LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2013, Page 392

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392

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

who walks before God in righteousness and holiness, HSGT diminishes the dynamic of Lutheran
teaching, providing a way for a sexual ethic that is elastic and ultimately undefined. Faith in
Christ becomes permission for the Christian to determine his or her course of action when it
comes to a sexual ethic within the nebulous bounds of self-designated love for the neighbor.

purging them. Since by faith the soul is made pure and enabled to love God, it wants all
things–the body in particular–to join in loving and praising God. Thus we cannot be idle.
The needs of the body compel us to do many good works in order to bring it under
control. Nevertheless, it must always be kept in mind that these works do not justify a
person before God. Rather, by yielding wholly to God, one does these works out of a
spirit of spontaneous love, seeking nothing other than to serve God and yield to him in all
earthly labors.16

2. The Category of “Paradox” in Relation to Christian Freedom
Drawing on Luther’s 1520 treatise, The Freedom of the Christian, HSGT seeks to develop a
paradoxical understanding of sexuality as marked both by God’s grace and human sinfulness:
“Lutheran theology prepares us precisely to hold in creative tension the paradoxes and
complexities of the human situation. This is also the case with regard to human sexuality. God
has created human beings as part of the whole creation and with the intention that we live
actively in the world (Romans 12-13; Ephesians 5-6)” (HSGT, 3).
The reading of The Freedom of the Christian in HSGT is selective at best and at worst deceptive.
While HSGT uses fragmented slogans from Luther’s treatise, it fails to grasp the Reformer’s
argument and instead makes a misapplication of the argument in matters of sexual ethics.
Isolating Luther’s well-known paradox that a Christian is a perfectly free lord of all while at the
same time a perfectly dutiful servant of all from the full scope of the Reformer’s argument,
HSGT fails to take into account his distinction of the “inner person” from the “outer person.”
The inner person or the new man is the spiritual nature of the believer. The outer person or the
old man is his sinful, fleshly nature. Luther bases this distinction on 2 Corinthians 4:16 and
Galatians 5:17. The soul’s freedom is not an external liberty (lack of political captivity, bodily
illness, poverty and the like) but an endowment of the Gospel. This is the “one thing and one
thing alone that leads to Christian life, righteousness, and freedom.”14
The freedom of the Gospel for Luther is not a bodily freedom from the demands of the law
which remain in creation. The Christian freed from the condemnation of the law in conscience is
not evacuated from creation but is enlivened to serve the neighbor within the structures which
God has established and instituted within the world. Works are not necessary for salvation but
they are necessary for the service of the neighbor. Hence Luther returns to the controlling
paradox of the tract: “Insofar as a Christian is free, no works are necessary. Insofar as a Christian
is a servant, all kinds of works are done.”15
The inner person is free, but because we also live in this world the outer person must remain
under discipline so that the body is conformed to the Spirit and does not undermine the faith of
the inner person. These bodily disciplines do not limit faith’s freedom but in fact serve to guard
that freedom so that the Christian does not become a slave to sin and thus forfeit the freedom in
Christ. Here Luther cites Romans 7:22-23, 1 Corinthians 9:27, and Galatians 5:24.

Luther says we should consider the works of the Christian as we would those of Adam in
paradise before the fall into sin. Adam’s work was instituted by God (Genesis 2:15) and was
done to please God, not to obtain righteousness. HSGT is silent on these aspects of The Freedom
of a Christian. Slogans are extracted from Luther’s treatise to promote an emancipation from the
very orders God has set in place to protect and preserve human life.
3. The Doctrine of Creation
Luther’s confession of the First Article embraces the personal (“has made me”), the
cosmic/universal (“and all creatures”), the communal (“He also gives me…house and home, wife
and children, land, animals and all that I have”), the providential (“He defends me against all
danger and guards and protects me from all evil”), and the doxological (“For all this it is my duty
to thank and praise, serve and obey Him”).17 By way of contrast, HSGT describes creation with
vague and imprecise language repeatedly resorting to the rhetoric of relationship.18 Thus we are
told: “Both narratives of God’s creative activity in the book of Genesis (Genesis 1 and 2) reveal
God’s goodness and desire for a close relationship with human beings as integral to the ongoing
handiwork of creation” (HSGT, 4). Further the document makes the claim: “As a mark of
personal confidence, the Creator even entrusts to human beings the task of naming and tending
the inhabitants of the earth God so clearly loves. The tender love and goodness of God’s creative
activity includes sexuality and gendered bodies (Genesis 2:23-25)” (HSGT, 5). The theological
significance of sexuality and gendered bodies is left undefined, without connection to the
Creator’s intention in creating humanity as male and female.19
The use of relational terminology is imprecise and deceptive in HSGT. Surely all human beings
are set in a relationship with their Creator by virtue of their being, in fact, creatures made by
God, preserved by Him, and accountable to Him. The human being is in a relationship with God;
this relationship is never a matter of neutrality since it is either of wrath or of grace.20 Even more
problematic is the assertion that God “trusts” human beings and that human beings “violate
16

