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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 347

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

H NS
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HOICES

How Do God’s Chosen Choose?

A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations
of The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod

September 1996

Christians and
Procreative Choices

How Do God’s Chosen Choose?

INTRODUCTION

People today pride themselves on choosing. Christians know that their
choosing is shaped, disciplined, and sometimes overruled by God’s choice
of them through their Baptism into Jesus Christ. Christians are called reg-
ularly to examine the connection between biblical faith and the many prac-
tical choices they must make ina rapidly changing world.

The Synod in convention has recognized the need for mutual counsel
and advice on a wide variety of medical and health-related ethical issues.!
The challenge is not only to be well grounded in sound confessional theol-
ogy. We need also to have a firm grasp of how our faith connects with
practical choices. The task is to achieve a deeper understanding of how bib-
lically disciplined reasoning Proceeds in relation to the difficult choices
people are being asked to make.

Biblically Disciplined Moral Reasoning

In this document the Commission on Theology and Church Relations
responds to the Synod’s request for counsel and advice by illustrating and
examining the relationship between Christian faith and Practical choices in
Procreative issues. We shall study this relationship by examining four
cases involving procreative choices that people in our culture find them-
selves considering. The discussion of these case studies Provides opportu-
nities to reflect on how Christian faith and theology inform our ethical
choices.

"1977 Resolution 3-26 “To Provide Assistance Regarding Bioethics,” 1977 Convention
Proceedings, 136-37.

Case 1: Choosing against Childlessness
Disciplined Chao «0.0.0... teeeveee

Case 2: Artificial Insemination by Donor
Disciplined Chaos

Case 3: Choosing for Childlessness............... sesensnsnsaneseesseanene 23
Disciplined Chao ......0..0.ccscscsscssesseseesseeese soveseeneescesesseseevers 23

Case 4: In Vitro Fertilization within a Marriage
Disciplined Chaos

Conclusion

Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952,
© 1971, 1973. Used by permission.

The quotations from the Lutheran Confessions in this publication are from. The Book of Concord:
The Confessions of the Enangetical Lutheran Church, edited by Theodore G. Tapert. copyright © 1959
Fortress Press. Used by permission of Augsburg Fortresa.

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Uses and Abuses of Reason

Throughout this document we will be talking about how Christians
reason.? God’s Word leads Christians to recognize both that human reason
is an especially powerful gift of his creative love and that, because it is so
powerful, human reason is especially liable to disastrous abuse by sinful
humans. Reason performs two distinct but interrelated tasks:

1. Reason su and assesses strategies for seekin; thering, and
selecting information relevant to whatever inquiryhwe want (8 pur-
sue.

2. Reason helps us take apart, reassemble, and consistently relate
t her the information we have gathered in order for us to see
what conclusions are supported by the information at hand. The

hilosophical and mathematical study of “logic” provides pro-
‘ound insight into this task of reason.

Sin can distort and corrupt both tasks, but the first task is the one liable
to the most serious abuses. The serpent began the attack on our first Ppar-
ents by saying, “Did God say ... 2” (Gen. 3:1). Here was an invitation to
human reason to abandon the strategy of trusting God’s Word about life
and to put in its place ways of seeking, gathering, and selecting informa-
tion independent of, and supposedly superior to, the clear words of God.
If we humans can be brought to seek, gather, and select information inde-
pendently of, and in contradiction to, God’s guiding Word, then Satan
does not mind when we use our divinely-given powers of logic (task 2
above) to draw sinful conclusions from sinful sources.

Our goal in this study of procreative choices is to use God’s good gift
of reason to his glory and for human blessing. The constant touchstone of

* Reason is a word with many meanings. Reasoning always involves the use of logical
inference consistently to think through what is implied by the information on which a tine
of reasoning is based.’We refer to this use of reason in iter 2 above. Reasoning also invotves
seeking, gathering, and selecting information (item 1 above). When we, with Luther, confess
that “T cannot by my own reason or strength betieve in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to
Him.” we are acknowledging that in our fallen humanity reason is no longer able w rety on
its own natural ways of seeking, gathering, and selecting information to judge for itself con-
cerning what God has done in Christ. Instead, “the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel,
enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith” (Luther's Small Cat-
echism, 15). When we are called and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we learn to discipline
our reason by having it seek, gather, and select information in the light of God's Word in the
midst of the church. Thus we can understand both the high praise due to God for giving “me
.. my reason and all my senses” (Luther's Small Catechism, 13) and yet also the confession
that “I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ.” Christian theology
from early on distinguishes between a “magisterial” use of reason that, “judging according
to its natural principles,” lords itself over God’s Word and a “ministenal” use of reason
Theld locked within the circle of the divine Word and kept under discipline, or ilhumined by
Holy Scripture” Johannes Quenstedt, Systeme 1:55ff.; quoted in Francis Pieper, Christan
Dogmatics [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950], 1:199).

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