LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 418

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418 THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

In the evening of his life he urged his spiritual sons Timothy and
Titus to truly hold fast the paradoke, the doctrine handed down. This
outlook, is no other than that of his early time in the apostolate. “Hold
fast to what has been handed down (paradoseis), which you have
leammed, whether it was through my word or through a letter from us”
(2 Thess. 2:15).

More than that, it is the outlook of Jesus Christ himself, as he speaks
to us in the Gospel: “All has been entrusted to me from my Father, and
no one knows the Son other than the Father alone, and no one knows the
Father other than the Son alone and the one to whom the Son wants to
reveal him” (Matt 11:27). The same thought is in the High Priestly
Prayer: “The words which you have given me I have given to them, and
they have received them” (John 17:8). It is Jesus, the teacher, who
speaks here and thus says to his church what belongs to the office of
teacher. ...

In the NT there is the idea of the paradosis [‘‘that which is handed
over” of tradition, the transmission of the pure teaching from one gen-
eration to the other, from teacher to the student. ....

As there have been more false prophets than true, more false apos-
tles than true, so also there have been easily more heretics than teachers
of the evangelical truth. The goal to which the teacher wants to lead his
students and the congregation instructed by him is the knowledge, the
gnosis, which at the same time is life. “The words which you have given
me | have given them, and they have taken them and have known truly
that I have come from you” (John 17:8). “They have known”—that is
the goal of teachers. This appreciation is but life. “This is eternal life,
that they know you, the only true God, and whom you have sent, Jesus
Christ” [John 17:3], he says in the same connection.’

The characteristics and qualifications of teachers of theology
are matters of no small importance.

Appendix B
The Reformation as a University Movement

In this magisterial work, Ernest G. Schwiebert (who died on
March 10, 2000, at the age of 104) presented the fruits of a long
lifetime of research into

the origin and development of the Reformation in sixteenth-
century Germany.

He was a professor of history at Erlangen, Wittenberg, North-
western, and Valparaiso.

He is perhaps best known for the monumental Luther and His
Times.

The University of Wittenberg was the very core and center of
the reforms instituted by Martin Luther. The Reformation was born
in his heart while he was a young professor at Wittenberg, as he
emerged from scholasticism in the development of his “theology
of the cross.” He would not rest until he has won the Wittenberg
faculty to his support and, with the Wittenberg faculty, transformed
the university and gained a following in a large student body, who
started later reforms of the Christian church. The reformer accom-
plished this in spite of the bitter opposition of Rome and the empire
and the hostile attacks of the universities of Louvain, Cologne, and
Ingolstadt, which culminated in the condemnation of Luther’s writ-
ings by the Sorbonne of the University of Paris in 1521.

Thus, in spite of all the bitter opposition, by 1536, the Univer-
sity of Wittenberg had risen to become the model of reforms of
Christianity within the Roman church.

Church historians have often approached the German Reforma-
tion with a false set of assumptions. The common approach often
has been to assume that Martin Luther, by his Flugschriften and
tracts on the teachings of the Holy Scripture, had won whole com-
munities of believers for gospel reforms within the Catholic church.
What such an approach fails to realize is that the average believer
was not reached by Luther’s writings, for the Reformation was
really any upper-strata movement in which professors, the clergy,
and an educated laity were involved. The Reformation began in
Wittenberg and from there spread to the outside world among edu-
cated classes everywhere who, by a variety of ways, started local

2004 Convention Workbook

reforms in various communities. It often started with university stu-
dents who had studied with Luther and Melanchthon, or with con-
verted clergy who urged a reform in the Roman church.

As the reforms of Luther and his followers and Luther’s “new
theology” spread among the intellectual classes, they enraged pro-
fessors at several universities, and Streitschriften broke out for and
against the Reformation by theologians, to which Luther and
Melanchthon replied. Once the battle was on, however, other uni-
versities, like Erfurt, Tiibingen, and, in time, Leipzig and Frankfurt
an der Oder, became certain that Catholic reforms were necessary,
and they joined in a battle for reform and the restoration of the
gospel. This academic battle was but the beginning of the Refor-
mation It was not until the Church Visitations and the work of re-
formers active in the field that the Reformation began, after a
decade, to reach the parish and congregational level. When the
common laypersons become aware of Luther’s reforms and when
the reformers began to establish church urdinances [sic], the Ref-
ormation become a reality and expressed itself in Landeskirchen.®
Mr. Paul Nus
April 29, 2003

NOTES

1. The Service of Women in Congregational and Synodical Of-
fices, A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Rela-
tions, 1994, 4.

2. Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (St Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1950), 1:42-44.

3. The Commission points to Dr. Franzmann as an example of
a “lay” teacher of theology, a debatable point in itself.

4, Martin Franzmann, The Word of the Lord Grows (St. Louis:
Concordia Publishing House, 1961), 152-54. _

5. Martin Luther, “Lectures on | Timothy,” Luther’s Works,
American Edition (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1973),
277.

6. The Ministry: Offices, Procedures, and Nomenclature, A
Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations,
1981, 19.

7. Herman Sasse, The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Let-
ters, Volume 2 (1941-1976), translated by Matthew C. Harrison
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002), 206-10.

8. Ernest G. Schwiebert, The Reformation, Volume II: The Re-
formation as a University Movement (Minneapolis: Augsburg
Fortress, 1996), 491-92.

Minority Opinions on Theology and Practice of “the Divine Call”

1.

This paper addresses the CTCR Report The Theology and Prac-
tice of “the Divine Call.”! It is intended to provide the following:

¢ Important and helpful material from Luther, Chemnitz, and
other Lutheran theologians that speaks directly to the subject
of the Divine Call but appears not to have been utilized in the
Commission’s Report.

* A critique of various points requiring a different view or em-
phasis, due to loose or missing connections between Theology
and Practice and/or troubling implications.

Our Lord Jesus Christ told Peter to ‘shepherd My sheep.”” This
is the reason God established the one office of the Holy Ministry?
(literally, “gift or work of service”). This office is inseparable from
the church. Christ’s undershepherd is no mere employee of the con-
gregation, subject to its commands. The man called by God as pas-
tor (literally, “shepherd”) must give an account to God for the souls
God entrusts into his care.* He serves Christ’s church by clearly
proclaiming God’s Word and administering His sacraments to
them, while also exercising the Office of the Keys on their behalf.