14
Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, translated with an introduction by Mark Tranvik (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2008), 52.
15
Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, 71.

Luther, The Freedom of a Christian, 73.
Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1991 [2005]), 15-16).
Relationship in HSGT is considered one-sidedly, almost exclusively on the horizontal level—human to human.
Certainly the importance of human relationships is never to be denied or minimized, least of all by confessional
Lutheran theology. However, HSGT’s failure to consider the importance of the vertical relationship we human
creatures have with our Creator leaves human relationships morally vacuous. Only a right relationship with God
enables a full and godly understanding of human relationships.
19
For a scriptural discussion of the theological significance of humanity created as male and female, see The
Creator’s Tapestry: Scriptural Perspectives on Man-Woman Relationship (Saint Louis: Commission Theology and
Church Relations, 2009), 7-15.
20
“Luther does not know of a neutral sphere ‘beyond’ wrath and grace,” says Oswald Bayer, “Creation as History”
in The Gift of Grace: The Future of Lutheran Theology, edited by Niels Henrik Gregersen et al (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2005), 258.

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God’s trust” (HSGT, 5). These expressions are without biblical support and actually convey a
cozy and natural partnership between God and humanity rather than the Scriptural distinction
between Creator and creature. Sin is then seen in HSGT as a resistance of identity and not a
fundamental mistrust of the Creator. There is no hint in HSGT that human beings “are born with
sin, that is, without fear of God, without trust in God, and with concupiscence”21 to use the
language of Article II of the Augsburg Confession.

seclusion of consensual arrangements, individuals may act without restraint if these activities do
not interfere with others in their own self-enclosed lives. HSGT misses the opportunity to
critique this individualism that is so evident in discussions of sexuality.

It is in the body that the Christian submits to serve the neighbor in love:
We must also understand that these works serve the purpose of disciplining the body and
purifying it of all evil desires. The focus should be on these desires and the best means of

The treatment of creation in HSGT is fragmentary and lacking in coherence. The law is affirmed
as ordering and preserving the world and exposing human sin. Yet HSGT never really
demonstrates how the law accomplishes these tasks. There is nothing in HSGT that would
suggest anything resembling the orders of creation22 as creational structures that remain intact
even though they might not be recognized by those whose perception is blinded by sin. Note 11
in HSGT explains the avoidance of the vocabulary of “orders of creation” as this form is “linked
to a static notion of creation” and instead suggests the language of social structures as this term
“is less technical and more suggestive of God’s ongoing creative activity to shape and reshape
social structures for human protection and good”(HSGT, 39-40). Yet social structures are not
synonymous with orders of creation, since social structures are sociologically rather than
theologically defined.
HSGT invokes a vision of existence evoked by the eschatological expectation of a transformed
creation which renders relative the place of God’s law in governing the behavior of mankind.
The new creature now transcends the structures and boundaries given in creation to participate in
a world that is made flexible for a variety of expressions determined by the self. There is, in fact,
something Gnostic-like here in the suggestion that human beings might be liberated from
physiological boundaries imposed by bodies which are either male or female.23
4. Sexuality and Vocation
The section, “Our vocation to serve the neighbor” (HSGT, 8) begins with the recognition that
“we do not live in private worlds” but quickly slips into a discussion of individualistic actions. It
speaks of “complex and varied situations people have relative to sexuality: being in relationships,
being single, being a friend, living in a young or aging body, being male or female, being young
or old, or having different sexual orientations and gender identities” (HSGT, 9).24 Privacy has
become a key component in current moral discourse as it is widely assumed that within the

