Marxen, and Marxen is talk­ing about John the Baptist in the Gospel of Mark. And says the juxtaposition, this is Perrin first, to the Old Testament prophecy concerning the wilderness in Mark 1: 3 and the appearance of John the Baptist in the wilderness in verse 4 shows us that John the Baptist is here being interpreted as the fulfiller of these prophecies and as such the forerunner of Jesus. But this means that the reference to the wilder­ness in verse 4, whatever may have been the origins in the tradition, is not a geographical reference at all but rather is a theological statement. Then he quotes Marxen: "The wilderness is not a geographical location. It is not permis­sible to reflect as to where it could lie. This reference is not intended to give a location for the work of John the Baptist, rather 'in the wilderness' qualifies the Baptist as the one who fulfills Old Testament prophecy. It might al­most be said the Baptist would even be the one who came in the desert even if in his whole life he had never once been anywhere near the desert." That is a specific example. Is that an exegetical question? PROF. H: Well, I think that is an exegetical question. It is one where exegetes differ. I find that in reading the Gospel of Mark there probably are not very many exegetes who would agree with the negative historical judgment that Perrin and Marxen seem to be making there. But evidently he is discussing it as an exegetical matter. And it is some­thing to be considered exegetically. Prof. I Transcript p.9 COMMITTEE: Well, is it right a priori with a confessional Vorve1'staendniss of Scripture to say that there is something here which Luke-Acts explicitly puts into the mouth of St. Paul and to say that that cannot be harmonized with what St. Paul really says in First Corinthians'! PROF. I: I don't know. I haven't asked the question before, COMMITTEE: Would you be disturbed if one of your professors would expound, using the historieal-critical method, the exegesis of Corinthians and Acts in that fashion and say now you have two points of view here that cannot be har­monized? PROF, I: Well, I don't know, I guess I would be concerned, yes, because we have all kinds of different emphases in the Scripture, different emphases between the Gospel of John and the synoptics and between the synoptics and Peter, and Peter and Paul, and what not. These are varying emphases. I find them to be marvelously in harmony, COMMITTEE: Are emphases in theology, emphases in doctrine and content, emphases in terms of historical statements, differing in what respect? PROF. I: Well, you have the book open here on the Gospel and the Theological Task, and I have gone to the trouble of trying to distinguish between these various terms and have attempted to say that I think we heed to be clear on what it is we mean by the terms we use, I am not going to live or die by a particular definition of a term, just so long as we use terms the same way. And I distinguish be­tween Gospel on the one hand and doctrine or dogma on the otper and theology in the third place. PI·Of. M TI'anscript p.8 COMJVIITTEE: Would you say then that you regard these patriarchal narratives as them being in every way historical in the sense that they correspond to fact? Or is there room for the position that while they might be, let's say 90 percent historical, they might be 10 percent nonfactual'( PROF. M: I suppose I would have to say that I can't think of any, and it's just because I am not able to recall this that quickly. I can't think of any statement in the historical narratives of the patriarchs where I would have to say: Well, maybe a certain percentage of this is not historically valid. I would conceive of a possibility that in the text that we have, for the purpose for which it was written, there could be things which would not necessarily correspond pre­cisely to wie es eigentlich geschehen ist. COMMITTEE; So there is this possibility. Would you regard this as being divisive in any way in the church if a person took this position? In other words, suppose I take a given spot in Genesis or Exodus or Deuteronomy or whatever, and say now I am convinced on the basis of my studies of the background of this, and so on, that this is added for theological reasons, and I'm convinced by the line of reason­ing that this really didn't take place, therefore, I will not accept the text at this point? PROF. M: O. K. Now you've broadened this beyond the patriarchal narratives when you introduce the possibility of Exodus and Deuteronomy COMMITTEE: Yes, yes, stretch it out PROF. M: If we could stretch it out beyond that, I could point to -I'm sure you could too -to passages in the Old Testa­ment which describe a historical event but which do so in terms of what I call divergent parallels. Which would sug­gest to me that the Biblical writers who record these di­vergent parallels, and in some cases put them down side by side, were not concerned about the blow-by-blow account of precisely what happened but that they were concerned primarily with the theological content, the theological mes­sage of that which they are recording. PI'of. D Transcript pp.27-28 COMMITTEE: Just to wrap up a little bit on historical-critical method. You reviewed in one of the CTM's, I think back in '68, Von Rad's commentary on Deuteronomy, and in that and I think this is rather typical of the approach of Von Rad and others he says on page 28: "The sermons in 5e, 2 Deuteronomy are addressed to ISI'ael in the form of words of Moses now near to his death when they arrived in the land of Moab after their wanderings. This fiction is main­tained consistently throughout the whole of Deuteronomy but really isn't fiction. In fact these sermons were addressed to Israel in the latter periods of the monarchy," And then he goes on to give his line of reasoning. Are you in agree­ment with Von Rad on that? PROF, D: I remember Prof. X once tried to come to grips with this, and I have every admiration for his way of get­ting at these things. He said that essentially the Pentateuchal materials are Moses for our day, for the day of whoever a man is writing for. I wouldn't call it fiction. That I think is a bad choice of words. I think it is important that you recogniZe that indeed the people who were speaking that maintained that the spirit of Moses for example as in Num­bers 12: 11 and 12, where the spirit of (chapter 11 rather) the spirit of Moses is transferred from one to the other, that these men speaking in the spirit of Moses, making it clear that their words were dependent upon Moses, could see no other person and could credit the truth that they were speak­ing in their generation to no other person than Moses since indeed it was derived from him. And I would maintain that they were speaking in their generation dependent upon Moses, bringing Moses up to date for their day and age, but that they should somehow or other credit it to someone else than the true person from whom it was dedved would be abhorrent to such people, Faculty Statement to Graduates Pentecost 1972 A Pa1·ting Peace, Section IV May the Holy Spirit Whom the Father sends in Jesus' name, Bring these words to your remembrance: "ANYONE WHO LOVES ME WILL HEED WHAT I SAY ... HE WHO DOES NOT LOVE ME DOES NOT HEED WHAT I SAY," (John 14:23-24) A moment ago we said that the inspiring by the Holy Spirit dare not be separated from the facts of history. The converse is also true: the facts of biblical history cannot be understood without the Holy Spirit. Without Him to teach us, we might still retain all sorts of facts, but not as Gospel faci;s, hence not the facts of Scripture. We do run the dan­ger of forgetting that. We tend to reduce the things which happened in biblical history for example, Jesus' virgin birth or His resurrection or the Exodus -reduce them to where we can no longer see what really was happening there "for us men and for our salvation." All we have left then is the fact that this or that miracle took place, That much many a pagan believes. So do the devils, Once we have stripped these facts of their real Gospel secret, what good does it do to ask, "Do you believe that they happened or don't you?" Of course they happened, But that does not require believing in any evangelical sense of faith. So the first question is not, "Did it happen or didn't it?" No, the first question is, "Did what happen?" For example, what really happened when Jesus was born of a virgin? Or when He suffered, died and was buried? What does it mean when the Large Catechism says, "All this in order to become my Lord"? (The Creed, 31). Only as we first answer that ques­tion, discerning the Lordship of Jesus in and through those events, do we thereby answer the other question ("did it happen?") in a way that really honors our Lord. That is possible only by faith in Christ, out of love for Him. For as Jesus says, in order to "heed what I say" it is necessary first to "love me." And that is why He sends the Holy Spirit. "He who does not love Me," says our Lord, "does not heed what I say," even though that man may seem to get the bib­lical facts straight. He really does not get the facts straight, not even the simplest facts, not even those facts which seem hardly miraculous at all. For he does not understand what really happened. It was that way with the disciples. For, as Jesus said, it was because they did not love Him that they could not grasp what in fact was happening. Even the elementary event of Jesus' death, His "going away," the disciples misunderstood. True, if someone had asked them whether His dying hap­pened or not, they would of course have answered that it did, And in a sense they were right. He did die, But what they would have meant by His dying was all wrong. The 69 5e,2 dying which they thought was happening never really hap­pened at all. They were too afraid, too unloving, too dis­spirited to see that where Jesus was going was home and that the One to whom He was going was His own Father. So what point would there have been in asking the disciples before they received the Spirit, "Did Jesus' death happen or not?" No, the question which needed to be answered first is, "Did 1vhat happen?" "Which death?" The death they originally had in mind did not really occur. We all want to heed our Lord's Word. That too is some­thing which we in our Synod all have in common. We all want to believe what His Word says to us, truly believe it. None of us wants to deny or even to abridge what all was happening in the biblical history. All of us yearn to perceive how those wondrous happenings, each and everyone of them, are bound inextricably to what God was there doing for our judgment and salvation. We all know that without that "for us" no event in Scripture is yet a subject for faith, an acting out of Jesus' Lordship. What we are also finding out to our sorrow is that this constant connection between biblical history and biblical Gospel can be treacherously difficult to discern in each and every case. No wonder, such discerning is humanly impossible without our being taught by the Holy Spirit. This difficulty of ours, perhaps more than any other in our whole theological task, reflects how remiss we have been in doing our biblical homework. All of us have. Now it comes home to us how utterly dependent we are, for our reading of the Scriptures, upon the love of Christ and the leading of His Spirit. Pages from 1972-73 Catalog Concordia Seminary, S1. Louis EO-307. PSALMS. Survey of Psalter as a whole. Exegetical study of Hebrew text of selected Psalms. Analysis of Psalms Gatttmgen and their Sitz im Leben in Old Testament worship. Study of major theological themes of Psalter. 3 hours. EO-30B. OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION I. An isagogical survey of the Pentateuch, Former Prophets and Writings (except Psalms and Daniel) together with a consideration of historical backgrounds and theological mo­tifs. 3 hours. EO-309. OLD TESTAMENT INTRODUCTION II, An isagogical survey of the Latter Prophets and Daniel to­gether with a consideration of historical backgrounds and theological motifs. 3 hours. EO-3Il. OLD TESTAMENT APOCALYPTIC. Investigation of the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testa­ment in terms of its connection with Old Testament proph­ecy, relation to intel'testamental apocalyptic, and theological relevance. .3 hottrs. EO-401. STUDIES IN THE PENTATEUCH: YAHWIST STRA'l'UM Detailed exegetical analysis of the theology of the Yahwist Stratum described from investigation of the slories and tra­ditions of which it was composed. The mef.~age conveyed by these stories and traditions in the literary and historical con­text of Pentateuch. 3 hours. EO-402. STUDIES IN THE PENTATEUCH: DEUTERONOMIC CODE. Detailed exegetical analysis of the Deuteronomic Code, in­cluding dctermination of precise contents and historical background. Investigation of exhortations and laws of which Code is composed. The message conveyed by these laws in literary and historical context of Pentateuch. Theology of the Code. 3 houTs. EO-403. STUDIES IN NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES, IntrodUctory and advanced courses in Aramaic, Ugaritic, Arabic or Akkadian as need and interest dictate. (Good working knowledge of Hebrew essential.) 3 hotO's. EO-404. STUDIES IN THE INTERTESTAMENTAL PERIOD. ' Critical analysis of selected texts and/or traditions found in this literature. 3 hours. EO-405. OLD TESTAMENT A6CHAEOLOGY, Study of Old Testament world, history and message in light of archaeological discoveries in Palestine and Ancient Near East. Primary archaeological reports, excavated artifacts and slides utilized whenever possible. 3 hours. 70 EO-40B. OLD TESTAMENT THEOLOGY. Historical and/or topical analysis of theological concepts and theological systems in the Old Testament. 3 hours. EO-409. CREATION THEOI,OGY. A seminar on the patterns and motifs of creation texts in ancient myth, Old Testament and inter testamental literaturc. Current significance of creation theology for modern man and his relation to environment. 3 hours. EO-410. THE WISDOM OF JOB, Analysis of the biblical text with focus on human ,suffering, ethical motivation, Job's attempts at self-vindication and their rebuttal, and justification as the work of God alone. 3 hours. EO-418. STUDIES IN THE LATTER PROPHE'l'S (AMOS). The techniques and results of exegetical methodology as ap­plied to the Book of Amos in Hebrew. Study of the earliest "writing prophet" and the continuing theological and social significance of his message. 3 hours. EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY E-B05. RESEARCH PROJECT. Independent study project for graduate students under su­pel'vision of selected instructor on basis of student-prepared prospectus. Prospectus form available from School for Grad­uate Studies. 3 hours. E-806. MASTER'S THESIS. Studcnts may register for these credits in any quarter. Credits must be earned before the S. T. M. degree is awarded. :.1 hom·s. E-807. DOC'l'OR'S THESIS, Students may rcgister for these credits in any quarter. Cred­its must be earned before the Th. D. degree is awarded. 3 hours. E-B09. EXTENSIVE READINGS, Extensivc readings in an area not normally offered in other courses, on the basis of a selected bibliography prepared by the department. Final paper to summarize various interpre­tations or to make coherent pattern of readings. Final exam­ination to evaluate breadth of reading and insights gained. Prospectus form available from School for Graduate Studies. 3 hours. E-B31. PROBLEMS OF HERMENEUTICS. An investigation of basic hermeneutical issues: the transla­tor as interpreter, the canon as a hermeneutical problem, in­spiration and allegory, tradition as interpreter, "what it meant and what it means," "the New Hermeneutic." 3 how·s. EO-B01, B02, B03, B04. OLD TESTAMENT SEMINARS ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR Seminars in the major problems of Pentateuch, Former Prophets, Latter Prophets and Writings, respectively. The core courses of thc Old Testament graduate program in which the student develops a critical exegetical methodology through extensive readings, research papers, and class dialog under the guidance of at least two instructors in each semi­nar. (Knowledge of German required.) Class limit: 5 stu­dents per seminar. Admission by prior consent of instructor. Each: 3 hours. EO-B15. STUDIES IN GENESIS 1-11. Detailed exegetical study of the Hebrew text of this first por­tion of Genesis. 3 hours. EO-B16. STUDIES IN EXODUS. Seminar studies in the Book of Exodus focusing on the sig­nificance of the exodus event for Old and New Testament theology. Key chapters discussed on basis of Hebrew text. 3 how·s. EO-B20. SEMINAR IN DEUTERONOMIC THEOLOGY. Description of the theology of the Deuteronomic-Deutero­nomistic work on the basis of an investigation of the mes­sages which the work as a whole and its various parts con­veyed to the historical situations to which they were ad­dressed. 3 hOltrs. EO-825. STUDIES IN BIBLICAL POETRY. Excgetical study of representative examples of lyric poetry from thc earliest (e.g., Exodus 15 and Judges 5) to the latest (e.g., Lukc 1 and 2) in the Bible. Particular attention to Gattung-analysis and stylistics. Comparative materials, not­ably from Ugarit and Qumran, are also drawn upon, though ability to work in Semitic langUages other than Hebrew is not presupposed. 3 hours. EO-831. SEMINAR IN JOB. Analysis of selected crucial points in the dialog sections of the Book of Job. (Available to students in Graduate Pro­gram in Pastoral Counseling as an Area B elective.) 3 hours. 5e, 3 EO-837. SEMINAR IN THE PSALTER. Investigation and evaluation of contemporary approaches to the Psalter. Research assignments on basis of Hebrew texts and thorough analysis of scholarly literature of past 50 years. 