# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S109
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 105

[145] - nd Resolution of Synod re Compulsory Retirement
‘of Professors at the Age of Seventy

We, the Faculty of Concordia College at Fort Wayne, Ind.,

with come before Synod with a sincere and earnest request to
beeind the resolution of Synod regarding compulsory retirement
of professors at the age of 70.

We believe that the action of Synod as reported in the syn-
odical Proceedings of 1944, p. 112, is

1 Il-advised. For many men, to this day, have done efficient
work in their professions after attaining the age of 70, even at our
own seminaries and colleges;

2. Ilogical. According to present regulations of Synod a local
board is entrusted with the duty to pass on the inability of a
professor in a given instance when he is perhaps only 40 years old.
Why can’t a board pass on the inability of a professor after he
has reached the age of 70 or more? Why must an arbitrary human
ruling be invoked to declare a man inefficient at the age of 70?

3. Robbing the Church of gifts which God has given her. The
representatives of a visible church body have, we believe, no
moral right to take away from the Church the gifts which God has
given her and which, through years of experience, have been espe-
cially trained to serve her in a certain capacity. What injustice
would have been done to the Church if, e.g., Drs. Walther and
Pieper had been retired at 70? .

4. Against the law of love and respect which God demands
for His servants, 1 Tim. 5:17-18, et al. No visible church body or
board, we believe, has the moral right to cut short the service of
a servant of God by arbitrary human ruling and to encroach upon
His divine prerogative. For professors at our seminaries and col-
leges are not only servants of the Church but also servants of
Christ, the Lord and Master of His Church, who has called them
into their office.

5. An impairment of the validity of the calls, through which
the majority of our professors have, until now, been divinely called
as teachers to our seminaries and colleges. According to the terms
of their calls, these men were called to service for life or until
such a time when a situation arises in which they can no longer
serve efficiently and to retain them as teachers would be detri-
mental to the Kingdom.

The call of a professor until now was always on a par with
that of a pastor. In the past the argument was frequently used —
in order to influence a congregation to release its pastor — that
a professorship was even of greater importance in the Kingdom