LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 203

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Theology and Church Relations
2. The efforts of the socialists and communists are in conflict with
definite doctrines of Christianity, to wit:
(a) the doctrines of personal property, as involved in the
Seventh Commandment, “Thou shall not steal,” and
taught elsewhere in Scripture;
(b) the doctrine taught in the Fifth Commandment and in other
passages, that the government alone has the power of the
sword;
(c) the doctrine of the sanctity of marriage, as set forth in the
Sixth Commandment and elsewhere;
(d) the difference recognized in the Bible not only (a) between
parents and children, man and wife, master and servant,
employer and employed, but also (b) between rich and
poor;
(e) the scriptural doctrine that man shall eat his bread in the
sweat of his face;
(f) the scriptural doctrine that God would use men’s adversities
for their spiritual welfare;
(g) the scriptural doctrine that human happiness is not to be
sought in this world, but in God, and in the hope of a
recompense and equalization in the world to come, and in
the hope of eternal life, and finally
(h) the scriptural doctrine that the source of all misery in this
world is sin.
23. Acts 20:28; Eph. 4:10–12; 1 Cor. 4:1; Matt. 16:19; John 20:22–23;
1 Peter 2:9; Matt. 18:17–18.
24. 1 Tim 2:11–12; 1 Cor. 14:34–35; Romans 16:17.
25. Gal. 3:23.
26. James: 2:66.
27. Gal. 5:19–21; 1 John 4:20; Luke 14:27.
28. John 15:5. Gal. 5:22.
29. Matthew 28:19; Otten, ep. cit., 11–13;
The sixteenth-century Reformers did not modify the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity in any manner. Article I of the Augsburg Confession declares:
Our churches, with common consent, do teach that the decree of
the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and
concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any
doubting; that is to say, there is one Divine Essence which is called and
which is God; eternal, without body, without parts, of infinite power,
wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things, visible
and invisible; and yet there are three Persons, of the same essence and
power, who also are coeternal, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
And the term “person” they use as the Fathers have used it, to signify,
not a part or quality in another, but that which subsists of itself.
They condemn all heresies which have sprung up against this article,
as the Manichaeans, who assumed two principles, one Good and the
other Evil; also the Valentinians, Arians, Eunomians, Mohammedans,
and all such. They condemn also the Samosatenes, old and new, who,
contending that there is but one Person, sophistically and impiously argue that the Word and the Holy Ghost are not distinct Persons, but that
“Word” signifies a spoken word, and “Spirit” signifies motion created
in things.
30. 1 John 5:20, Matt. 17:5; Romans 9:5.
31. John 1:1–2, Heb. 13:8, Matt. 28:20, John 21:17, Matt. 28:20.
32. John 1:3, Heb. 1:3; Matt. 9:6; John 5:27.
33. John 5:23; Heb 1:6.
34. John 1:14; 1 Tim. 3:16; Col. 2:9; Is. 9:6; Matt. 28:20; Acts 3:15;
John 1:7.
35. Gal. 4:4–5; Heb. 2:14.
36. Ps. 49:7–8; Rom. 5:19.
37. 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14; 1 Cor. 15:57.
38. 2 Tim. 1:10; Heb. 2:14; 1 Cor. 15:57.
39. Phil. 2:5–8.
40. Otten, op. cit., 16–17.
41. David Scaer writes in Christology, a volume in the new

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Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series (International Foundation for
Lutheran Confessional Research, Inc.):
“If the doctrine of justification by grace through faith is the center
of Christian theology, then Christology is the foundation upon which
rests justification and all the other articles of faith. Only that doctrine
of justification is Christian which is based on the Christology revealed
in the New Testament and later confessed by the ancient church in its
Creeds and councils” (1).
Some modern theologians profess to believe in justification by faith,
but they do not believe that Jesus Christ is God or that he was born of a
virgin and rose physically from the dead.
Many church members maintain that it makes very little difference
what one believes about Christ as long as one leads a good life and tries
his best.
Scaer takes issue with various twentieth-century theologians who
are not mentioned in Pieper’s dogmatics. Scaer says that “Though (Karl)
Barth is seen by certain Evangelical scholars as reviving the ancient
church’s Christology, his emphasis on ‘the transcendent’ may, in fact,
make a real Incarnation impossible for him” (4). “Jurgen Moltmann,
like Barth, speaks of two natures in Christ, but by attributing the death
of Christ to the divine nature casts doubt on his understanding of the
Incarnation” (4). “According to Bultmann, Jesus did not come from God
as the Only-begotten Son of God; instead, the church elevated Jesus to
a position of divine honor through a process of theological evolution.
This position has been stated before by the Unitarians who called Jesus
‘God’ only in an honorific sense” (4). Scaer observes that Wolfhart Pannenberg, a Lutheran theologian, “speaks of Jesus becoming God in the
Resurrection, but dilutes this belief by extending the integration of the
divine and human in Jesus in such a way as to include all of humanity in
this union. Moltmann says men are absorbed into God, while Pannenberg reverses this scheme with the view God is absorbed into humanity.
In both theories the Incarnation is so universalized that its uniqueness in
the person of Jesus is lost.”
Roman Catholic Theologians
“The abandonment of Chalcedonian Christology was caused by
a restrictive historical approach to the Christology of the New Testament. This practice is not limited to Protestant theologians. Piet J. A. M.
Schoonenbert, in his book The Christ, claims that the man Jesus gives a
personality to the Word of God. The humanity of Jesus does not allow
for the Incarnation of the divine Logos” (4, 5).
Scaer says that “The contemporary Christology ‘from below’ simply does not take the preexistent divine nature into account. To preserve
the human nature, Schoonenbert eliminates the divine nature altogether,
a position which was not an option even for the heretics condemned by
the ecumenical councils. This approach characterizes most modern approaches to Christology” (5).
Scaer shows that various prominent Roman Catholic theologians,
who have not been excommunicated, deny the real deity of Christ. He
writes: “Edward Schillebeeckx attempts to harmonize Roman Catholicism’s commitment to the doctrine of the Trinity with his conviction that
Christology must be approached ‘from below.’ This allows him to speak
of the Trinity from the perspective of the Christology. It is true that the
question of how the Trinity is revealed to humanity must be answered
from the perspective of Christology. The revelatory question cannot be
confused, however, with the ontological one which lies at the heart of
the Christology of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Jesus is the preexistent Son
of God, the divine Logos, even though this knowledge comes to us only
by means of His incarnation. Schillebeeckx is unable to move beyond
speaking of Christ’s divinity in functional terms as the one in whom God
gives us salvation.
“Another well-known Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kung, who
has been disqualified by the pope as a teacher of doctrine at the University of Tubingen because of his theological position, attributes to Christ
only a functional deity. He is willing to use the Christological language
of the Nicene Creed, but interprets this only in the functional sense of

2013 Convention Workbook