3 hours. 5e, 3. The Findings Concerning the Use of the Historical-Critical Method and the Determination of the Intent of the Biblical Authors It is accepted by Biblical interpreters in general that to understand a given section of Scripture it is necessary to determine the intent, or purpose, of the author. What is he attempting to tell his readers? This search for intent, however, is used by some professors to justify stating subjectively that the intent of the author is only to teach a theological truth, and not to give historical information. In this way the historical in­formation may be disregarded or rejected. This technique becomes a reduc­tionistic hermeneutical device and in practice results in~asting doubt on a great deal of the factual, historical material of the SCl'iptul'es. This principle, if extended, leads to the undermining of the autheniicity of any and all of the mighty acts of God related in the Scriptures, and thus of the Gospel itself. It is unsatisfactory to claim that the creeds of th.e church are a "con­trol" governing this phase of the historical-critical method. This view, how­ever, de facto elevates the creeds over the Scriptures. Cf. again Appendix IV: A Statement of ScriptuTid· and Confessional Principles, Section IV, "B. The Purpose of Scripture," and IV, "F. The Infallibility of Scripture/' par. 6 on "intent." For an illustration of this point see the following transcripts. Documentation Prof. K Transcript pp.21-22 COMMITTEE: How do you understand the image of God that we find in Genesis, man created in God's image, and then in connection with the fall? Were men, either Adam or Eve 01' somcbody else, originally perfect and fell, or what does or does that say something else? PROF. K: The image-of-God material is in the Priestly source. The Priestly source does not have the fall account, and so I don't see, in my understanding of the theology that uses the fall account and the image-of-God account, the re­lationship between these two. COMMITTEE: Are you saying that the image of God occurred in one source, the fall occurs in another, therefore, you can't make any connection between them? Is that what you're saying? PROF. K: I'm saying that I do not make a connection between them in my teaching as I try to present these sources, and I would maintain that the intent of the Pentateuch is not to make such a connection. PI·of. n: Transcript pp.19-20 COMMITTEE: Do you believe that the Scripture teaches an original, real Adam and Eve, and a fall in which they were involved? Or is this a general way of describing the fact that early man didn't live up to God's expectations or that man in general has never lived up to God's expectations? PROF. K: Well, I believe that the Yahwist source in these materials is trying to tell us something about God and God's king in his dealing with man in the pre-flood and the post­flood era. The Yahwist uses sources, and of these sources I would have to ultimately say, make the same statement that I did of the Abraham sources, I don't know whether he intends these to be historical. COMMITTEE: But didn't you tell us before, it's the canonical Word which determines the canonical text rather than the sources? PROF. K: Absolutely. COMMITTEE: Well, isn't the canonical text clear? PROF. K: No. Not if the canonical text is constructed in this way and this is the process that the Spirit has used in its construction. COMMITTEE: What about it in the sources would lead you to believe that there was no real Adam and Eve and no real fall? PROF. K: I didn't say that. COMMITTEE: Or to question whether or not PROF. K: I said that I simply have to answer the question on the basis of the canonical and the Yah wist wordj I don't know. COMMIT1'EE: How about Paul and Romans 5, when he speaks of Adam, or in First Corinthians 11, when he speaks of woman falling first and then man? PROF. K: He sees Adam as the representative of mankind who got us into this mess -COMMITTEE: He refers to him as one man. PROF, K: He sees Christ as the representative of mankind who got us out of this mess. That message is very clear to me in Romans 5. I would again have to say that if you want to get more of a message than that out of Romans 5, you know, assert on the basis of what Paul says that he is talk­ing about a historical human being, that again I don't know; I think I know what his message about God and God's action in response to the event in Adam and the event in Christ is, and that is his message to me, COMMITTEE: How about First Corinthians 11, where it says that man wasn't deceived, but the woman, and the woman fell first and then man? Does that tell us anything in terms of the fall itself as an event as described in Genesis 3, PROF. K: Unless Paul is discussing the subject of Adam and 71 5e,4 Eve's historicity, which I don't think he is, I don't really think it does tell us anything, or I would have to respond again, I don't know. Prof. I{ Transcdpt p.to COMMITTEE: Just one more question: Would you explain what you meant by historicized credo document? PROF. K: Well, that -the term -I may have used it, but it doesn't strike me as my terminology -but I would mean that the intent of the document was to make a statement about Yahweh and His Word shaping history rather than that the document has as its intent to recount just what happened. That term just doesn't sound like me in connec­tion with the Succession Narrative, so I don't know precisely. COMMITTEE: Professor K, you would not agree, then, with these statements, go beyond what you said you're acquainted with, I quote: "Instead of history we have a kind of his­torical novel" -this is in reference to the Succession Nar­rative. And from the same author: "The Succession Narra­tive is a piece of political propaganda justifying Solomon's claim to be the true successor to David in a si tuation where this claim may well have still been disputed." Now, from what you have been saying, I would understand you to re­ject this out of hand and quite emphatically? PROF. K: Well, I don't know. I don't use the term propa­ganda; I do attempt to point out that the author is writing this to indicate that it is Yahweh's will that Solomon be king, you know, and he's writing it for people in that situa­tion who were questioning whether you ought to have a king at all, and if Solomon rather than a descendant of Saul ought to be king, and the author is -I guess a person could use the term propaganda -he is making propaganda for Solomon, but his propaganda is that Solomon's succession is Yahweh's will. Prof. M Transcript pp.20-21 COMMITTEE: If I understand you right then, the purpose -if you think the purpose can be served without accepting the textual statement or even the New Testament, which says the world which then existed was deluged with water and perished and so on -if you can say that the purpose can be served without accepting that statement, that then you're under no compulsion to accept the text -is that correct? PROF. M: No, X, my contention is that the text of Old and New Testament is all-important and that our concern must be to understand what it is that the text is saying, what its intention is. See, our traditional, Lutheran approach is that we deal with the sensus literalis, but for us Lutherans the sensus titemlis is the divinely intended sense, and my con-cern as an exegete must be to determine what that divinely intended sense is, which at times may even be -and I say this deliberately -even be different from the mere surface sense of the words. COMM!TTEE: You mentioned all these different things that the exegete has to go into, seeking the purpose, looking at the background, and everything else, but X's question was: When you've done all this and this is your field, what do you say about the flood? PROF. M: I use the flood in my preaching to proclaim Jesus Christ because the New Testament brings me back to this again and again, that all of the Old Testament is there to bear witness to Christ and the flood account bears witness to man's sinful rebellion against God, to man's judgment on sin, a judgment which makes me tremble in my boots, but which is then followed by the word of grace, which in the New Testament comes in its culminating form in the clear and beautiful proclamation of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Son of Man, my Lord and my Savior. COMMITTEE: Now this is wonderful, but in this particular passage, if the world flood, which Scripture says was an event, and if the total destruction, save for Noah's family and that grace -if in effect this really did not take place and that this maybe was a little local flood and they escaped on a raft or something like that, you're saying that this still could be and you've still got the same message of grace. Is this what you're saying? PROF. M: Well, I'm not saying that that's what the Scrip­tural state of affairs is, but I'm-COMMITTEE: I mean, would you allow this, say, if a person took this view? PROF. M: If you're asking if I would allow it, I think I would say yes, I would. So long as this individual does not negate the divinely intended sense of the passage, which is to teach sin and grace. COMMITTEE: But is there anything in the text which indicates to you, in the text which indicates to you, that it was not what it claims to be: a world flood? PROF. M: Well, if we had a good deal more time, I'd say we ought to go through the chapters in Genesis which speak to us of the flood account and which again utilize this ap­proach of divergent parallels and where we -I would say we find evidence from within the Scriptures themselves which suggests that the concern is not for the precise his­torical sequence of events or a precise description of facts, and to that extent I would say that I could not insist on one version of the flood account which I could say is the only correct version based on Scripture. And here again I'd say I'm resting my case on what the Scriptures themselves say. 5e, 4. The Findings Concerning the Use of the Historical-Critical Method and Its Effect on the Interpretation of Miracles De Facto Denial of Miracles All of the Seminary professors stated that they accept the concept of the Biblical miracles as having actually taken place. However, the Fact Finding Committee explored this item in some detail inasmuch as practitioners of the historical-critical method typically tend to set aside the historicity, the "it really happenedness," of miracle accounts. The committee found that, despite their acceptance of the possibility of lDiracles, Seminary professors commonly tend to treat the reality of mira­cles in given texts as exegetical questions. It is considered permissible to 1;reafa~account of a miracle as nonliteral and therefore nonhistorical (i. e.: "Roever happened"). Professors claimed that "Did Christ walk on water?" was the wrong question to ask the text. It was also asserted that the miracle ()fChristwalking on water could be treated as an open exegetical question that c()uldbe interpreted in several ways, thus in effect eliminating themi­raculouselement from the narrative. There is a marked reluctance on the 72 5e,4 part of some of the men to condemn this downgrading of the miracle accounts as unbiblical. This practice constitutes a serious erosion of Scriptural au­thority, since it leaves open the possibility that any Scriptural account may .be questioned by the device of asserting that the theological lesson, not its factuality or historicity, is the important concern of the text. In this connection see Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Con­fessional Principles, Section IV, "I. Historical Method of Biblical Interpre­tation." The following transcripts report the findings of the inquiry on this point. Documentation Prof. N Transcript pp.15-16 COMMITTEE: Some scholars feel that thel'e are some parts of, let's say, the Gospels which are, well, they sometimes call them imaginative additions, to somehow bolster the Mes­sianic image of Christ. Now if such an imaginative addition is allegedly Christ walking on water -now is it permissible for me as a Christian to say, "Well, it's in the Bible, I mean it's -it's written, and therefore, even though it's hard for me to see how that could happen, I'll accept it"? And on the basis, of course, we first come to faith in Christ and so on, and we know his view of Scripture, and we've been con­vinced by the power of the Word and so on. But when I get to that particular point, the man says, "I want to excise it, I think that's an imaginative addition." I can either do that and say, "Well that's legitimate," or I can say, "It's written," and on that basis accept it. Now, which do you regard, first of all personally what's your position? PROF. N: In that particular point of Jesus walking on the water, I accept it as a miracle, and I'm sure it is not neces­sary that what the miracle has a place in the Holy Scriptures and in Christ's ministry. But here simply I am saying that Christ walking on the water is that miraculous deed which Christ did, and I accept as that. COMMITTEE: Now would you say, suppose I don't, that I'm a good Lutheran and I still don't accept it because my schol­arship leads me to believe that's something that was added to, really didn't happen in the life of Christ? PROF. N: Well, it would depend on that person's belief in total context of his Christian life and acceptance of author­ity of Holy Scriptures in his Christian life, but I suppose that he could interpret the walking of Christ on the water in probably, in a little bit different from what I do accept. But simply because of that I would not think that to ex­clude him from my Christian fellowship with him, but to counsel him to continue to keep in the faith in Christ. COMMITTEE: Well, really, my question wasn't exclusion from fellowship. My question was whether or not this was a Lu­theran thing to do. PROF. N: I think Lutherans mean many things too and like many other Christian communion, I do think that we, as Lutherans, do not altogether agree Scriptural accounts in same way. I think there are, and Luther himself clearly recognized this and very hermeneutical principle. What he often emphasized was his individual relationship to God and his place of the conscience and I think we Lutherans today too, I think should remain on this and on certain different interpretation of the particular passage certainly does not exclude him from that Lutheran thing. I think he has a legitimate place to be in that Lutheran community. Prof. 0 Transcript pp. 11-12 COMMITTEE: Can we say that Jesus did the miracles attrib­uted to Him in the Gospels in a sense that He interrupted the usual natural processes? PROF. 0: Yes. COMMITTEE: Did Christ walk on water? PROF. 0: I would see no reason to say He didn't. COMMITTEE: You would say that He did then? PROF. 0: Yes. COMMITTEE: Is it acceptable for a Lutheran theologian to deny this? PROF. 0: I would say, now you're asking exegetical questions. Now, personally I'm in the clear. I am not as certain as if a Lutheran theologian, going to the Greek text of the Bible and reading there that, if this is the case, that Jesus was walking rraQo. 