# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1973_S138
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

RESOLUTIONS 137

However, “Gospel reductionism” must be seen as
having another dimension, one even more damaging.
The Gospel itself becomes clouded, when it no longer
has the clear vertical dimension of God being recon-
ciled with sinners through the vicarious atonement of
Jesus Christ. As St. Paul states, it is this word of rec-
onciliation which must be proclaimed to men every-
where, in keeping with our Lord’s own mandate to carry
it to the ends of the world (cf. Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 5:
19-20). The charge cannot be that the faculty overtly
denies this Gospel. This would be unfair and untrue.
Nonetheless, it must be pointed out that throughout
Faithful . . . I, in spite of the emphasis on “Gospel,”
there is only a subdued reference to Gospel expressed
in terms of the forgiveness of sins, in fact, total avoid-
ance, in term and concept, of vicarious satisfaction, sub-
stitutionary atonement, imputation of Christ’s righ-
teousness (1 John 1:7: “The blood of Jesus Christ, His
Son, cleanses us from all sins”), and the hope of eternal
life in heaven. In its place there appears rather a strong
emphasis upon what at best can be described as a
lateral-moving sort of “Gospel” that seeks for “the
liberation of human beings from all evils” and waits to
be instructed by “the thought patterns of every culture”
(cp. Faithful .. . I, 32, 20, 24). With this there is a
definite, studied avoidance of Christ’s avowal concern-
ing the Old Testament Scriptures that “they are they
which testify of Me.” (John 5:39)

Existentialistic theology (freedom to achieve self-
understanding and authentic existence by internalizing
of personal religious experience) has severely undercut
the content of Christian faith in our day. It is with con-
siderable apprehension, therefore, that note must be
taken of the faculty’s emphasis on the “meaning” of a
given Biblical episode rather than on both the fact and
its meaning together (cp. Faithful ... I, 17, 19, 23, 25,
26, 37). There is no possible way of protecting the Gos-
pel, once the fact is separated from the meaning. Both
must stand, or the Gospel is destroyed.

It is pertinent in this connection to observe that the
historical-critical methodology, by its very presupposi-
tions, acts as a judge over Scripture, and subjects it to
cold rationalistic judgment as one would any other
human document. This means that the anthropocen-
tric (man-centered) approach, which the historical-
critical method uses on the text, regularly spills over
in judgment against the content of Scripture. Francis
Pieper, in a very discerning insight, years ago, stated:
“Synergism in soteriology is basically related to and
on a par with synergism in Scriptural interpretation;
both proceed on the analogy of the human ego” (Lehre
u. Wehre, 53, 531). This simply means that when man
lords it over the text, he ends by lording it over his own
salvation as well.

The seeds of “Gospel reductionism” appear through-
out the faculty’s documents. At the same time it must
be granted in all fairness that the faculty’s stress on
the Gospel — when understood in Scripture’s terms of
God’s forgiving grace to sinners for Christ’s sake — is

a very salutary, healthy emphasis in theology at all
times, the chief and central article of the Christian faith,
as our Confessions attest. What is lacking is a clear,
unambiguous attestation that this Gospel is ours today
as a result of the Holy Spirit’s working through the
normative and causative authority of Holy Scripture.
Without this mooring other “gospels” and “doctrines of
men” are bound to intrude. In the Large Catechism
Luther puts his finger on this point precisely: “I and
my neighbor and, in short, all men may err and deceive,
but the Word of God cannot err or deceive.” (Trig.,

57)

3. The proper and clear distinction between Law and
Gospel is crucial in Christian theology. Particularly
Lutheran theology has in this matter rendered distin-
guished service to all of Christendom, since the time
of the Reformation. The faculty has rightly stressed
the importance of the Law/Gospel distinction for the-
ology, particularly in its pastoral application. Never,
however, dare this important distinction be used against
the Scripture at any point, particularly not as a de-
limiting mechanism by which given material, passages,
episodes, etc., are accounted as incidental or even un-
necessary for faith’s acceptance.

Nor may the stress on the third use of the Law, as
a guide for Christian behavior, and as testified by the
Formula of Concord in Article VI, be set aside. It is
this latter stress which is conspicuously side-tracked
in the faculty’s most recent document, “Response.” The
assurance is first given, that “no one on the faculty re-
jects the third use of the Law as outlined in the For-
mula of Concord.” Yet the explication which follows
upon this is a studied effort at emphasizing “the con-
tinuing significance of the Ten Commandments as God’s
law exposing human sin” —a thing which no Lutheran
denies but which is the Second Use of the Law! The
faculty then adds the ambivalent assertion that “the
Christian is led by the Spirit of Christ to be free and to
face up to the criticism of the Law and move beyond
that criticism to deal in love with people” and that “the
Scriptures do offer guidance in what it means to love
one’s neighbor as oneself.” The same kind of “confusion
and ambiguity,” in fact “rejection of the third use of the
Law,” was noted in the Fact Finding Committee’s Re-
port. (120 ff.)

This manner of speaking fits exactly contemporary
neo-Lutheranism’s denial that Luther ever taught the
third use of the Law. The fact is, of course, that Luther
did teach it. (In his Galatian Commentary he calls the
Law “the command” or “the rule” (LW 27, 82) and
urges that “when we have taught faith in Christ, then
we also teach about good works” (LW 26, 133); there-
upon he lists the commandments and makes his exhor-
tation according to them. (Cp. also Luther’s Catechisms
and his hymn, “That man a godly life might live, God
did these Ten Commandments give .. .” Lutheran Hym-
nal, No. 287.) Above all, and in keeping with Holy
Scripture, the Formula of Concord asserts very clearly
and emphatically the fact and the significance of the