# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S1030
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

882 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

work in their professions after attaining the age of 70, even at our ,
own seminaries and colleges; -

2. Tllogical. According to present regulations of Synod a local :
board is entrusted with the duty to pass on the inability of 4
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, ng.
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? ae

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 g

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
than the office of a pastor, because a professor was to help train
future pastors and teachers for. the Church. :
The present ruling of Synod may have the tendency gradually
to undermine the proper regard for the sacred character ofa pro-
fessor’s call and may tend to change his own attitude toward his
work, so that he will no longer look upon his service as conse: -
crated to the Lord in the same degree as that of a pastor of a con-
gregation. It cannot be denied that the present retirement ruling
will break down the respect for the divine call of a professor.
Moreover, an age limit cannot be retroactively placed into the