'djv ihJ.I,aaaav, and he would understand that to mean "alongside," if he did not do this because he denied the possibility, but he was really convinced that the text said something else, then I would have to allow him that possibility. He's not denying the miraculous. COMMITTEE: Now, are you saying that the text in this in­stance is not clear, that there's a question as to what is meant? PROF. 0: I said, I'll say it very clearly. If another interpre­ter were convinced that the text bore that meaning, then I would allow him the right as an exegete to say that's what the text in his opinion meant, provided he is not saying it because he starts with the assumption that Jesus cannot do miracles. Am I making myself clear? COMMITTEE: All right, but then I want to pursue this COMMITTEE; Yes, I want to too, in this sense: What would determine whether you would permit him this? In other words, are you saying that his stance on the miraculous or the text? PROF. 0: Both. In other words, if I thought, one, that he is not saying this because he says, "I have a supposition that this is impossible; Jesus could not have done it; therefore the text could not mean that." That I would rule out. If he asserts that, yes, it is possible that Jesus could have done it, but as I read this Greek text, I don't think the Greek text says that. Do I make myself clear? COMMITTEE: But how would you determine -you see, this is a very clear statement as far as I know; there is no­the exegesis seems rather straightforward. Or if you don't want to take this one, take the raising of Lazarus. PROF. 0: I see no difficulty with the raising of Lazarus. COMMITTEE: Now suppose I were to tell you, though, that I would come along with some approach to the text in which I would say that I am convinced that this is a text clearly says this, I don't think there's any possibility with the text of changing it to say that it meant something else. The words are clear. But suppose I say that I believe these words are a legend that was placed in there by either the writer or a redactor later to build up the concept of Christ as the Messiah and on that basis I would not accept the account of the raising of Lazarus. Would you permit me this? PROF. 0: I would say, "You're wrong." I don't know if it's a question of permitting. COMMITTEE: Would you say that I can say tWs as a Lu­theran theologian? PROF. 0: I would say that you should not. COMMITTEE: But you would still allow me the possibility of saying PROF. 0: You are using words, "can," "understand to be," "is it," "can he say." Obviously he can say it. He does. COMMITTEE: Yes. What I mean, and I'm glad you came back 73 5e, 4 with this because we want to understand eaeh other very clearly. What I'm saying is, can I legitimately say this as one who is pledged to accept the Word as norma n07'mans? In other words, ean I take a case where there is a very clear statement, where there is no exegetical problem (yes) but where I may on the basis of some source theory or redaetion theory, perhaps draw the conclusion that this is something whieh is added by the community later, that this was not in fact something whieh happened, it is a legend, it is added, Now, suppose I take that position, can I legitimately do this as a person who said I am pledged to the Scriptures and to the sola SCriptum? PROF. 0: I guess I would ask, "What does this do to the Gospel, to this man? What does it do to the proclamation of the Good News? Does it undercut the extra nos charac­ter of my salvation? Have you made it impossible to pro­claim that Jesus Christ is the Lord, by His life, death, and resurrection?" And if he has, obviously, impossible to say that as a good Lutheran theologian, COMMITTEE: Do you make the Gospel then determinative rather than the Scripture? Are you in danger of switching formal and material principles? PROF, 0: That's a good question, I would answer that, X, by saying, "No, I don't want to set Scripture and Gospel against each other, I don't want to do that," I am committed qua Lutheran to, by the Confessions, to the fact that the central affirmation of the Scriptures is the Gospel, and there­fore as a Lutheran, the final, the ultimate step, the touch­stone of anything is the Gospel. This would certainly be the way in whieh Luther himself worked, say, in evaluating the Book of Hebrews, Prof. G Tl'anSCI'ipt pp.27·28 COMMITTEE: Let me sharpen it up. Suppose somebody says on the basis of a form criticism that he thinks that, well, take any story you want, but let's say Christ walking on water, Say I don't think He walked on water really; this is something that was written in by the church in order to show that He is really God, and what better way to do it to show that He is a God of nature. And that is really what that means: He is a God of nature, and we are quite sure that, although the text is clear and says He walked on water, that really that is something that is wl'~tten in and not his­torical, didn't happen. Now is this not a violation of this control here, the authoritative word is canonical? PROF. G: Let me first of all affirm that the walking on water presents no problem to me whatever and that I wouldn't take this particular route. Now let me try to defend the guy who may go that route whoever he may be. If I were to find in the literature of that period this kind of story told once or twice or three times, then I in full honesty would have no choice but to ask myself, May this have been a literary device used for a certain purpose? This is not the final answer. COMMITTEE: Applying that to the virgin birth, I am told­and I am not a seholar in that area that there are parallels, Egyptians and Greeks, the virgin b~rth. Well, applying that to the story of the virgin birth, would you then question whether or not that is to be accepted as historical? PROF. G: I would question that and then would affirm it, but that is where the problem arises. Vergil, as you know, in his Eighth EpilogUe something about the divine savior Augustus virgin-born. So (cough) classic example where in non­Christian literature the literary device "virgin born" is a way of affirming the unique power and heroism of Augustus. Julius Caesar claimed to be son of Venus, I think, built a temple to her somewhere along the line. At any rate they are all doing this. Then in all historical honesty I need to ask myself the question: Is it possible that a Jewish rabbi has picked up this motif and built it into the Gospel? As I wrestle with this question, I am tremendously helped by the ancient tradition of the church, which has always said we have found it desirable, wise, necessary to affirm the virgin birth. I don't know what logical principle that I could use to prove the virgin birth beyond debate. At some point in some way I have to fall back on my faith, my belief. PI·Of. P Transcript pp.8·10 COMMITTEE: In your opinion is there any miracle in the New 74 Testament which on the basis we have been talking can legitimately be exclsea from the canon? You know the New Testament like the back of your hand, so this is a fair question. PROF. P:Sure it is a fair question. We can't excise anything from the canon. The canon is a given, if I understood your question. COMMITTEE: Let me rephrase it then. Is there any of these miracles concerning whieh one in your opinion may draw the conclusion that this in effect does not represent some­thing that Christ did but it is something which is said con­cerning Him as some kind of an interpretation or imaginative addition or whatever you want to call it? Do any of the miracles in the New Testament qualify? PROF. P: Many of them qualify in the minds of many schol­ars. If you are asking what I believe, here on the spot, there is not one of the miracles which I would want to affirm was not within the power of my Lord and that the community in remembering and recording it has recorded something that didn't happen. I .can't think of any. COMMITTEE: If you had a student who felt that he had reached a conclusion that he had here a miracle which in fact qualified for that, what would be your, oh, say, peda­gogical approach to it, what would you indicate to him as his mentor? Would you be apt to agree with him then if he felt that way that this was O. K, if he felt his scholarship had led him to this, that you might not agree with the scholarship but you would say, "Well, this is your right to do this"'? PROF. P: No, I can't recall that it has ever happened that a student in a paper has taken a miracle text and has reached any kind of very radical conclusion. If it should happen, talking in hypothetical cases, in any case, if I have a concern over something that a student is prodUcing, I talk to the student, I would want to know what is going on. In the case of a miracle story which hypothetically his scholarship might lead him to see as an interpretative pericope, I would be very much interested in knowing what he thinks he is learning about the Christ in that pericope and if he is moti­vated by some of the reductionist presuppositions. I would want to find that out; it would be a concern; I would want to talk to him about it. COMMITTEE: Now suppose he is not operating with an anti­supernaturalism, but he feels he has done his homework, and he finds a number, as you indicated, of New Testament scholars of repute who think of a particular peri cope that this conclusion may be drawn, and if you have established that that is really his basis, would you say, "0. K., this is all right"? Or would you say it is recorded in the canon here as something which took place and therefore we have to accept it that way? I am getting back to my "exeision" again. PROF. P: In no case would that student, I think, be excising that pericope. That would not be his intention. COMMITTEE: What you are saying is how he interprets it, as to whether or not in fact it is historical or whether or not it isn't. PROF. P: Yes? COMMITTEE: O. K Well, if he says I think, for instance, Christ walking on water, that these led to the conclusions that really this is saying something spiritual and his schol­arly reading and so forth and his thinking, his analysis, leads him to the fact that this really isn't necessary for this to have happened for the Gospel, although It says something about the greatness of Christ, it is sort of perhaps a parabolic way of talking about that He is Creator and so on, but he says, "I think I will preaeh to the people in this particular sermon that Christ indeed is Creator and so on, but whether or not He walked on water we don't really know" -what would you do with that? Huh? PROF. P: I don't know. It is just so interesting how good a sermon you can preach on these pericopes when you try to carieature them. I don't think that student would want to preach that Christ walked on the water, punctum. None . of us would want to. If his study of that peri cope led him to an exaltation of his Lord, I might say, "Well, maybe you will study that text another time and reach different con­clusions; but you do have a grasp on your Lord, and this text has helped you." I don't think I would be terribly concerned. Prof. Q Tl'anscript pp.17-18 COMMITTEE: That's why I'm asking you the question, sir. Do you yourself believe that in the Gospels, or in the New Testament in general or in the Old Testament too if you please, that there are imaginative enlargements? Do you believe this or do you not? PROF. Q: I think for example in the book of Revelation you have many, many cases of imaginative expression. "144 thousand." This is the tt'ouble with a good many witnesses. They go off on a tack, you see, naturally, well let's take, but this is underestimate-COMMITTEE: Well, let's take two examples you give. PROF. Q: Fine. COMMITTEE: Peter's walking on water, the coin in the fish's mouth. PRm'. Q: Well, let's say this, that if you had a camera on the occasion I'm sure that you would have broken it. COMMITTEE: Would you please state directly what you mean by that? PROF. Q: What I mean is that there are questions that are improper for us to ask in some ways. The facts of history as they come to us, as was pointed out before, along with their interpretation, I as an interpreter of any text, especially of the texts of Sacred Scripture, have to take the stance of one who recognizes that all the standards and criteria of the cosmos, and that includes also my scholarly standards, that they will have to recognize their limitations, that there are many phenomena -I'm using that word loosely now of God that are not completely susceptible to our under­standing. That's what st. Paul says: "We see as in a glass darkly." The early church pondered many of the things that Jesus said and did, but they had the assurance that the Lord was guiding them; this is a great comfort to us. In other words, if they didn't grasp something fully at the time when they were with the Lord, and we know they didn't, because otherwise the apostle Peter would not be criticized so much in the Gospel, and repeatedly notice that 5e, 5 the Gospels affirm to us that the disciples understood none of these things, and now, the Good News comes to us as Good News, not as good data first of all, and you yourself know, not you, but one of your own poets has said this that for example, in Genesis the horticultural observations ~r th~ biological observations are not those that would be sub­scribed to by a taxonomically oriented researcher, that's a quotation out of the Biblical Research Amwal. Well, I think that the same kind of caution, the same kind of reticence, the same kind of scholarly sobriety should characterize our concern in investigating. the truth. COMMITTEE: Now with that background, would you please indulge me and answer my question? Do you believe that there are imaginative enlargements in the Gospels? PROF. Q: Well, show me where there are some, and then I will analyze them. I can't just answer a question that I­I have to see a text. COMMITTEE: Well, Peter's walking on the water. That's a very familiar text. Or Christ walking on water; it's the same thing. PROF. Q: You always tell me, however, that the time is run­ning out. I have to look at the context now on this score. COMMITTEE: Please do. PROF. Q: All right, which-COMMITTEE: I'm very happy you didn't bring your Hebrew Bible along. PROF. Q: Personally, I don't have any problem with the story. COMMITTEE: You think it did not happen? PROF. Q: I said I didn't have any problem with the story, and then you said it didn't happen. Now that's your prob­lem, not mine. Do you say it didn't happen? COMMITTEE: No. I don't think you've answered the ques­tion, whether you think that story happened or not. PROF. Q: It isn't important whether I think it happened, but the thing is it's important that I understood what the Lord was doing when He was walking on the water and what the text is saying that He was trying to tell me through that event. 5e, 5. The Findings Concerning the Use of the Historical-Critical Method and the Authenticity of the Words of Jesus as Reported in the Four Gospels The Words of Jesus Many practitioners of the historical-critical method throughout the world question the reliability of the New Testament accounts of Jesus' deeds and sayings. They are of the opinion that the Gospels bring us "interpreta­tions" by the early church of the life of Jesus. What they mean is that the early church added to the stories as it interpreted what Jesus said and did to fit its own specific circumstances. Some advocates of the historical-critical method go so far as to dismiss all of the historic elements in the Gospel accounts with the single exception of the fact that Jesus lived and that He died on the cross. The accounts found in the four Gospels are attributed to the Christian community and the in­sights it had into Jesus' ministry after He had departed. Very few of Jesus' words as found in the four Gospels are considered to be authentic. Because of this situation the Fact Finding Committee probed the pro­fessors regarding their own opinion of the authenticity of the words of Jesus as found in the four Gospels. The professors recognized that the committee was not asking if the four Gospels record Jesus' words with the precision of a tape recorder. The ques­tion was if the words in their basic substance were indeed words that Jesus spoke. The professors did not deny the authenticity of Jesus' words in any 75 5e,5 particular· case. However, in harmony witit the •. histori~al-~riti~al approach some considered it legitimate for an int~rpre1erto condud~ .. ~or scholarly reasons that Jesus did not do or say th~ thiJlgs.attributedti)Him. The basic restriction was that ()ne may not deny who Jesus is 01' that He could have said or done these things. Redaction criticjsmis follow~d to the extent that speeches in the New Testament lllay. ~e$aid to have beeuedited by the. Ne.w Testament authors so as to become vehicles for their owp. theology, .. ..\.; This principle introduces uncertaintyintoth~ entire New Testament : text. If this approach is followed, then one doescpot know whether the words· . attributed to the apostles and even to Jesus1iVcre fabricated by others at a later time. The attribution to Jesus of words He never said involves putting into Jesus' mouth what the church wanted Hbnto say. Thus Jesusbecomes the vehicle for promoting the theology of the early ChUl'ch, rathel' than the norm and SOurCe of that theology, The sacraments of the church can no longer be held to rest upon Jesus' own institution,for no one can any longer be sure that He spoke the words attributed to Rim; In this way the reliability of the Scriptures and of the Gospel itself· is attacked directly. Cf. Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Confessio-y,aJPrincipl~s, IV, F, 7·8. . . . .. .... .... See the following transcripts and exhibits for documentation f)f this point. Documentation Prof. I Tl'anscl'ipt p.lS COMMITTEE: But my question was, if a person on your ulty takes that position, if scholarship leads him to that, the text says Jesus said this, with no problem with the synoptics, etc., clearly reports it as having said that, and he says no on the basis of whatever presuppositions he does, but he says against the text, you see, the text says this, and we say the Scripture is nonna nOl'llUtnS, but he says, "I don't accept what the text says." Would you tolerate that as being either Biblical or confessional? And I think you probably ought to be able to answer that with a yes or no answer. PROF. I; Well, there are very few questions you can answer on a yes-or-no basis. Very few. COMMITrEE: Well, we won't debate that now. We may de­bate that outside. Would you please answer? PROF. I: Ya, I would be glad to answer. I would want to determine what the reasons that he gives, what these reasons are, why he comes to the conclusion that he comes to. If his reasons are that Jesus could not possibly have done this, obviously he has a foreshortened or a shrunken view about who Jesus is. That would be serious. Prof. 0 Transcript pp.9·11 Do you believe that the words which are by the Gospels to be spoken by Jesus wcre actually spoken, at least in content? This was conceding that they were translated from Aramaic into Greek by the writers. PROF. 0; Substantially, yes. COMMll'TEE: Would you define what you mean by substan­tially? PROb'. 0: All right. The writers of the New Testament books nowhere betray primarily an interest in recording for the sake of recording. The church called these documents Gos­pels, and Gospel is a word for proclamation. That is, the words are recorded because they are useful for the churches to which they are addressed, that is, to which the Gospels are addressed, for which they are written. That means that at times one finds the very same saying of Jesus in a slightly different form in a different Gospel, because it is directed to a different end; and that I would regard as not I forget what X's word was before [fruitless and irreverent] not fruitless or irreverent, but this is precisely the application of Jesus' teaching to the needs of the church by tlle prophetic and apostolic men. COMMITTEE: All right, now-PROF. 0; That's what I mean about substantial. 