LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 399

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 399

trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power

of thy anger, or thy wrath according to the fear of thee? (7~11).

The psalm concludes with a prayer that God would prosper our
numbered days:

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Re-

turn, O Lord! How long? Have pity on thy servants! Satisfy us in the

morning with thy steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our
days. Make us glad as many days as thou has afflicted us, and as many
years as we have seen evil. Let thy work be manifest to thy servants,
and thy glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our

God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea,

the work of our hands establish thou it (12-17).

There may be important differences between being born into a
usual family, being born out of wedlock, or being born from artifi-
cia] insemination or from cloning. We will explore these differ-
ences in more detail later in this document. However, from God’s
standpoint, no matter how a human life has begun, it has begun
from flesh. And, except for the Word who became flesh and freely
bore the burden of our sin, to be born in flesh means to be born in
sin and estrangement from God. This is why Nicodemus and all
sinners have a need to be born again of water and Spirit, baptized in
the name of Jesus, the Word, the Son of God.

The sin that clings to our flesh leads some to demean the per-
sonhood of those who are born out of wedlock. The temptation is to
think that our moral and spiritual significance varies depending
upon some standard of purity concerning our origins. This same
temptation has led some to propose that should humans result from
cloning they would have a debased personhood. But God’s Word
makes plain that there is no difference: “...all have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God”(Rom. 3:23). And all human beings, apart
from their origin and despite sins committed, “are justified by his
[God’s] grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

The good news that comes in Jesus is that God patiently and
wonderfully reaches out to us all, regardless of our origins or our
current sin, with the new birth from the Spirit. The church, the
Body of Christ, is God’s instrument in the world for offering new
birth freely to all.

The question “What child is this?” is the prior and most impor-
tant question we must ask as we address new and difficult ques-
tions about genetics, procreative technologies and cloning. In ask-
ing this question we are led to the answer that God’s Word has
always given, summed up in words often used at Baptisms:

...we all are conceived and born sinful and so are in need of forgive-

ness. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and

everlasting condemnation. But the Father of all mercy and grace has
sent his Son Jesus Christ, who atoned for the sin of the whole world
that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.’

One person may have been born into a fine family of Christians,
while someone else may have been born into a fine family of non-
Christians. Others may have been born in non-family circum-
stances, or be the product of artificial insemination or some other
reproductive technology. In future years people born from a
process of cloning may walk among us. However, the most impor-
tant thing is this: No matter how a person’s life begins, anyone—
despite being born in the flesh—can become a child of God
through the rebirth of Holy Baptism.

This means that we cannot determine the pluses and minuses of
various ways and means of producing humans by thinking that
some people either are more human or less human because of their
origins. Whatever we discover about the wisdom or “unwisdom”
of various ways of procreation, we need to recognize these twin
truths: 1. “there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God” and 2. all “are justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:22~24).

Marriage and Family in Scriptural Perspective

Developing a biblical perspective on cloning and other procre-
ative technologies requires that we now turn to a study of what it is

* to be a parent. This study will draw on the distinction between flesh

and spirit and offer some guidance on how Christians will and will
not enter the calling of parenthood.

Every facet of human life is affected by the struggle between
flesh and spirit. It is therefore no surprise that this should be true
also of marriage and parenting. A Christian wedding service gives
vivid expression to this struggle:

The Lord God in his goodness created us male and female, and by the
gift of marriage founded human community in a joy that begins now
and is brought to perfection in the life to come. Because of sin, our age-
old rebellion, the gladness of marriage can be overcast and the gift of
the family can become a burden. But because God, who established
marriage, continues still to bless it with his abundant and ever-present
support, we can be sustained in our weariness and have our joy re-
stored.®

Consider for a moment what marriage and parenting would look
like without reference to the Spirit and the life to come. From the
standpoint of our existence in the flesh, marriage and parenting are
expressions of the biological imperative to reproduce. We create a
new generation that replaces us while we sink back into nonexis-
tence. Various religions and philosophies have in one way or an-
other analyzed our situation as “being toward death.” John
Zizioulas, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, summarizes this view
of life in the flesh in the observation that marriage and parenting
simply “supply matter for death.”® The ancient Greek tragedies,
contemporary Country and Western music, the Blues, and count-
less expressions in between explore in painful detail the limitations,
frustrations, disappointments and death that characterize life in the
flesh. ;

Marriage: A School of the Spirit

The good news of the Gospel proclaims that Christ has come
and that we are now called to be children of God, persons drawn
into the life of the Holy Trinity and thus finally beyond the reach of
the futility of life toward death. So difficult for us to come to, how-
ever, is a life like God’s life, a lively outflowing of community and
purpose (John 10:10).

This is where marriage and parenting take on a new dimension.
God guides us everywhere and always to go beyond the impera-
tives of the fleshly life. Many see marriage and parenting as simply
temporary and ultimately doomed responses to biological necessi-
ties. Others view marriage and parenting as institutions to be used
for self-fulfillment. But God’s Word invites us to think of marriage
and parenting as opportunities to experience and practice the life
of the Spirit.

The marital union of man and woman is a fundamental created
setting in which God desires to transform children of the flesh—
both parents and children—into children of God. Because we are
destined for a new heaven and a new earth, we cannot and do not
absolutize marriage and family. We must hear the hard sayings of
Jesus: “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor
are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25;
cf. Matt. 22:30, and Luke 20:35) and, “If any one comes to me and
does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and
brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my
disciple” (Luke 14:26). So, we accept God’s guidance that in mar-
riage we are learning how to live not simply as children of the flesh
but as children of God.

Thus it is that men and women are to learn to see their relation-
ship to each other not as a temporary opportunity for a little self-
fulfillment but as an occasion for loving as God loves. Fathers and
mothers and their children are to learn to see each other not as ob-
jects and resources for fulfilling their goals in life, but as persons
given to each other by God to be loved as God loves. But people

2004 Convention Workbook