Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 21

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

i inn i Ae a ie fel a

Lutheran Synodical Conference, 1958 21

ism. Purity of religion was to be the means —the “schoolmaster”
—-to bring them to Christ. They made it an end in itself, boast-
ing of their own self-righteousness and superiority as sons of
Abraham instead of humbling themselves to receive the Messiah,
whom they themselves had foretold. Then when He came, they
failed to recognize Him. This is certainly one of the major ironies
of history. They had never learned what the servant in the par-
able was to learn to his sorrow: that you can’t keep a treasure
by burying it; or what Paul taught in 1Corinthians 13: “Though
I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and
all knowledge .. . and have not charity, I am nothing.”

With all their noble qualities, they were sadly lacking in
lovable traits and wide sympathies. George Santayana (in his
book The Idea of Christ in the Gospels) puts his finger on their
trouble when he writes:

It is indeed one of the beauties of Christ that in spite of His

absolute holiness, or because of it, He shows a spontaneous sym-

pathy, shocking to the Pharisee, with many nonreligious sides

of life, with little children, with birds and flowers, with com-

mon people, with beggars with sinners, with sufferers of all

sorts, even with devils. This is one of the proofs that natural
spirit, not indoctrinated or canalized, was speaking in Him.

The scribes and Pharisees were enmeshed in their own dogma,
shackled by that which should have made them free. That has
been the plight of the scribe and the Pharisee of every age, for
it would be a mistake to think that their. type has disappeared
from the earth. “The most scathing denunciations to fall from
the lips of the gentle Savior,” writes L. Nelson Bell in Christianity
Today, “were reserved for these men who knew the letter of the
Law but whose hearts and lives were so far from the truth.”

There is an ominous warning in all this for those who are
one-sidedly preoccupied with purity of doctrines. Orthodoxy and
confessionalism are fine ideals, and we would not want to depart
from them. But let us beware of making them ends in them-
selves rather than means toward the end which supersedes all
others, that of winning souls for Christ. Let us beware of the
sins of pride, uncharitableness,. and exclusiveness, with which
the evil one waylays those who cherish the purity of doctrine.
In this connection I should like to offer two quotations. The
one is a sentence from an otherwise laudatory article in the
April 7, 1958, issue of Time magazine:

As for theological liberalism of the early 20th century, it barely

touched Lutherans at all. But the Lutherans’ position apart had

its disadvantages too. Snug, smug, and embattled in their mighty

fortresses called synods, they often looked down not only on

their fellow Christians but on fellow Lutherans as well.

The other quotation is again from the layman L. Nelson Bell,
who writes on the subject “Orthodoxy Can Be Deadly” in the
widely circulated magazine Christianity Today. He says:

I believe that the cause of Christ has suffered greatly at the
hands of those who, proclaiming their orthodoxy to the skies,
have shown themselves totally lacking in Christian love, courtesy,
and forbearance. The Apostle Paul writes, “And the servant

- of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt
to teach, forbearing,” but often we who regard orthodoxy so
important fail to heed this warning.