76 COMMITTEE: Thank you. That's clear. Now, by way of con­trast, is it possible for a Lutheran theologian to say instead of this that they are SUbstantially the words of Jesus, to say that what you have in the Gospels are words attributed to Jesus through the Christian congregation, Christian com­munity, years and generations later, and that they are words which Jesus very likely never really said? Is this a live option for a Lutheran theologian? PROF. 0: You used the word possible. It's obviously possible because Lutheran theologians have said it. COMMITTEE: Well, let's ;;ay, is it contrary to Scripture, con­trary to Lutheran theology to take this position? PROF. 0: Not necessarily. That is a question which can be answered either yes or no, depending on the way in which you surround the answer. St. Paul quotes Jesus three times in his letters. Each time he does it he quotes Him as 6 XUQlO;. St, Paul apparently was convinced that did not stop speaking at the Ascension. I take that to the sense, for example, of his word in 1 Thess.4: "This we say to you in a word of the Lord." I would see that the church there­fore uses the words of Jesus in much the samc way that it uses the Old Testament, uses them to apply them to a new situation. I do not think therefore that anyone in the early church would say, "We are creating words of Jesus." And in that sense, no, they are not putting words in His mouth. COMlIUTTEE: Now Paul is, in the reference you gave, says that he's confident of the words of Jesus, is not attributing this to something which He said at the allegedly said during His lifetime ministry, as the Gospels do, and this is what my question is with reference to. Put it this way: Is it possible that Jesus really did not say what the Gospels at­tl:ibute to Him? Now this is substantially. For example, are the words the product of the creative ability of the writers? PROF. 0: No. COMMITTEE: They're not. Now I actually asked you two questions. I guess in both cases you'd say no then. The first, just to repeat it. Is it possible that Jesus really did not say what's attributed to Him by the Gospels, that is, sub­stantially? PROP. 0: If I understand the question, I guess I would an­swer no, but-COMMITTEE: This really goes right with it, by way of ex­plaining the first question. For example, are the words, as some allege, the words attributed to Jesus, really the product of the creative ability of the writers or the editors, the re­dactors? .. 5e,6 PROF. 0: That one, no. COMMITTEE: Another one. Form criticism holds that a story grew up about the sayings of Jesus, in other words, a story which serves as a framework for the saying, so that the say­ing can be told, and if this happened after His death, in other words, if the story really is a story made up, created, to fit the saying in a different context, do you find this to be acceptable? terms to Jesus' prediction, especially referring to the en­circlement by the Roman armies. It is thus evident that XX does not attribute to Christ the details of the prophecy con­cerning the destruction of Jerusalem. These were "dubbed in" later, after the event. Prof. XX PROF. 0: Not put in that bald form. No. Conco1'dia CommentM'Y: Acts St. Louis: CPH, 1970, p. 22, Prof. XX Jesus and the New Age Acco1'ding to St. Luke, Clayton Pub-lishing House, 61 Ridgemoor Drive, St. Louis, Missouri In the introduction of this commentary XX says: "It is im­possible to prove that the speeches [in Acts] are merely free creations of the evangelist. Indeed the speeches are remark­able for ideas and nuances appropriate to everything we know of the situation and the speakers (see the commentary on the individual addresses).. Luke is himself close enough to the events, to people who were present or to reliable sources, to offer .the gist of what was said on various occa­sions. Nevertheless, the vocabulary and style and themes of the various speeches have far more in common with one another and with the totality of Luke-Acts than with any other sections of the New Testament. The simplest explana­tion is that Luke had carefully edited his sources and used the speeches as a vehicle for his theology," XX argues that it is impossible to determine the words of Jesus spoken on any given occasion. He asserts that as Christians pondered on Jesus and His meaning for their time, new sayings of Jesus could be produced, presumably by the community. He includes this type of activity under the umbrella of inspiration. Cf. pp. xviii-xix of his book. XX applies this idea to Jesus' prophecy concerning the de­struction of Jerusalem. On page 212 he claims that the de­struction of Jerusalem had already occurred when Luke wrote his Gospel. XX speaks of Luke adding more explicit 5e, 6. The Findings Concerning the Use of the Historic'al-Critical Method and the Interpretation of Messianic Prophecy, or: Messianic Prophecy and the Unity of the Old and New Testaments The Lutheran confessors believed that the New Testament interpreted the Old (Apology, XXIV, 36, 37). They likewise taught that the believers in the Old Testament days were saved by a faith in a Messiah who was to come. Several seminary exegetes state that the Old Testament is interpreted by the New in such a way that the fullness of God's grace is revealed in the New. But they believe that the Old Testament must be interpreted apart from what the New Testament says about it. This means that the New Testa­ment identification of Old Testament passages as pointing to Jesus Christ is not held to determine the meaning of the Old Testament passages. Likewise several of the men teach that the Old Testament patriarchs believed in the grace of God, but that grace was the general goodness of God and the promise was of earthly prosperity and general spiritual welfare rather than of a specific Messiah to come. According to the Old Testament exegetes, the so-called Messianic proph. ecies in most cases had to do with immediate applications involving the royal house of David. Only in a derived sense are these prophecies later applied to Christ, the greatest Son of David. In several instances professors denied the existence of prophecies pointing directly to Christ. In general, the exegetes follow the current trend of Old Testament schol­arship, which does not hold that the Old Testament believer understood any­thing about a coming Redeemer. This reluctance to accept direct prophetic references to Christ is also in harmony with the anti-supernaturalistic bias of the historical-critical method. However, the professors do not deny the theoretical possibility of pre­dictive prophecy. The professors realize that their approach to Messianic prophecy is not in harmony with the way in which the Lutheran confessors approached the Old Testament. However, they counter with the argument that they are not bound to the exegesis of the Confessions. While it is true that our church has maintained that it is unnecessary to agree with every exegetical detail or line of argumentation in the Confessions, the church must determine whether this principle can legitimately be extended to the point where such a major confessional approach to the Old Testament can be set aside without seriously modifying our church's understanding' of the significance of con­fessional subscription. In evaluating the position of the St. Louis faculty it is important to note how the Lutheran Confessions treat the topic of Messianic prophecy and the faith of the Old Testament believers. 77 5e, 6 The Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV, 83: "In Acts 10:43, P~ter says, 'To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.' How could he say it any more plainly? We receive the forgiveness of sins, he says, through his name, that is, for his sake: therefore, not for the sake of our merits,. our contrition, at­trition, love, worship, or works. And he adds, 'when we believe in him.' Thus he requires faith. We cannot take hold of the name of Christ except by faith. In addition, he cites the consensus of all the prophets, which is really citing the authority of the church." Apology. IV, 5: "All Scripture should be divided into these two chief doctrines, the law and the promises. In some places it presents the law. I'n others it presents the promise of Christ; this it does either when it promises that the Messiah will come and promises forgiveness of sins, justification, and eternal life for his sake, or when, in the New Testament, the Christ who came promises forgiveness of sins, justification, and eternal life." (Italics added) Apology, IV, 57: "This service and worship is especially praised through­out the prophets and the Psalms. Even though the law does not teach the free forgiveness of sins, the patriarchs knew the promise of the Christ, that for his sake God intended to forgive sins. As they understood that the Christ would be the price for our sins, they knew that our works could not pay so high a price. Therefore they received free mercy and the forgiveness of sins by faith, just as the saints in the New Testament." Apology, XXIV, 55: "In the Old Testament as in the New, the saints had to be justified by faith in the promise of the forgiveness of sins given. for Christ's sake. Since the beginning of the world, all the saints have had to believe that Christ would be the offering and the satisfaction for sin, as Isa. 53:10 teaches, 'When he makes hbriself an offering for sin.' " Formula of Conco7'd, Solid Declaration,V,23: "Since the beginning of the world. these two proclamations have continually been set forth side by side in the church of God with the proper distinction. The descendants of the holy patriarchs, like the patriarchs themselves,constantly reminded themselves not only how man in the beginning was created righteous and holy by God and through the deceit of the serpent transgressed God's laws, became a sinner, corrupted himself and all· his descendants, and plunged them into death and eternal damnation, but also revived their courage and comforted themselves with the proclamation of the woman's seed, who would bruise the serpent's head; likewise, of the seed of Abraham, by whom all nations should be blessed; likewise, of David's son, who should restore the kingdom of Israel and be a light to the nations, 'whowas wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and with whose stripes we.are healed.' " In this connection d. again Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural attd Confessional Principles, IV, "H. Old Testament Prophecy/, and "VI. Con­fessional Subscription." For illustrations of the professors' approach to prophecy see the follow­ing transcripts. Note that there is some variation in their stance. If the Lu­theran Confessions are to determine what is truly Lutheran, how are we to regard the professors' view of prophecy? Documentation PI·of. D Transcript pp.29·31 COMMITTEE: Now when Christ in Matthew 22 quotes the first verse of Psalm 110 and says, "How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls Him Lord? ... If David calls Him Lord, how is He his son?" Would it be correct to say that Christ is there telling us that David did indeed, by \Ising the term Lord to apply to his progeny, have an under­standing that this was to be more than simply a great king who was to succeed him, but in terms of calling Him Lord even though He is a descendant, that there is a clear indi­cation here that the Spirit had given David an understand­ing that this was to be in fact the Messiah and the fact that the Lord concept is it to be One superior and One that would imply God Himself? PROF. D: Well, first of all to this thing that the Septuagint is quoted. In the New Testament the text quotes the same 78 word, XUQLO;. In the Hebrew there is a distinctive difference between the two. It is Yahweh neum, which means an oracle. It is an oracle of Yahweh which speaks to Adonai. Now Adonai is a term that can clearly refer to the king. Now Yahweh couldn't, because that is the name of God. But Adonai is a word that is a general word for lord, and so it is important that you recognize that there is truly a distinction between the two, in the original. And Jesus is aware of that and is playing upon that in order to catch the Pharisees. And the whole point of that pericope, as I recall, is that He wants to get the Pharisees tricked. And He doesn't answer it, and they don't answer it. So that is an un­answered question as to what the text means. If you go back to what the text is saying, it is pretty clear to me that God is speaking an oracle to the lord through, in this case, the king David. And the promise is that this king will have authority and a future and a dimension that really indicates that he is after the order of Melchizedek, he is a priest­king. And the whole package implies, of course, the whole raft of Messianic hopes that are connected with the promise to the king and his future. David and the lord are never just the historical king. And that is what the whole Mes­sianic package is about, that the hopes connected with the promises to David and to his seed have a future, have a promise, have a dimension, have an ideal in fact that is only fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ. And yet there is the historical connection as this is spoken in its original context in connection with David or the Davidic king. COMMITTEE: So you are saying then that you believe that Adonai, "my Lord," there is a term for a Davidic king and not a direct reference to Christ? PROF. D: Not a direct reference to Christ, but in the sense that this is a text that has the promise of the Messianic hope associated with it, it is truly part of that package which looks to the future. Now it is very important that we don't make a statement that there is a kind of rectilinear connec­tion between one text here and a New Testament situation as though here this is not a statement to the king but is some kind of soothsayer diviner who gives you a wonderful (one) word out of the distant future. You are talking about historical situation, and the message must be relevant to that time as well as being relevant to the ultimate plan of God. And in that sense it is fulfilled in the New Testament. COMMITTEE: Are there any passages in the Old Testament in your opinion -you use the word rectilinear or direct, and you also referred to it as soothsayer type, but with ref­erence to it -leaps across the centuries, is it as no direct reference to the immediate situation in which the word, prophetic word was spoken but that it refers directly to the Christ who is to come? Do you know of any of those or recognize any of those in the Old Testament? PROF. D: I would like to rephrase that question, in order to make clear what I understand to be the truth. I look at the Old Testament promises whether they are to David or to Moses or to whoever happens to be. Those promises have to be meaningful to the situation and the time, but the promises are not somehow or other limited. They are part of the stream of both. They are part of the plan of God, and they move ahead, and ultimately God is in the midst of that hope and that promise, and God fulfills that promise as He fulfills His plan. And if you suddenly just say, "All right, somebody divined something one day" (like you know), or, "I'll look at my crystal ball, and I'm going to look at 2500 years from now, and Pwnkt! there is going to be something happening." That is not the Biblical understanding of proph­ecy. That is divination. And I am very concerned that we insist upon the process and the understanding of fulfillment that the Biblical tradition talks about, and this beautiful discussion about iT/.llQOOl that is in this hermeneutics of the CTCR (1 am sure it is in here; it is in one of the CTCR documents anyway. No, it is in here!) gives you the whole point of trying to understand the thing in some kind of fullness, not some kind of limited way of understanding the process of how God plans the future. COMMITTEE: So if I correctly understand you, then you do not know of any place in the Old Testament, including Micah 5 with reference to Bethlehem and so on, which is a prophecy that has reference to the Messiah but does not have reference also to some immediate situation. Is that correct understanding? PROF. D: Yes, you must first relate it to its immediate situa­tion and see how the hope of that Messianic figUre has meaning to the people in the days of Micah 5. And clearly you have to be talking to your audience. You are not talk­ing to the air in some distant moment. You are talking to the needs of your audience at a certain time. That is the basic Lutheran principle. And in talking to the historical situation the deeper dimension of the truth and the power of the promise leaps beyond that moment to the future, and in the futUre the word is fulfilled. Prof. K Tl'anscl'ipt pp.14-17 COMMITTEE: I wonder if I can attach another question to this. You would say what you have said in spite of the fact that Jesus emphasizes to His contemporaries that God is not 5e, 6 a God of the dead; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they are living now. You would still say what you said? That there is a possibility, that, because I realize that Jesus said this in the days of His humiliation. Well, I'd like to go one step farther. In trying to reconstruct the Emmaus story, and I can paraphrase it a little bit: When Jesus meets the two disciples, He tells them, "What stupid theologians you are that it took you so long and you haven't reached it yet, that you understand that these things had to happen which the prophets said of Me." Would you on the basis-and don't forget that statement wa~ made in the days of his exaltation when His kenosis was complete, and we can take it for granted that in these days of His exaltation He was again possessed of all of the divine majesty, which includes knowl­edge, also knowledge of what happened in the Old Testa­ment -would you say on the basis of the Emmaus story, "We can point to the Old