LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1973, Page 61

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62 PRESIDENT’S REPORT

was never more in evidence than it is today. Let us
praise God for that concern! When we are tempted to
lament the many doctrinal disagreements that we are
experiencing, let us praise God that at a time when
many Christians appear to be indifferent to doctrine
and unable to articulate even the most basic elements
of the Christian faith, God has blessed our Synod with
pastors, teachers, and laymen who continue to care
about doctrine, and to care because they know that
the church’s doctrine is the basis for all of its other
tasks. I thank God that I am a member of a church
like ours, for as I have traveled throughout the length
and breadth of this great Synod, I have met liter-
ally hundreds of thousatids of people who are con-
cerned about the doctrinal questions facing us and who
express in countless ways, but always with great sin-
cerity, their desire and prayer that our church will con-
tinue to be faithful to the Holy Scriptures and the Lu-
theran Confessions.

I doubt that any time ih the history of our church
has witnessed more solid theological study than the
past 2 years of our history. Bible classes, discussion
groups, pastors and teachers conferences, and interested
laymen throughout the church have met in literally
hundreds of conferences and meetings to discuss serious
theological questions on the basis of Holy Scripture and
the Lutheran Confessions. This convention, aS you
surely must know, will have to make important de-
cisions about doctrinal questions, particularly on the
nature and authority of the Word of God. I have already
spoken to you about the significance of our present
controversy on the “Scripture alone” principle. At this
point I merely want to express our gratitude to this
great church body for preparing to make these de-
cisions by studying these questions so seriously during
the past biennium. I want to thank particularly the
Commission on Theology and Church Relations and all
of the District présidents and program committees who
cooperated in sponsoring more than 50 conferences in
36 Districts of our Synod to study these issues before
decisions are made in this convention.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we must make
important decisions about our doctrinal position in this
convention. Your decisions at this convention will de-
termine whether our Synod’s future existence will be
characterized by the same doctrinal confession and po-
sition as have characterized us for the past 125 years.
Your decisions will have a profound effect not only
upon the future direction of our church body as such,
but upon the souls presently entrusted to our care and
the generations of children yet unborn.

It is no secret to any of you that the controversy in
our midst on the authority of Holy Scripture has cen-
tered largely between the synodical President’s office and
the administration and faculty of Concordia Seminary
in St. Louis, although reverberations and problems in
this area exist throughout all parts of the Synod. Be-
cause I plan to make additional remarks when Com-
mittee 3 on Seminary Relations reports to the conven-

tion, I will not present the details of this controversy at
this time. But at the very beginning of this convention
I want you to understand the gravity of the situation,
affecting as it does not only all that you do in this con-
vention but virtually all that we will do as a church
body for years to come.

I have endeavored to the best of my ability, and
with the help of God, to maintain the position of this
church which it has held and confessed throughout its
125 years of history — the position that I believe the
overwhelming majority of our pastors, teachers, and
laymen still hold, and the position which I believe the
Constitution of our Synod expects its President to
maintain on the basis of Holy Scripture and the Lu-
theran Confessions. I have therefore emphasized that
the Synod’s position that Holy Scripture is the Christ-
centered, authoritative, inspired, and inerrant Word of
God is the position that the Synod expects to be upheld
in its pulpits and classrooms, not because it is “some-
one’s personal theology,” but because it is the teach-
ing of God Himself in Holy Scripture and the under-
standing of our Lutheran confessional writing as well,

But it must also be said that my efforts to maintain
our theological position have been called “divisive,” and
the position itself condemned as “less than scriptural,”
“yn-Lutheran,” “sub-biblical” and “alien to Lutheran
theology,” etc. These allegations from some of the most
important leaders in our Synod have never been with-
drawn, in spite of the fact that our Commission on
Theology and Church Relations, our Springfield Semi-
nary, the Board for Higher Education, several Districts
and pastoral conferences, and literally thousands of pas-
tors and laymen have expressed their conviction to the
contrary. I have said it elsewhere, and I say it to you
now, that Synod stands at a doctrinal crossroads at this
point in its history. For it cannot continue to profess
one position on Holy Scripture, while tolerating attacks
on that position from those who have another position.

I affirm before God and in the presence of all of
you that I am convinced that the doctrinal position I
have set forth and taught is nothing other than the po-
sition which has been confessed in our Synod on the
basis of God’s Word and our Lutheran Confessions for
125 years. It is truly Lutheran, for it honors the Gospel
and puts it at the center of our teaching as the chief
doctrine of the Scripture and the light by which all of
Scripture is to be interpreted. It is a truly Lutheran
position in that, together with Article II of our Cons-
titution, it accepts without reservation the Holy Scrip-
ture as the “written Word of God, and the only rule and
norm of faith and practice.” It is truly Lutheran in in-
sisting that a view of the Scriptures which puts the
Scriptures at the mercy of man’s reason, and teaches
that the Scripture errs must ultimately put also the
message of the Gospel at the mercy of the same human
reason and render that message unsure. We can have
no other Scripture than an inerrant Scripture as our
norm, and no other Gospel than the Gospel of the
Scripture as our message. Before God, we must stand
on that basis until our Lord’s return.

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