Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Sheet 530
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Sheet 530

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

A RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS ON
“The Witness of Jesus and Old Testament Authorship”

The Commission on Theology and Church Relations
has received a number of questions and comments on its
recently issued study document, “The Witness of Jesus
and Old Testament Authorship.” The first 10 pages of
the document have met with little criticism. This is as
it should be, for these pages present the evidence for the
central thesis of the document: that Jesus’ divine Son-
ship is clearly evidenced in His use of the Old Testament
as the divinely inspired Word of God by which He calls
men to repentance and proclaims the Kingdom present
in His person and work.

Most of the questions and criticisms deal with the
conclusion of the document (pp. 11—12). Some criti-
cisms reflect a failure to read the document carefully;
others, however, indicate ambiguity or a lack of pre-
cision in the document itself. In response to Resolution
2-03 of the Synod’s 1967 convention and in order to
clarify the position of the commission on this aspect of
the authorship problem and foster its continued study
by the church, we have attempted a response to major
criticisms in question-and-answer form.

1. The four conclusions given on pp. 11—12 are based
on the presentation of Part II, C. What relations, if
any, do these conclusions have to the central thesis
of the document concerning the significance of our
Lord’s kenosis?*

These conclusions are not based on any theory or
doctrine of the kenosis but on the “witness of Jesus,” that
is, on what the New Testament actually records of His
“+eferences to the human authorship of Old Testament
passages and books” (p. 11, bottom). The reason for dis-
cussing the kenosis at some length before dealing with
the textual data is that this doctrine has often been im-
properly invoked so that the authoritativeness of Jesus’
words is called into question. This happens, for instance,
when it is argued that in and because of His kenosis
Jesus lacked the divine capacity to distinguish truth
from error, fact from fiction. On the other hand, in op-
position to this distortion of the Biblical doctrine, some
have so exclusively emphasized the deity of Jesus that
His genuine humanity seemed to be called into question
or reduced to an outward appearance only.

In order to eliminate such misunderstanding and
misuses of our Lord’s kenosis as it relates to His knowl-
edge and use of the Old Testament, the document treats
His kenosis with some detail at the very outset. In effect,
it rejects both extremes mentioned above. It restates
with care the proper understanding of our Lord’s kenosis
and demonstrates that from such a correct understand-
ing one cannot draw inferences that either call into
question the authoritativeness of Jesus’ words or pre-

* The term kenosis is derived from the phrase in Phil. 2:7: “He
emptied Himself” (heauton ekenosen). It refers to our Lord's so-
called state of humiliation, in which Jesus did not always or fully
make use of the divine attributes communicated to His human na-

ture. The term kenosis describes Jesus’ whole life as a ministry of
self-giving, culminating in a self-giving into death.

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judge the isagogical significance of His references to
the Old Testament. This significance, the document
shows, must be learned from direct study of the actual
texts in which Jesus’ words are recorded.

2. Does the document use the kenosis of our Lord to
affirm that He was “merely a first-century Pales-
tinian Jew” in His knowledge and use of the Old
Testament?

On the contrary! The document insists that in Jesus’
knowledge and use of the Old Testament, as in all He
said and did, He was not merely a first-century Pales-
tinian Jew but the incarnate Son of God and that His
kenosis was a self-giving rather than a self-diminution.

3. What does it mean that Jesus “no more ‘displays’ His
knowledge than He ‘displays’ His power” (p.12)?
Did not Jesus’ miracles and sayings give evidence
of both His divine wisdom and power?

To be sure they did and still do! This statement.
however, seeks to express the humble, slavelike deport-
ment of our Lord during His earthly career. Jesus was
not ostentatious in using either His omniscience or om-
nipotence. He rather used His full deity in the humble
servant ministry of seeking and saving the lost.

4. Since Luke 24:25-47 contains statements made by
Jesus in the state of exaltation, why was it used in

a document dealing with our Lord’s kenosis?

Simply in order to deal with all the major references
of Jesus to Old Testament authorship. This passage
suggests that the risen Lord, in the state of exaltation,
used the Scriptures just as He did before His death.

5. Does the document deny the traditional view that
Moses wrote the Pentateuch and that Isaiah and
Daniel wrote the books that bear their names?

Not at all. It merely points out that Jesus nowhere
explicitly states the precise extent of their writing. The
document accepts Jesus’ statements on authorship (sum-
marized in p. 11) at their face value but suggests that
it is not clear whether these statements apply to entire
Biblical books or not. With regard to Moses, the docu-
ment explicitly calls him the “major originative factor,
as recipient and transmitter of revelation, of the content
of the books” (p. 12). This statement was intended to
affirm the substantial Mosaic authorship of the Pen-
tateuch without drawing the exegetically unwarranted
conclusion that Jesus explicitly teaches the Mosaic au-
thorship of every word of the Pentateuch and without
eliminating the possibility that the Pentateuch may have
undergone some editorial revision subsequent to the
death of Moses.

6. May the same line of argument employed in the
document to affirm the Davidic authorship of Psalm
110 be used to assert the substantial Mosaic author-
ship of the Pentateuch on the basis of John 5:39-47?