Testament and say, Jesus says to us, Look for the predictive messages of the Old Testa­ment"? Do you, or would you tell your students, Prof. K, that there are passages in the Old Testament, just as Jesus said to the Emmaus disciples, "which are definitely pre­dictive to Me"? I use a different term to my confirmation kids, and that's Messianic. PROF. K: There are passages that are predictive of the Christ. Jesus claims to be, and I honestly believe He is -the New Testament writers assert that Jesus of Nazareth is -the Christ. And He is saying, "You need to see in the Old Testament the predictive passages about the Christ, whom nobody knew in the Old Testament, who it was, and you need to apply those passages, all of them, to Me." COMMITTEE: It seems to me, Prof. K, that not all, but many of the students who come out of the Hebrew classes today at the Sem, have an altogether different interpretation of the term Messianic passages than I would buy. Is it your con­tention that only in those passages where the New Testament says, "Here is where David is speaking about the Christ," that those you would classify as Messianic? Or don't you use the term Messianic at all? PROF. K: Oh, yes, yes. COMMITTEE: In what sense? That they are an anointed one, a royal one, like the Second Psalm, the Meshiko? PROF. K: In that sense, yes. COMMITTEE: His Messiah, His Anointed One. PROF. K: And then in the sense that after the historical national demise of the Davidic dynasty, the affirmations that there will come a future figure described in various ways, who is described as Son of David, a representative of the Davidic dynasty. He will come to perform certain functions for the people of God. Those are, as 1 see it, Messianic pas­sages, and the development of Messianism as I see is the anointed, that is king, Judean king, Davidic dynasty, and then the passages, when this dynasty no longer exists, about the coming one from that dynasty who will perform certain functions for the people of God, of peace, of security, of welfare, of spreading the religion of Yahweh, the religion of God throughout the nation. COMMITTEE: So 1 take it you present, for instance, Psalm 2 as a royal psalm? PROF. K: Yes, sir. COMMITTEE: But you also add the predictive element in it, is that right? That you would say now, this psalm really pointed forward as an arrow to a time when there would be a greater one from the house of David. PROF. K: I see it as having two uses in the history of Israel, this one psalm. In its first use it asserts something about the son of David and his adoption, that is, his coronation, when they regarded the son of David who came to be king as adopted by God. I see it as having a use when that kind of historical use didn't make any sense anymore, that people used it to talk about the coming representative of the Davidic dynasty who would do the things that the prophets described. These are the two uses that I see of the psalm, as a royal psalm. COMMITTEE: In that connection, how do you exegete Matthew 22: 41 and following: "While the Pharisees" let's see if I can find it -"While the Pharisees were gathered together, 79 5e, 6 Jesus asked them a question, saying, 'What do you think of the Christ? Whose Son is He?' They said to Him, 'The Son of David.' He said to them, 'How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls Him Lord, saying "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at My right hand till I put Thy enemies under Thy feet." If David thus calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?'" How would you exegete that passage? PROF. K: Well, in my teaching at the seminary I don't recall that I have. In the parish, as I have exegeted it, r have as­serted that our Lord is making the claim with the Pharisees that He is the Messiah, and that, I guess, is about the-COMMITTEE: Well now what our Lord is saying is that David, one, was inspired by the Spirit and thus attributes to Psalm 110 David authorship; secondly, He says that David calls Him Lord, saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at My right hand till I put Thy enemies under Thy feet. If David thus calls Him Lord, how is He his Son?" Now, is not our Lord actually saying that David then prophesied of the One who is to come, who is his son, but still is also his Lord, and the problem as I understand it is that a king would never call a descendant his lord, because the older one would be the lord, would be the greater. PROF. K: I quite agree with what you say about it, the state­ment about David and His inspiration. There are a good many things about the passage I simply do not understand. What I think I do understand is that our Lord is making a claim with the Pharisees. I don't believe He's denying being David's son -COMMITTEE: But is He not saying that David wrote of Him ahead of time, prophesied? PROF. K: Yes, He is saying, "I am Lord, and you should be able to find in your ScriptUre this kind of affirmation about Me." COMMITTEE: Would you call that a rectilinear prophecy, then? The term has been claimed by someone; I'm not sure I necessarily like it. Would you identify this as one? PROF. K: I don't Use the term rectilinear prophecy. I do re­gard Psalm 110 as a royal psalm with the uses that I have ascribed before. COMMITTEE: In their day, then (do I understand you cor­rectly?) in their day it would have had relevance and ref­erence only to someone who is to follow in the dynasty, some king, some royal person who is to come, and actually for them no relevance beyond that. And it's only later, when the New Testament comes, that that's read back into it. Is that correct? PROF. K: Well, if you make the same distinction in their day that I have made, I wouldn't see it coming through like that. When there was a Davidic dynasty, it seems to me that Psalm 110 is saying this representative has both royal and priestly prerogatives. Some kind of an assertion along that line about the dynasty. In the period when this dynasty wasn't ruling, people affirmed and understood this passage to mean that the coming future figure would be both king and priest. This was the understanding of Psalm 110, as I can see it. ' COMMITTEE: Do you know of any passage in the Old Testa­ment which you could say would apply only to Christ, that no immediate fulfillment or even promise relative to some royal king, some (cough) who is to follow? In other words, do you know of any passage like that at all that you'd so identify? PROF. K: That refers to the Christ, the Messiah? COMMITTEE: Yes, Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, Son of David. PROF. K: Not Jesus of Nazareth, because no one knew who the Christ was going to be until Jesus of Nazareth came along; they just didn't. COMMITTEE: All right. PROF. K:Passages that refer to the Christ, yes, Isaiah 11, Micah 5. COMMITTEE: How about Isaiah 53? PROF. K: I do not see that as referring to the Christ in its first emphasis and meaning. In the Targum of Isaiah 53, the 80 %tidt>~~'f" suffering aspects are left out, and it is referred to the royal messiah. So Isaiah 53' had a Messianic reference before the time of Jesus of Nazareth. But I would answer in the nega­tive if I understand yoUI' question as to this-COMMITTEE: Would you say the Targum was then definitive for explaining Isaiah 53? PROF. K: No, I think that the thing that is definitive for un­derstanding its use in the New Testament is the ministry of our Lord and His affirmation about Himself as Suffering Servant. But I think that the Targum usage that connected it with the Messiah contributed to the understanding of people at the time of our Lord as He made this kind of affirmation. Prof. A Transcript pp.6-7 PROF. A: I believe that the words were used for example in Psalm 2. I think that this was a psalm used at the corona­tion of many kings over and over again, and thus are not in their oliginal and primary (who is to say in the long run?) sub specie aeternitatis, whether this is in God's mind not the primary function ultimately, but at least the one that they were aware of then, they were using this in the­at the coronation of the king to indicate the fact that Jahveh had chosen this man and that he was -he had the promises of Jahveh of the Davidic dynasty. However, God's promises are always open-ended, and one never knows how fully and how can never predict accurately, humanly speaking, how He is going to fulfill them even more gloriously than you could expect. And I find this, that the promise, that the fulfillment that God brings about is usually greater than and breaks through even the promise. COMMITTEE: Let's say I grant the statement that everyone of those predictive passages referred to a local situation, when then that predictive passage is referred to the Mes­siah, would you grant me permission to label'that psalm Messianic then? See, in my mind Psalm 2 is ... Psalm 110 PROF. A: I would say, I would give you permission. Well, sir, if you are convinced that that is Messianically predic­tive, then I would say, "Fine, go ahead." I, on these matters, on interpretive matters which certainly don't affect directly any article of faith, I say absolutely go ahead, and I change my mind sometimes, and I, you saw me doing it here, this is a principle that I hold to steadfastly, and I will present a point in class and say this is my view, these are the reasons why I have it, I recognize these problems, I would try to answer them in this respect, I think this is the best and fullest answer. If you don't buy this, if you buy another one, fine. Now let's listen to what the message is too. But I think my best technique is to try to understand the orig­inal situation in which it is spoken because I believe that God Is there speaking a word to those men, and to the ex­tent that He gives us the wisdom to put on the shoes of those men to whom God's prophet is originally speaking we will better hear the word He intends to speak there. So that the message of gracious victory here, the message that God is going to set things right that Is here, is -He fulfills in Jesus Christ, absolutely, who is the great Son of David and who is the One of whom these words can be said in their highest sense, and I feel that it is correct to say that this is a He is a fulfillment of this. Prof. A Transcript p.24 COMMITl'EE: What about a statement like Acts 1: 16? "Breth­ren, the scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas, who was guide to those who arrested Jesus." And that's of course a quote from Psalm 41: 9: "Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread," and so on. Now just incidentally, he's referring to this the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David; would you say that def­initely labeled Psalm 41 as a Davidic psalm? PROF. A: No sir, I, frankly, I would not. I think this is a common way of speaking of all the psalms that they are of David or of any psalm is of David. As I understand the text here, and as I understand the usage among Jews. Prof. S Transcript pp.21·23 COMMITTEE: The Messianic prophecies, would you regard them as a part of the doctrinal system of the symbols, ~ ~ i'" JJ '~ whether ex professo or incidental? Do you have anyone who has difficulty with the Confessions because of the Mes­sianic prophecies in the Old Testament? PROF. S: Sometimes identification in Confessions might be taken a little differently but not with the idea that the Scriptures do not speak of the Messiah. COMMITTEE: What is the little difference? PROF. S: Well, I mean, like whether the Bible passage, a specific Bible passage, which is cited in the Confessions, whether that specifically talks about the Messiah. Not that there are passages; this would go into a specific area. COMMITTEE: Just to pursue that a little farther like in the Formula, under Law and Gospel (pause). . . . Where they mention the seed and so forth and quote Genesis. They apply this a couple of places in the Apology too. Repen­tance, you know, they apply Genesis 3: 15 very definitely as Messianic. PROF. S: There may be some who feel that from the New Testament viewpoint that there is no doubt about it, or whether the Jews themselves at that time recognized it as such; there seems to be very little evidence in the Old Tes­tament. That's, if you look at it from that angle as far as we are concerned, it is one thing. That's where you have to watch the difference. I am sure that in many places in the Old Testament we use Bible passages for which the New Testament gives us the answer. It certainly is much clearer then, and the ancient Jews might not even recognize this as Messianic. COMMITTEE: There, too, wouldn't the Confessions make plain that from the beginning of time men were not saved in any other way? This was understood even then as Messianic. PROF. S: I am not so sure whether that -again, you see, in terms of the, whether everybody would accept that­that necessarily the Confessions are not merely giving an exegetical judgment as to the meaning of Genesis 3: 15. As far as the Messiah is concerned and policy for Him, there is no question that when you begin to identify it, is it always Genesis 3: 15 that gives you all of that? There may be dif­ferent-COMMITTEE: Prof. X in one of his essays recently in the Fest­schrift says Abraham was not a Christian. Would you care to comment on that? PROF. S: Well, if you would, I think this is a semantic deal where you think of him as a Christian in the sense of -I can't, I am not saying I am reflecting his viewpoint, I don't know it. But if you think of it in terms of believing Jesus Christ was a man who was born in Bethlehem a man of Nazareth and all of that as part of the Christian and that the Old Testament faith was explicit as mine, as Christ died on the cross, that Abraham thought of Christ the Messiah dying on the cross, no. But he certainly was Christian in a sense. I think it is a very important one; that Abraham put his full confidence in his salvation in the Lord's action in some shape or form. How that was identified for Abraham would be dif­ficult for all of us to answer unless we go ·to the New Tes­tament and read it backwards. But unfortunately Abraham didn't have the New Testament. That Abraham was saved by faith in the promises of his God, in that sense he was a Christian. Prof. C Transcript pp.31·35 COMMITTEE: All right. Now are there any Old Testament passages that speak directly to the Messiah who is to come? A direct prophecy versus the typical? PROF. C: YE'S, this is obviously an example of the typical. Yes, certainly there are a number of passages in the pro­phetic books which are in the form of a direct prediction and which use terms that speak about a Messiah, an Anointed One, or even without that particular term, speak about a coming Ruler in the lineage of David through whom God will exercise His rule. COMMITTEE: Could you mention some of these that you feel are directly predictive of Christ and his suffering? PROF. C: Yes, Micah, chapter 5, referring to Bethlehem as the source from which this Ruler will come; Jeremiah 23, the Scion from the branch of David; and a number of others of that nature. 5e, 6 COMMITTEE: Would you classify Isaiah 53 in that? PROF. C: Isaiah 53, in the technical sense of the Messianic expectation, I would not classify as Messianic. But by this term, now, "Messiah, Messianic," I mean the expectation of One who is in the line of David, the Anointed of God. Be­cause Isaiah 53 doesn't specifically indicate that the figure being described here is a kingly figure. COMMITTEE: Yes, the Servant of Jehovah. Does that apply in that day to someone, or does this apply only to Christ, you think? PROF. C: This, I guess, as we all know, is one of the big disputed questions, and I have found for myself that it be­comes most meaningful if I recognize the likelihood, although I can't really prove it, the likelihood of some application in the day of the prophet. COMMITTEE: Why is that more helpful to you? PROF. C: Because it's in a context where the whole, where the prophet is speaking always about the return of his peo­ple to Jerusalem and the fact that his people have been among the nations, and have been suffering there, that now, that his people will be returned and will be vindicated, and God will show His glory through them. And while it's not explicit in Isaiah 53, I tend to think that the servant men­tioned there is somehow connected with the servant identi­fied as Israel earlier in the book. COMMITTEE: A little bit more specifically, you mentioned predictive Messianic prophecy. Are there passages that pre­dict His suffering and resurrection without the reinterpre­tation of the New Testament looking back, but I mean in a predictive way? PROF. C: When you add that last phrase, that­COMMITTEE: Well, so that those who wouldn't have had the New Testament could have read the Old Testament and been able to see not all the details as to who carried the cross or what time it took place but that the Messiah was to suffer for the sins of the world and rise again? PROF. C: I do not see that a person prior to the New Testa­ment era could have read these details, even, from the Mes­sianic prophecies, those prophecies which speak of a ruler, a king from the house of David, who will be God's repre­sentative on earth. In most, I think in all cases of those prophecies the emphasis is on the glory of the Messiah. COMMITTEE: What would you do then with the passage in First Peter 1, where it mentions about how the prophets predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory? PROF. C: Yes, there, of course, I think the word Christ is not the more vague reference to Messiah from an Old Testament viewpoint, but the very specific reference to Jesus the Christ, and so what he is talking about is the actual sufferings that of course St. Peter knows about, and