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Morally, virtually all that the document can affirm is that “In whatever the situation, all people
are called to build trust in relationships and in the community” (HSGT, 9). This invites a
situational ethic that fails to address life lived in the body before both God and the neighbor.
Without examination or critique the psychological/political language of “sexual orientation” and
“gender identity” is adopted, rendering theological evaluation inappropriate.25
While earlier HSGT made the claim to ground its discussion of ethics in the Lutheran teaching of
justification by grace through faith, now the document slips into a way of speaking that would
seem to disregard the radical proclamation that God justifies the ungodly. Instead this section of
HSGT speaks of “flawed and imperfect human beings” who experience brokenness, loneliness,
and loss yet who know “that our efforts are still infused with God’s love and blessing for
ourselves, our neighbors, and the world” (HSGT, 9). This sentimental language is hardly
adequate for the Holy Scriptures’ proclamation of human sin and God’s grace in Christ Jesus.
Tolerance is a poor substitute for absolution. The restoration of trust is not the same thing as the
redemption of our bodies and rescue from God’s judgment.
In keeping with the document’s overall orientation toward a particular form of realized
eschatology, HSGT sets God’s rule in the present world in contrast with His rule in the coming
kingdom by citing Paul’s description of “the groaning of creation” in Romans 8: 22-23. Yet the
Apostle’s words in Romans 8 make little sense if they are divorced from the first chapter of his
epistle. In Romans 1 Paul writes of God’s wrath being revealed from heaven against all
unrighteousness precisely in the arena of creation, where the truth of God is exchanged for a lie
and human beings worship the creature rather than the Creator. It is in this exchange of the truth
for the lie that another exchange is executed. Paul writes: “For this reason God gave them up to
dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature;
and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for
one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due
penalty for their error” (Romans 1: 26-27).26 Richard Hays comments:
Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention because he regards it as
providing a particularly graphic image of the way in which human fallenness distorts
God’s created order. God the Creator made man and woman for each other, to cleave
together, to be fruitful and multiply. When human beings “exchange” these created roles

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Augsburg Confession II: 1, KW 38-39.
22
For a discussion of how a rejection of the orders of creation is problematic not only for ethics but also for
soteriology, see Armin Wenz, “Natural Law and the Orders of Creation” in Natural Law: A Lutheran Reappraisal,
edited by Robert Baker (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2011), 79-95. On the necessity of the orders of
creation for the biblical understanding of marriage, see Nathan Yoder, “The Order of Marriage and the Lord of the
Order,” Lutheran Forum (Summer 2009): 42-45.
23
Here see Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Gnosticism is an
ancient philosophical system that held to the existence of a secret knowledge (gnosis) that would provide the
initiated person access to reality apart from bodily existence. Lee argues that the so-called Gay Rights movement is
a modern form of Gnosticism in that it seeks to define sexuality apart from something as mundane as biology. Lee
concludes “In short, there are important forces within liberal American Protestantism that would like to escape the
concerns of the physical body, of sexuality. Ironically, this movement reaches its culmination in the denial of the
importance of the family, procreation and, therefore, of human life itself” (139).
24
Note the inherently Gnostic formulation of “living in” a body, as if there is another way of living that is outside or
apart from a body. Cf. footnote 23 above.

For a critique of this language by a Lutheran pastor who is also a research psychologist, see Merton P. Strommen,
The Church & Homosexuality: A Middle Ground (Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers, 2001), 57-76.
For a very thorough treatment of the use of this pericope in the current debate on homosexuality, see Armin
Wenz, The Contemporary Debate on Homosexual Clergy: A Theological Discussion in the Formerly Lutheran
State Churches in Germany, trans. Holger Sonntag (Saint Louis: LCMS World Relief and Human Care, 2006), 3-34.
Also see Gerhard Forde, “The Normative Character of Scripture for Matters of Faith and Life in Light of Romans
1:16-32” Word & World (Summer 1994): 305-314; Jonathan F. Grothe, The Justification of the Ungodly: An
Interpretation of Romans, Volume I (Privately published in Canada, 2006), 84-101; and John T. Pless, “Using and
Misusing Luther on Homosexuality” Lutheran Forum (Winter 2004): 24-30.

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