LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 45

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DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

each other, “We are going to cooperate. We are going
to work together. And we are going to put down a few
rules for ourselves by which we are going to cooperate.”
When they have signed the papers, you can call it the
Jim-Joe Synod. Why? Because the word “synod” sim-
ply means: “one walking the same road with another.”
And you need only two to make a synod.

At this time we have over 6,000 congregations walk-
ing together. They have signed certain papers and
have said, “This is the way we intend to cooperate.”
Now, when there are brethren who say to themselves,
“I am ruled only by the Scriptures. My congregation is
sovereign. The Handbook of the Missouri Synod cannot
dictate to me,” we say to them in reply, “So you want
to write a new rulebook? You want to change the rules
of the game? Instead of three strikes you want four
strikes? Instead of getting on base with four balls,
you want to get there with three? That’s not what
you signed!” As long as this man’s signature is on the
paper, he cannot overstep the bounds set by the rule-
book and claim ecclesiastical freedom with impunity.
He who oversteps those bounds has to say to himself,
or we'll say it to him, “You have left our team. You’re
through!”

Furthermore, there is within the framework of the
confessional writings of the church and within the
framework of a signed constitution no academic free-
dom for an individual. Every teacher in Synod has
made promises as to what he will teach. By his signa-
ture he has said, “This is what I will teach, and nothing
else.” Certainly he has the freedom, academically, to
search out all the mysteries of God in His universe,
but he does not have the freedom to teach publicly
that which violates the articles of agreement which he
himself signed.

And so we say to both sides: “There is within the
framework of the church neither ecclesiastical freedom
nor academic freedom. Your signatures were secured
neither by compulsion nor by coercion, neither by
pressure nor by duress. Your signatures to the Consti-
tution of the Missouri Synod were secured by con-
currence.” Therefore, if the church changes its mode
of cooperation or changes its teachings, it shall not be
the decision of an individual who claims freedom, but
the decision of the whole. Every other pathway violates
the integrity of the signatories. This loyalty is one of
the demands of love.

Love Demands a Charitable Evaluation

Furthermore, if the Lord is our model of love, there
has to be a charitable evaluation of the deeds and
writings of our church fathers. This is the third ele-
ment in the demands of love, to evaluate charitably
what our fathers stood for. Yes, they made their mis-
takes. They, as we, had their limitations. But we will
not permit, without rebuttal, our authors, preachers,
teachers, professors, and laymen, whoever they may be,
to point to our fathers and say of them, “Behold, how
naive they were! They were living in a little capsule.
They had no wide Weltanschauung. They didn’t have

45

the sense and the spirit of an outreach into the world of
man. They were too narrow.”

Some authors love to quote the fathers. When we
find these quotations, these references, in the books
that are being published in our day, we'll take the time
to look up those references. And here is what we call
dishonest authorship, that only a portion of a quota-
tion from the fathers is used, and the author uses that
portion to say, “Look how valiantly this father is con-
tending for the truth! But he doesn’t make truth
relevant!” The author, however, omits the second part
of the quote which shows this father’s love for the
world, his interest in mankind, his outreach into the
lives of men, making relevant the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. We say to you, “Let every one of us speak out
against such authorship which thus perverts the mes-
sage of the church of yesterday, the message and the
work of the fathers.” There has to be a charitable
evaluation. What is black is black. But what is white
will still be white to us. You authors will not dem-
onstrate to others this charitable evaluation if you give
us truncated quotations from the writings of the fathers.

There has been an attempt at debunking the fathers.
Is this love for the Kingdom? Is this the love of Christ
for His church? Yes, we admit there have been evi-
dences in our time of the emasculating effect of the
ministry of those who contended for the truth only for
truth’s sake. There have been those in high and low
positions who never gave to the church the corollary
of truth, that when truth is present it will be active in
love or it is not truth. Truth is functional, dynamic,
effervescent, it bubbles over, it can’t help being what

it is. Truth blesses. Truth raises man to higher levels
of action.

Love Demands an Interest in the Total Man

This leads me to my fourth point. The demands of
love are an interest in the total man. Here again our
loving Lord left us a model. His religion, Christianity,
is a blessing to all of society. It is utterly false to say,
“The Gospel but not the social gospel.” How should
it read? Like this: “The Gospel, the whole Gospel
which has social implications.” That’s what we stand
for and nothing else. We will not cut off the Gospel
in its effect upon the man in the church. He is to see
that when he once has truth he becomes the most con-
cerned man in the world, concerned about the spiritual
and physical needs of every other living human being.
All the problems of man become, by virtue of the truth
he possesses, his own personal problems which he will
help solve with help from on high. No man has done
his duty when he has shouted into the world, “The
Gospel but not the social gospel.” He who thus shouts
is compelled to give us an evaluation of what the Gos-
pel does to people. If our Gospel has no such implica-
tions, it is simply no gospel at all.

The legitimate areas of the church’s concern — and
these I give to you in no logical order — are first of all
the gray-haired fathers and mothers, our senior citizens,
in the kingdom of our Lord. Under the cross stood the