he is therefore re­ferring to other passages in the Old Testament apart from the strictly Messianic prophecies. And these other passages would, of course, include the Isaiah 53 one, which our Lord did definitely apply to Himself, and which indicates that God's way of working among men is through a representa­tive of His who actually suffers, not, it's not the theology of glory, the-COMMITTEE: I'm not sure I understand you. You said "other than the Messianic," but if it speaks of the sufferings of Christ, it would certainly be Messianic, wouldn't it? And it says-PROF. C: That would be Messianic in a different sense. COMMITTEE: He's talking about the Messianic Man, the An­ointed One. COMMITTEE: O. K. I'm hitting on the word "predicting," I guess; the holy writer says they predicted these things. You mentioned that Peter knew about it, but that isn't the point of what he's saying here. He says the prophets pre­dicted the suffering. I wasn't sure that I got your answer to that. PROF. C: Yes, I think we got bogged down on the use of the term Messianic, which I was using in a very narrow sense, but if it's differl?ntly defined, I'd apply it differently to them. Would you care to ask me about a specific passage that talks about the-81 5e, 6 COMMITTEE: I was asking if you would give us one that you would say predicted the sufferings of Christ, since Peter said they did. PROF. C: Offhand COMMITTEE: Let's take a specific one. How about Psalm 110, which Christ refers to in Matthew 22:41, when he says: "How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls Him Lord'?" and then: "If David calls Him Lord, how can He be his son?" PROF. C: Yes, sir. This was one passage that I didn't, I mean one thing that I didn't include in my bibliography for you. I didn't realize until yesterday that I had had a couple of sermons asked for for Concordia Pulpit, and one of these was on the assigned text of Psalm 110, so that was in the '69 Pttlpit, and I did make some references there. Well, I would see this one as being Messianic in the stricter sense, depicting the king -which may, in fact I am convinced that it orig­inally does refer to the currently reigning king, in other words the son of David who is now on the throne, but then easily receives the typical reapplication to a future king and ultimately to Christ our Lord. COMMITTEE: What do you do then with Christ's exegesis on it when He says in Matthew 22: 45, that David calls Him Lord? How can He be David's son? Now if, I think Christ is saying there, if I understand this correctly, is that calling Him Lord indicates He is a superior. Would that not then indicate that it is pointing directly to Christ, not to anyone else? PROF. C: Not to me. And I have worried about that a great deal too. And I finally came up with what to me barely gets me across the hump. But it seems to me that one way of understanding the original intention of this psalm is that it is written with respect to the son of David who is next taking the throne, namely, Solomon, as it was in history. And it seems to me that the whole psalm applies beautifully to Solomon and of course to any further sons of David or in the lineage of David who actually sat on the throne. COMMITTEE: How do you answer the Lord's question then to the Pharisees? PROF. C: That He's speaking COMMITTEE: He asked a question. He says, "If David calls Him Lord, how can He be David's son?" and it says: "No man could answer a word in reply." And I'm just wonder­ing what your answer would be. PROF. C: I'm not sure that I would do any better, but I guess Christ's implication is that He must be something more than a, in that context, something more than a mere human be­ing even. Prof. B Transcl'ipt pp.8·9 COMMITTEE: I would just like to finish on this because I am not sure I understood Prof. B's answer to your question. As you read this, it appears (does it not?) that Cyrus is something in the future, I think is what Dr. X was getting at. If this was inspired, as you seem to indicate that it was regardless of who wrote it, then it was inspired in the sixth century hut made to appear as though it were much before. What did you mean when you said it is not demonstrable, you are not sure what it is demonstrable, that it appears to be something in the future? PROF. B: We don't know how the people of the Old Testa­ment interpreted those chapters of Isaiah, but I think from all of the evidence that is available, beginning at chapter 40 the book was written, let's say, in 550j that is the date that I quoted. Well, Cyrus came in 538. Now I would hold that it was written in a prophetic vein of Cyrus but in the very immediate future, from the vantage point of the Baby­lonian Captivity, which was just about over. To show that I teach that kind of verbal prophetic inspira­tion, may I say this: When the prophet Amos began to preach alm~st simultaneously with Isaiah in 750, there was as ~et no SIgn ~m the historical horizon that the Assyrian armies. were go~ng to threaten Palestine. An yet Amos is preachmg ~hat Judgment is coming from the east, and he even mentions that it is coming from the land of Assyria. I have no 'Yay of knowing where Amos got that except from God Himself. But Amos is speaking to his own cen-82 __ "_~'F_'_",:'::r&_e_lt ii": tury, and that is why the situation is a little different there than it is in the case 'of the two Cyrus references in Isaiah. COMMITTEE: So it is still predictive, but it is only a few years predictive. PROF. B: That is right. COMMITTEE: Do you feel uncomfortable if the prediction stretches out longer? Is that what you are saying? PROF. B: No. I feel that there are no other instances in the Old Testament where God took that big leap of 200 years. COMMITTEE: You spoke before of a harmony between the documentary hypothesis and verbal inspiration. I think you said providing these are properly defined or something like that, and then we talked a little bit about verbal inspiration and defining this. In most of our literature I guess this has assumed also on the part of the human writers a freedom from what, lapses of memory and errors of fact. Would your definition of verbal inspiration also include this for the re­dactors or editors and so forth of the Old Testament? PROF. B: I think this ties in directly with the idea of the veracity and the truthfulness of the entire Old and New Testament record. Yes, because this is God's verbally in­spired Word, therefore the authors are assured of keeping it truthful. COMMITTEE: Well, factually also! PROF. B: That is right. Prof. XX "The Meaning of Archaeology for the Exegetical Task" CTM, Oct. 1970, pp. 525, 526 p.525 The classic boundaries of the land of Canaan are more clearly definable in the light of recent archaeological ex­ploration. In Gen. 15: 18 Yahweh is described as promising Abram that He will give his descendants the land extending all the way "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates." Exegetically the question arises whether this is a bona fide predictive prophecy or whether it reflects the boundaries of the Davidic Empire of the 10th century B. C. read back into the patriarchal period by the ancient JE tradition. p.526 The date for the beginning of plaster-lined cisterns thus needs to be moved back some 300 years in the light of such newly discovered evidence.' This matter of water conserva­tion is important, since it indicates how archaeologists must be ready to revise their conclusions in the light of newly accumulated evidence -just as theologians must. Prof. XX The Form and Meaning of the Fall Narrative Concordia Seminary Print Shop, S1. Louis, Mo., 1965, pp. 22-25 The writer rejects the traditional interpretation of Genesis 3: 15 as the protevangelium, or first Gospel promise of the coming Messiah. He holds that Gen. 3: 15 is primarily ad­dressed to the snake and speaks of his doom (enmity oracle). The author believes it is possible that the New Testament alludes to the other side of the oracle, namely, an implied victory for man (Rom. 16: 20; Rev. 20: 2, 12: 9). The snake is a sign of man's continual temptations and especially his estrangement from God. Christ's victory on the cross has the significance of a victory of the Second Man and thus from the "hindsight of the cross" we gain a richer understanding. The author finds symbols of grace in the Genesis account. (Cain is permitted to live. Eve is called the "mother of all living." Man's nakedness is covered.) However, he does not find a protevangelium in the sense of a clear pointing to Christ in the text of Gen. 3: 15. Prof. U Transcript pp.17-18 PROF. U: Which Isaiah passage? COMMITTEE: Seven, with reference to the almah and to JtCl.Qi7evo£, in Matthew. Now what contextual force is there n J at all between Old and New Testament there, as you do your exegete? PROF. U: I think it depends on the text, to take the one we were talking about a while ago on Amos. I think that when Amos is talking about "woe to yoU who desire the day of Yehveh," he is not saying, "Woe to you who look for the second coming of Jesus." I think the second coming of Jesus is of the same type, it's the same type of day that's expected; but obviously the people of Amos' time were not looking for the second coming of Jesus, so that there the understanding of the Amos passage, I don't think is particularly clarified by the New Testament reference, and there may be other passages where it is. COMMITTEE: How about the Isaiah passage? Isaiah 7? PROF. U: What's your specific question on that? COMMITTEE: With reference to the meaning of almah, "virgin young woman," meaning of a prophecy primarily for the time of Ahaz, or looking beyond this time, Matthew says this happened that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, and then he uses rrU(nHvD<;, which can only mean virgin, removes any ambiguity with reference to the almah, if you look upon the New Testament as interpreting the Old. In other words, is Matthew reading something new into that that wasn't in the Old Testament? Is this retrodiction? Or if you look at it as prophecy, can the way the New Testament sees this fulfilled help us in terms of what was in the Old Testament? Do you see and do you use in your exegesis a connection between the two? 01'-PROF. U: Sure. With regard to both the Isaiah passage, my first assignment I think is to make clear what the passage 5e, 7 meant in its original context and then to follow that through and to say what it might mean in the New Testament and what it might mean today in the preaching. Dr. X knows from attending the course that X and I teach together that one of the main assignments in the course after a lot of lexicography, etc., is precisely a sermon on that text which we exegeted to death. The specific problem in Isaiah now is to say that Ahaz was not really willing to trust God, but he was resorting to all sorts of military preparations, etc., to escape Ephraim and Syria, which were ranked against him. And that the prophet Isaiah comes to him and says, "Lo and behold, you are going to have a son, and the sig­nificance of this son is that he's going to have a name: 'God with us.' And if you really hear clearly what God is trying to say to you, that son's name is going to be 'God with us,' and if you really believed and trusted that, that God would be with you, you wouldn't have to shake like a leaf, like the text says." Now-COMMITTEE: That's all you think it says? PROF. U: No, I'm not done yet. That when you go on from that and when you say what. St. Matthew is asserting then, he is saying, I think in a new context, or a new time, that as a matter of fact God is with us in a way that far tran­scends that and fulfills it, fills it up to the brim, and He is going to do this through a young woman, whom He calls the virgin. And the virgin birth, I told you I affirm, I be­lieve, and as a matter of fact though, the significance of Jesus is that He is really the sign and the guarantee and the demonstration that God is with man and that as an offshoot of that, or that as an accompanying factor, I'm very happy to boldly and joyfully confess the virgin birth, but it's the salvific significance is the way God has been decisively with me in this God-man. Se, 7. The Findings Concerning the Historical-Critical Method and the Doctrine of Angels Typical users of the historical-critical method generally regal'd Biblical entities such as angels as mythological concepts carried over into the Old Testament from the myths of the Near Eastern neighbors of the Israelites. The Fact Finding Committee did not explore this topic except in a few in­stances. In two of those instances the committee found reluctance to affirm (1) the devil as a personality, (2) the existence of good and evil angels. In view of the many statements of the Scriptures, as well as of the Lutheran Confessions, regarding the reality of the devil, it may be concluded that the reluctance to declare unequivocally that angels and the devil(s) exist re­flects the typical attitude of historical-critical scholars mentioned above. See the following transcripts for a discussion of this point. Cf. Appendix IV: A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles, IV, "I. Historical Methods of Biblical Interpretation," 4. Documentation Prof. C Transcript pp.9·13 COMMITTEE: You emphasized in your statement the impor­tance of seeking to determine what God has done and what God has said, and especially the historical base that's neces­sary in using the historical-critical method. And some of the non-Lutheran proponents, or people who have used this method, have used it with at least the end result to take away much of the historical base in Old Testament story or narrative. Now for example, would you consider it legit­imate to say that the angel stories in the Old Testament are not necessarily -that the angels might be mythological en­tities, but this is simply a graphic way of describing how God happened to enter into the lives of these people? PROF. C: You're asking me whether I would consider this­COMMITTEE: Would you consider this legitimate to say that the angels are not necessarily, this is just a way of describ-ing God's entrance into the lives of these people? We don't have to believe that there are such things as angel beings? PROF. C: Well, I think I would recognize a person's right to trace the historical development of a belief in angels, and to recognize that there are references to such things in the mythologies of the nations round about Israel. So to that extent, to the extent that he can indicate that, he can speak of this as a mythological thing also. COMMITTEE: I was using mythological in the sense though of not being, not something that's found elsewhere in myth, but something that is in fact not, you know, historical in the Scriptures. PROF. C: Oh. I was understanding the term in a more tech­nical sense. COMMITTEE: The reality of it is the substance of what I was getting at. 83 5e, 7 COMMITTEE: In other words, I think what you are getting at -correct me if I am wrong -is: Do the referenees in the Old Testament, or the New. for that matter, to the angels, these spirits, which are obviously beyond our ordinary grasp, our ordinary experience and so on, or any research -there are many who would say, I suppose well, you refer in one of your essays to Robinson would say, well this is a kind of a thing 20th-eentury man can't accept? Now do you per­sonally feel the fact that they are mentioned in the Scrip­tures, the Old and the New, not just in one place, but in many places on that basis do you yourself believe in angels? PROF. C: I would like to point to the fact that the Bible refers to these beings around God in many different ways. Now in some places they are called angels, messengers, a trans­lation of both the Hebrew and the Greek word for it, and in other places they are referred to in pretty different ways. They are called, well, the host of heaven, they are called the sons of God, the bene-El, the sons of El. They are re­ferred to, I think, implicitly in a number of references espe­cially in the Old Testament to the council of advisers round about the Lord. They are referred to as seraphim in the vision of Isaiah. And all of these are, it seems to me, pic­tures of God as the king surrounded by his court, just the way any ancient monarch would have his advisers round about him. They do His bidding just as all His creatures do His bidding, but these in a special way. And so the intent of this is to mean, I think, that God is the supreme Ruler over everything, and to the extent that anyone else has power or abilities at all-whether human or in worlds that we do not, are unable to see -this is all at the commmand of God Himself and completely under His control. So I see this as in part actually being a corrective, very intentionally a corrective, against the ways that peoples l'ound about Israel believed about the heavenly who of course wor-shiped them, regarded them as gods, in a real pantheon kind of way. COllfMITTEE: With reference to, say, any of a number of these descriptive names, the names that are given, and with ref­erence to ministering spirits and so on obviously not identified with God as you yourself have said. But are there entities like that? Or if a person says, suppose as a 20th­century man I say: "Well, I cannot stomach this. It's just too much for me." Would you say, "Well, that's fine, it's O. K."? That's one question. Really the prior question though that I want to come back to, is: What is your own personal belief? Are there any such entities angels as described in this? Or is this simply a way saying that God's got everything under control? PROF. C: Well, I'm not prepared to deny that there are angels, that there are all kinds of things that I don't know about, that there are powers of, in an unseen world. The point of what I was saying, I think, is to point to the variety of the Biblical ways of speaking of this kind of thing which in­dicates to me that the individual details, since they appear in different ways and different places, aren't the major thing. COMMITTEES Now, we're not of course asking whether they've got six wings as in Isaiah and so forth, which obviously is a picturesque way of putting it. Bllt do you personally believe in angels? PROF. C: Well, as I said, I don't deny that there are angels. COMMITTEE: You don't deny, but you don't, you're not an­swering with a yes or a no. You don't deny that there are, but do you affirm it? PROF. C: I don't believe in angels in the same sense that I believe in our Lord. COMMITTEE: "In the same sense." Now, would you explain what you mean by that? PROF. C: That I would put my trust in them. I don't deny their existence, so if you want to turn that around the other way, yes, I believe that they can exist, I don't know any­thing about it other than this richly, varied way that the Bible has of speaking of unseen powers around God. COMMITTEE; Well, if I understand you correctly, you say you wouldn't want to deny that there are and you wish to affirm that there might be. Now what about the existence of a personal devil? The fathers -aside from the Scriptural wit­ness in the Confessions you know, speak of him as con-84 niving and murdering, and killing, and tricking, and tempt­ing, and I guess you' know dozens and dozens of references to their confession of a belief in a personal evil angel, or the leader of the evil angels. Would you answer that ques­tion the same way as you do the question about the good angels? PROF. C: Now the question in this ease is ? COMMITTEE: Do you believe in the existence of a personal devil? PROF. C: Yes, I think I would answer it in the same way. COMMITTEE: "In the same way." I'd like to be real sure now we're understanding you right. You don't deny a personal devil, but you don't necessarily affirm him either. Is that what you are saying? Maybe you'd better make a more fuller statement so we don't misunderstand you, that's­above all, we don't want to do that. PROF. C: I certainly do not wish to deny the existence of these unseen powers, both those that assist God and those that are powers of evil in His world. The question would be whether the preaching of a sermon on this would be of help to, well, to myself or to other 20th-century people. Under certain, in certain situations, I should think yes, cer­tainly. Maybe not to the same extent, though, as Luther for instance found it to be a very helpful way going ac­tually quite a ways fadher (as I believe Dr. X implied) than the Scriptures themselves in describing the devil as his enemy. Prof. C Transcript pp.20-22 COMMITTEE: Well, as a theologian of the church, summing it up -and obviously we don't have a chance to go through all the passages that deal with this -is it your opinion that Scripture teaches that Satan is an entity, personality, a reality, or is it just possibly a description for the forces of evil in general? What's your personal belief? PROF. C: I would like to think of it -~ my personal belief, then, is in terms of the distinction that I was making before also, that there are these ways of speaking about the devil, Satan, the accuser, and these ways change from Old Testa­ment to the New Testament -and in fact within the eon­fines of the Old Testament -so that these details of the way in which he is personalized or anthropomorphically de­scribed are not the major point of the doctrine. The doc­trine, however, holds that there is, well, you can call it forces of evil, there is a very strong evil power in this world, con­trary to the way God intended it, and that this is a great danger for the Christian in his life -a danger which can be descriqed in terms of a personal enemy, as the Bible itself does in many places, but in other places it talks about it as powers and principalities and so on. COMMITTEE: One more and then we'll leave it. When Christ cast the devils out of these two men and they flee -ask permission to flee -into the herd of swine, and the swine jump off the cliff -what do you make of that text, what meaning does that have? PROF. C: I don't feel constrained to connect that directly with the question of the devil, the personal devil, that we've just been-COMMITTEE: Well, they're described as "evil spirits." PROF. C; Yes I think using a different term, in fact. So that the text doesn't indicate a real connection with Satan. COMMITTEE: But what does that tell you about evil spirits, with reference to: Are they real, or are they just a way of describing somebody that's got some physical condition which Christ relieves him of this problem? Or does this say anything about the reality of spirits? PROF. C: It certainly says something about the reality of the effects, because -This is within the area of observable data, that this evil in the world -brought about, I would say, by the existence of sin -has very definite adverse effects. COMMITTEE: Suppose I say that on the basis of stories like that existing in the literature of the people around Israel, beside that actually that business of the pigs jumping off the cliff is just a little addition that somebody put into the story, to sort of emphasize Christ and how He could com-mand the devils, and on that basis I would say that all the text really teaches is that Christ relieves problems, and solves problems, and so on (But that,), and the forces of evil are great; but, I say, this business of the pigs jumping off the cliff, that is something I don't have to accept. What would your reaction be to that approach? PROF. C: I think when a person uses the word "teaches" as you did in stating that, then I can agree that this is what the text t.)aches. I might add other things to it too, that are taught by this text. And I do . like to make that distinc­tion between what a text teaches and what is incidentdl or assumed already, because I do think that historically, ac­cording to a proper historical method, this is the way you determine what the original intent of a particular text is: that which it actually purposes to teach and not what is part of the cultural background that didn't have to be taught because it was taken for granted by everyone. COMIIUTTEE: Would you say then that I could deny the factuality of this business of the pigs taking the big jump and still be a good Lutheran theologian? PROF. C: Yes, I think you could still be a good Lutheran theologian. Prof. J Transcript pp.27-29 COMMITTEE: Do you believe the devil is a person? PROF. J: I would find no passage in Holy Scripture that would suggest this. COMMITTEE: What is your conception of the devil? PROF. J: Because when I think of "person" the only meaning that "person" can have, apart from the fourth-century theo­logical use of "person" in connection with the Holy Trinity, is the six people, seven people that are involved here. In other words the term "person" connotes "humanity" to me. COMMITTEE: All right. But I think you know what I am talking about with reference to, as opposed to, let's say a force. Let's sayan entity, an intelligent entity, analogous [to], although on the other end of the spectrum from God the Father, Son, and Spirit. PROF. J: Well, certainly not analogous to the fatherhood, to the -what we have habitually called the "person," the pel'sona, the hypostasis of the sacred Trinity. I think we have to be very careful to use that exclusively in that connection. COMMITTEE: We frequently say "God is a person." I think we understand that as opposed to a cosmic force. Using it in that sense 5e, 8 PROF. J: Again, when that state~ent is made, I have learned to want to know who is making it and in what context. COMMITTEE: What would you say is your understanding then of the devil? PROF. J: I would have to say ultimately that the devil is, that he is a creature, he is not supernatural, he is super­human. He is, he has been conquered by our Lord Jesus Christ, his work has been destroyed, our Lord is the ultimate and final Victor over tQe devil and over all of the demonic powers that exist. Who he is or what he is I can only imagine through -you used the word, and I think quite appropri­ately -the analogy of human language. I have never seen a devil, and therefore I have no concrete opportunity for conceptualizing him. COMMITTEE: With reference to the angels, which, you know, "left their first habitation and so on"-PROF. J: Of course, this is in one of the books of the New Testament that has an awful lot of exegetical problems at­tached to it and one which I think you would have to ulti­mately say is at the periphery of the canon. COMMITTEE: Let's take Luke, who talks about Satan leaving Christ in the wilderness. PROF. J: I said that I believe there is a Satan. COMMITTEE: You believe it is permissible for a Lutheran to deny that there is a Satan as such and speak simply in terms of a force of evil? PROF. J: I would want to see the context in which he says that. COMMITTEE: You think there might be circumstances under which it would be possible? PROF. J: I would want to know precisely what he is saying, what he is trying to antagonize. Because I think that-COMMITTEE: If he is antagonizing the mythical concept. PROF. J: If he is antagonizing the wrong concept, he might be offering a conceivably desirable antidote. If he and I had the chance to discuss it, he might ultimately end up with a somewhat different formulation from the one that he came with, or possibly I would be better instructed after he and I had talked together. But, forgive me, I am a little leery about these alternatives because particularly through my re­searches of the last few years I have discovered how difficult it is to simply take a statement and say, "Is it right or is it wrong?" without knowing a great deal more about the con­text in which it is in. 85 5e, 8 Documentation Prof. I Transcript pp.ll·12 COMMITTEE: May I interrupt you a minute before I lose this thought. You said people like Matthew, Mark and Luke. Is it your belief that Matthew wrote the Gospel ascribed to him, or was this written much later and by someone else, or Mark? PROF. I: Let me ask you -this is a kind of an interesting question which I want to ask you somewhere along the line. What does that question have to do with my affirmation of faith and my professional commitment? If I give one answer or another, what does it have to do with the question that we are here for? COMMITTEE: Well, I'd have to say, Prof. I, the committee in asking its questions is trying to establish an overall picture, and I don't think it is fruitful for us in any given instance asking what I think is a legitimate question which is often asked in books on isagogics to debate each question or even many of them. However, if you do not want to answer that one PROF. I: No, I'm prepared to answer it, but I think that it is a l'elevant-COMMITTEE: It is part of the overall picture. PROF. I: But it is a relevant question which I put to you because you can COMMITTEE: The committee isn't going to get into a dialog with you, Prof. I. That is supposed to not be our business. We are just supposed to find out what you think. We are not supposed to-PROF. I: All right, let me enter it into the record so that it there if you are not going to give me the answer I will you the answer and that is-COMMITTEE: Now we are just supposed to ask questions, you are supposed to give answers. PROF. I: That is that -well-ya, sure, but if I need some clarification, I am going to ask you. COMMITTEE: Yes, sir, you may, as to what I am asking you have every right to that. PROF. I: I make no pretense at expertise on the synoptic problem. I happen to have done a little bit of work on that, and you have to if you are going to wind up with a Th. D. degree, as I had to do a little work in other areas. But I am no expert, and whether I say that I think Matthew wrote Matthew or I think that that name has been attributed to Matthew from earliest Christian times and I don't know who wrote it is really irrelevant to the question of my confes­sional commitment and whether or not I am true to what we are committed to in the Lutheran Church. Prof. R Tl'anscript pp.22-23 PROF. R: No, I am willing to speak to that as long as we recognize the limitations of the document. Let's talk about the apostolicity of Ephesians. That is what the little frag­ment that you saw was on. In all other respects except stylistic ones I think Ephesians is Pauline. But the stylistic arguments -here I have to defer to people who are experts in this field and I am not, very clearly I am not the stylistic arguments lead me to conclude -and I do this very pro­visionally -that the man who actually wrote the letter as we call it, the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, was not Paul. I wouldn't stake my life on that, and I may well be wrong, particularly in the face of so many other scholars who have said that it was Paul. But that is not so much what I was concerned to say. (I wish now I had reread this before I dis­cussed it, because that has been some time ago that I wrote that.) The thing that I wanted to say was that, even if it were not Paul, it seems to me that you cannot do exegetical justice to the content of the Epistle to the Ephesians unless you read it the way in which the author meant it to be read. He very clearly means it to be read as Paul's letter to the Ephesians. He means it to be read as being apostolic, and not just apostolic in general. He means it to be read as the work of that apostle who is Paul, and that that is not an 86 extraneous isagogical consideration for him. The apostolicity of what he writes is essential to the whole point of the the­ology of the epistle. What I am trying to do here, Dr. X (I have to wrestle with my failing memory at this point), what I am trying to do is to not fall into the trap of some authorship arguments that I have seen which would say, because the author was not whoever-now, in this case, Paul therefore by that very token the apostolicity of the epistle is dismissable, it is expendable. And I wanted the reader to be in the bind, if he is going to say that the author was not Paul, be in the bind of however not being able to say that you can then dismiss the question of apostolicity, because I think with this epistle that is not an option. The apostolicity of this epistle is essential to the document itself, COMMITTEE: Why is it not an option? PROF. R: Because the writer will develop some of the basic arguments -particularly the Christological, soteriologieal sections in the first two or three chapters -around his own claim to authority. And his claim to authority is that he has been bequeathed the mystery of Christ, God's pJan for the ages, because he is an apostle. COl>rJ\,uTTEE: Now if it were not Paul and there is no other apostle you can think of that readily fits, there is somebody who is writing as though he were Paul. Does that not make him then an impostor? PROF. R: No, that it most certainly does not. COMMITTEE: Why does it not? PRm'. R: Well, that is assuming (of course I am not telling you anything) that is assuming that pseudonymity is for documents of this kind in that period a case of forgery. That is why I preceded my remarks before by saying in all other respects it is Pauline. Everything you find in Ephesians you can find elsewhere in the authenticated Pauline corpus. I could well see (I am just guessing) but I could well see that if it were Paul-and as I said, I don't stake my life on whether it is or isn't but if it were not Paul I could well see where a follower of his (and let me interject it is inter­esting if this weren't Paul then it is a Pauline theologian the likes of which we have no evidence of in the early church) if it weren't Paul, then I can well see that the reason he is writing as Paul is not as an impostor but precisely as the contrary. Out of modesty he is saying, "Nothing I have here is my own, all of this is Paul's." And he is right. It all is. Prof. DD Transcl'ipt p.17 COMMITl'EE: I believe that earlier, Prof. DD, you said some­thing about the inspiration of Scriptures, an article of faith that can't be proved, and so forth. Do you find any sig­nificant number of people who attempt to demonstrate or prove the inspiration of Scripture? PROF'. DD: Do I find them? Well, I haven't run across them in large numbers. COMMITTEE: Do you feel there are persons in our own church body who are attempting to do that, demonstrate or prove the inspiration of Scripture? PROF. DD: I think there are those. This may not answer your question, but I think it has bearing. There are those who feel that the inspiration of Scripture demands a single authorship to certain books, and I don't think that follows at all, just as little for the book of Psalms or the book of Proverbs or the Gospel of John or any of the others. So I think that people who do that, that say, "If this was not written by a single author, then it was not inspired," they are wrong, Prof. K Transcript pp.18·19 COMMITTEE: Just on that point, then we'll come back to you, The first control states the authoritative word for the church today is the canonical word, not pre canonical sources, forms, or traditions, however useful in investigation these possi­bilities may on occasion be for clear understanding what the canonical text intends to say. Now if I understand this cor­rectly, what this says is that no speculation or research concerning sources, forms,· 01' traditions is authoritative over against the Word, but it is the text as we have it, the canonical text, which is the authority. Do you agree to that, or do you place any restrictions on it? PROF. K: I don't know of any restrictions that I place on that. I don't really know where I have a problem between the Word of Yahwist and the canonical Word, that is the Pentateuch. COMMITTEE: Yes. The word of the Yahwist would presumably be a source, wouldn't it? PROF. K: Yes, of the Pentateuch. If such a thing arose, I would assert the message of the canon, the canonical, the Pentateuch, which is a canonical document. I don't have this problem, however, I haven't run up against it, as I could recognize it. COMMITTEE: If I heard you correctly before, you said that if Jesus said, "Moses wrote of Me," then Moses must have written of Jesus; however, if you accept multiple authorship, there wouldn't be necessarily anything that you could iden­tify as Mosaic, you would probably be saying, is this correct, that somewhere along the way, the Yahwist or others in­volved in getting this together must have picked up some­thing that Moses wrote but we wouldn't be able to identify it necessarily. 5f PROF. K: Well, you do have in the Yahwist account certain references to material that Moses wrote. COMMITTEE: O. K. But this, you would limit these words of Jesus to that? PROF. K: Not necessarily, but you know, if you were going to say to me, "Tell me what you think Moses wrote," it would be those passages, you know, that the Yahwist as­cribes to him. COMMITTEE: You've talk('d in terms of the two accounts of Genesis, Elohist and Yahwist. Are those in any way in dis­agreement with one another, contradict theologically or any other way? PROF. K: That they contradict one another in fact, yes. That they contradict one another in what they have to say about God and the presence and action of God, no. COMMITTEE: What are the contradictions in fact? Could you list them? . PROF. K: Well, you can go down the line in the two creation accounts and see the differences in fact. COMMITTEE: Could you name one or two, just off hand? PROF. K: In the Yahwist account, the order of creation is man, animals, woman. In the Priestly account, the order of creation is animals, then man, and then woman. That is a difference in fact. 5 f. The Findings Concerning Permissiveness Documentation Pl'of. xx "What Does 'Inerrancy' Mean?" CTM, Sept. 1965, pp. 592-3 One of the major findings of the fact-finding inquiry was a marked per­missiveness on the part of a number of the professors. While they them­selves professed a doctrinal stance in harmony with the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions, they were reluctant to condemn deviating positions. This is illustrated in the following sections. The question must be asked: Does reluctance to condemn false teaching not in effect bless it as a viable option and then involve the person permitting it in false doctrine? The Lutheran confessors not only proclaimed the truth, they were vigorous in their condemnation of error. "We condemn and reject these errors," is a familiar theme of the confessors. It is in fact an act of love to condemn false doctrine, so that men may be warned and avoid it. 5 f, 1. Permissiveness: Miracles As mentioned earlier in the report, all the professors granted the possi­bility of miracles having actually been performed as the Bible records. How­ever, for various reasons there was a willingness to permit the abandonment of a historical view ("they really happened") of the miracles. will not exclude the possibility of miracle at every point on principle, but the other principle of the economy of mir­acles may induce one or the other of us to accept an alterna­tive solution in certain cases. In applying the criterion of human experience to which we have previously adverted, there will likewise be inevitable differences of opinion -for example, as to the extent that midrashic influence can be allowed in the Old Testament or in the New. Obviously, we who believe in the almighty power of a Pantocrator to whom nothing will be impossible Prof. L Transcript pp.19-20 COMMITTEE: On the same lines, if someone does treat events in the life of Christ, for example, His walking on water, raising of Lazarus, or whatever, as an invention of a later pious age, would you regard persistence in such exegesis as 87 5f, 2 divisive of fellowship with the denomination, or is it just a tolerable exegetical difference of point of view? PIIOF. L: I would have to know why the man is sensitive to that. COMMITTEE: Suppose he says his scholarship leads him to this as a result of his scholarly studies in terms of source hypothesis he decides having gone through the form or re­daction criticism and so on that he concludes that this again is something which is added by the church to give a historical matrix for some saying so the event is really imaginative addition. PROF. L: In my experience I just wouldn't talk until I heard how he preached this. COMMITTEE: Suppose he says that from the pulpit in so many words, "I am going to preach to you about Christ walking on the water. Of course He probably never walked on the water; that is what the New Testament church put in so that we could preach a little spiritual truth here." PROF. L: That would be tough. COMMITTEE: Since you would think it would be tough. PROF. L: I 'am saying that is very hypothetical, I have never heard it done. Prof. V Transcript pp.14·14 a COMMITTEE: Well, see, I am talking about controls, what we may -let me put it this way: If I decide with reference to the doctrine of resurrection that this is a story which the early church in an effort to somehow explain the wonderful feelings they had despite the fact that Christ was dead and gone and in order to perpetuate His teachings and so on in effect invent it so that the tomb really wasn't empty, but when you talk about the resurrection you talk about some­thing spiritual, something eternal but not about Christ really '5 f, 2. Permissiveness: Christology and truly coming back to life, being quickened and rIsmg. N ow suppose I say that I find in the people surrounding Israel enough resurrection myths that I say, what these people have done is, they have adapted a resurrection myth which they picked up say from the Egyptians or somebody, and they have not clocked this and put this into the history of Christ, but it is not historic in the sense that it really actually happened. Is that legitimate for me as a Lutheran theologian? PROF. V: I don't think so. COMMITTEE: What would be the control? PROF. V: The Scriptures, which witness to the resurrection and are accepted by faith. COMMITTEE: Yes, but in other instances I can go to the Scrip­tures and say, well, here is an instance of Christ turning water into wine or the raising of Lazarus, can I excise any of those then and give them the same treatment that I just gave the resurrection? PROF. V: No. I think what you are doing here is, we were talking about what is fundamental, and the Lutheran Church has always had a problem on fundamental and nonfunda­mental doctrine from the Adiaphoristic Controversy right on to the present time. The problem is of course is: What are the controls? The Scriptures are the controls for me. N ow when it comes to the things that deal with the Gospel really, the centrality of the thing in Jesus Christ, the resur­rection is a very important thing, but when it comes to changing water into wine or whether a change comes into one of the other miracles which I happen to believe, I don't think that faith is dependent upon whether Christ could change water into wine or do a miracle. That is not the reason I would say that; faith does not depend upon that. I would say that faith depends upon Christ, the Person of Christ, His life, death, and resurrection. Let me say this, I am not trying to limit it for anybody. That is in answer to your question. The diminution of the authority of the Holy Scriptures that flows from the use of the historical-critical method results in an unwillingness to accept certain sayings of Christ at their face value. For example, Christ says in John 5:45·47: uDo ,not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is Moses who accuses you, on whom you set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote of Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" Christ also taught in Matthew 12:39·40: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the [sea monster], so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they re­pented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." In connection with passages of this type, some of the men indicate that it is an acceptable option to believe either that Jesus was accommodating Himself to the views of the people or that He was Himself ignorant of the true facts because He was in the state of humiliation. Such a position implies the denial of the omniscience of Christ in His state of humiliation. It raises the question whether Christ's teaching can be regarded as reliable if the Biblical interpreter is permitted to sit in judgment upon the sayings of Jesus. In this connection, it should be observed that the Scriptures provide no indio cation that Jesus ever accommodated Himself to error, not even in the state of humiliation, when He did not always make use of the divine knowledge which He had as the Son of God. For an illustration of this position, see the following transcript and excerpt from an essay: 88 Documentation Prof. A Transcript pp.23·24 COMMITTEE: Well, in connection with the New Testament. How do you handle the isagogical statements of Jesus, like you did Romans 5, that because Jesus' purpOse and ascribing a psalm to David, well, He didn't have that as His purpose, simply ascribed it to him, or when He said, "Moses wrote of Me," obviously His great didactic point was not Mosaic authorship, now, was He accommodating Himself like Paul was in Romans 5, the surface treatment of Genesis, or a first­century Palestinian Jew, or subject to erratic judgments on isagogical questions, or would you accept Mosaic, his isa­gogical statement in John 5? PROF. A: Which is the one in John 5? COMMITTEE; I think it's John 5: "If you would have believed Moses, you would have believed Me, because he wrote of Me," 37 [46] or something. PROF. A: When this is a common way of speaking of the, as I understand it, a common way of speaking of the Penta­teuch, I, it seems to me that option is open and we must look at all the evidence. I certainly, if I were convinced, frankly, that this, my Lord wished to reveal this to me, who wrote the Pentateuch, I would accept it. Absolutely. But I find no threat to my belief in the deity of Christ or in the trust­worthiness of the word of judgment and Gospel that He speaks to me in the view that He was not addressing Him­self, either. I realize accommodation is not a view that is in good favor with many, I personally don't hold to that; I would hold to that He's using either a common way of speaking or that He is here in that wondrous thing, that state of humiliation where He is a genuine man as we are, for which I thank and praise God that He took that upon Himself to save me. COMlIllTTEE: You're saying, then, that Jesus may not have known any better? PROF. A: Well, I think if He wished to know better He could have. Addition from Prof. A's response: In the pressure of the moment there were many infelicities of expression in my interview, but only one item that I really wish to change. In discussing John 5: 37, and whether our Lord asserted Mosiac authorship of the Pentateuch, I re­sponded, "He is here in that wondrous thing, that state of humiliation where He is a genuine man as we are, for which I thank and praise God that He took upon Himself to save me." (1, p. 24: 6-8). Dr. X asked, "You're saying then that Jesus may not have known any better." (1, p. 24: 11). I re­sponded, "I think if He wished to know better He could have." (I, p. 24: 1). But the tape shows that this was a very slow halting answer because I was upset that such a pejorative term "didn't know any better" should be used of my Lord or that anyone might think that I would choose such an expression of my Lord. I regret that I repeated the term "know better" in my answer and sincerely hope that "may not have known any better" was only an unintended slip on the part of the interviewer. Prof. XX Essay: "The Lesson of Jonah" VII. The New Testament Implications One of the most difficult problems of interpretation is that of reconciling a didactic explanation of the book of Jonah with the statements which Jesus makes about Jonah in the New Testament. It has been maintained that the texts of Matthew 12: 38-42 and Luke 11: 29-32 constrain us to conclude that Jesus regarded the Jonah episode as a historical event which actually took place. If He regarded the book of Jonah as a historical account, must we not regard it as such also? It is true that Hebrews 1: 2 constrains us to re­ceive the statements of Jesus as the last word from God. At the same time the interpreter must be certain that his understanding of these words of Jesus is the correct and intended understanding. The question that needs to be answered is this: Did Jesus hold that the prophet Jonah actually spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish? A number of answers 5f, 2 have been proposed. The first and most radical is that Jesus neither held this nor said it. The account of Luke does not mention the fish. It suggests that the sign of the prophet Jonah was his preaching of repentance to the Ninevites. As Jonah preached repentance, so the Son of Man was to preach repentance. In Matthew, however, the sign of Jonah is the three nights in the fish's belly which is parallel to the sign of Jesus' being in the heart of the earth for a similar period. How is this difference between Luke and Matthew to be explained? Luke's account has been regarded as the earlier and more original. Matthew in turn, drawing on his more detailed knowledge of the Old Testament, applied the words of Jonah 2: 1 to the Lord's resurrection and thus gave the sign of Jonah another emphasis. Matthew's account seems to as­sume that Jonah told the Ninevites of his wonderful de­liverance and that ihis message was the means of bringing them to repentance. This explanation sounds quite plausible. Neither does it conflict with any teaching of the Christian faith. The second answer to the question is an affirmitive one: Jesus did hold that Jonah was actually swallowed by a fish, but He believed this only as a child of His time. Contem­porary Judaism was of the opinion that the prophet really experienced the ordeal of the deep and therefore Jesus as a pious Jew accepted it. This answer would imply that in His humiliation Jesus chose to relinquish His omniscience and that He needed to grow in wisdom and stature like every Jewish lad of His time (Luke2:52). Such a limitation of His understanding would be inseparably bound up with His incarnation and would verify the fact of His humanity. According to the third answer Jesus did not speak to the question at all, whether the book of Jonah contained history or parable. He used the Jonah incident for purposes of ad­monition and the impact of such instruction would be just as strong with a parabolic interpretation as it would be with a historical interpretation. If Jesus frequently resorted to parables of His own to proclaim the truths of the kingdom, it is reasonable to conclude that He would appropriate an Old Testament parable for the same purpose. He could surely say that His dwelling in the earth would be com­parable to the familiar story of Jonah without thereby im­plying that the Jonah incident had actually taken place. But what is to be said about the men of Nineveh who according to Jesus will arise at the judgment with the Lord's generation and condemn it? Does this not mean that the histOl'ical men of Nineveh will actually rise at the final judgment? We of course know that inasmuch as all men will appear before the throne of God's judgment, the in­habitants of ancient Nineveh will also be constrained to stand there. But this does not require us to believe that the men of Nineveh in the eighth century actually heard Jonah's preaching, that they actually repented as a result of it, and that they will actually rise in judgment against the New Testament people. The Lord was holding up the Ninevites as the epitome of the impenitent who finally did respond to the preaching of the prophet. It is as though He were telling unscrupulous people that they would come under the same condemnation as the rich man in Nathan's parable; 01' as though He were telling lazy people that their lot would be the same as that of the fellow who buried his talent. The characters who are chosen to illustrate a theological truth do not automatically become historical characters. Even presenting them as eventually appearing at the last judg­ment does not necessarily mean that they will do this in actual fact. If it be argued finally that in the New Testament texts the Ninevites must be historical because the Queen of ShebGl who is mentioned with them is historical, then it must be noted that the point of comparison between the QUeen and the Ninevites is not the histol'ical character, but the heathen character of these witnesses: the impenitent people of God will be condemned by those who come from outside the fold. In the light of this study it ought to be granted that there is room foJ' both the historical and the didactic interpreta­tion of the book of Jonah. Problems arise, no matter which way one turns. If one looks merely at the individual points in the case for a didactic interpretation, their validity may be challenged. But the combined effect of all of these argu­ments does appear to make a strong case for a parabolic account. 89 5f, 3 The plaee of the book of Jonah in the prophetic canon calls tor a didactic interpl'etation, The quotations from ear­lier literature s1