Dr. Lothar Schwabe
Presented at the
Solid Ground Conference “THE FAILURE OF DISSENT AND NEW BEGINNINGS”, Calgary,
Sept. 21, 2011
Take
heart. Be of good cheer
John
16: 33
“In
this world you will have troubles. But take heart (be of good cheer, KJV) I
have overcome the world.”
At this conference on “The Failure of
Dissent and New Beginnings” I am with fellow dissidents who, like me, have
failed to have our ELCIC remain loyal to the Bible and treat it as the only
source of its doctrines and actions.
We are totally dependent on what God has
chosen to reveal to us in what we know about God. That
is why the Bible is so important for us.
I believe that our God is so enormous, so
unimaginable, and so multi-dimensional that our human mind is incapable of
objectively perceiving and analyzing God. We simply cannot comprehend God. I agree
with Paul,
“Oh,
the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable
his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! Who has known the mind of the
Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” Ro. 11:33-34.
(NIV)
God reveals himself to us in the inspired
Word of God. That is all we have.
What God has revealed to us in Holy
Scriptures does not even make much sense. It does not make sense to humans because
it comes out of the mind of God which is far greater than any human can
comprehend.
- Grace does not make sense.
- God’s love for sinners does not make any
sense.
- Forgiveness does not make any sense.
- Miracles do not make any sense.
- Christ’s death on the cross for our sins
does not make any sense.
- The Trinity does not make any sense.
- God’s mercy does not make any sense. The
laws of nature do not reveal any mercy to us. Just
try to jump off a twenty story building and hope for the law of gravity to show
you some mercy.
Holy Scriptures have a message that is
radical, amazing, and defies all human logic. Human wisdom could never come up
with something like “Saved by grace through
faith in Jesus Christ.”
What God has revealed to us often does not
make any sense to us because God, like his peace, passes all understanding. We
cannot comprehend this mind-boggling divine reality. We can only believe.
Actually, it is the heresies that make
sense. All heresies are products of the human
mind and therefore always make sense. Arians made sense in their claim that
Jesus was just a human being. Antinomians make sense.
It also makes sense the church should be
inclusive and not exclude homosexuals from being ordained, even though some
parts of the Bible have something else to say about homosexuality. Jesus did
not talk about homosexuality. Therefore it makes sense to ignore all that Jesus
said about marriage being between a man and a woman. This all makes sense and
sounds reasonable. The problem for us is that the revealed Word of God has
something different to say about homosexuality.
Sin makes a lot of sense. It makes no sense
to tell the truth all the time because it gets you into deep trouble. Greed
makes sense and not only on Wall Street.
My point is that what makes sense and
sounds reasonable is not always right before God.
On
the other hand, teachings from the Word of God that may sound foolish are
right.
That all is very confusing to intelligent
people who have been trained to reason and think logically. Our choice is to follow the wisdom of the world and human
intelligence or to believe what Holy Scriptures say.
Paul must have confused a few intelligent
scholars when he said,
For the message of the
cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,
But to us who are being
saved it is the power of God.
For it is written: “I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise;
The intelligence of the
intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise man?
Where is the scholar?
Where is the philosopher of
this age?
Has not God made foolish
the wisdom of the world?
1 Corinthians 1:18-20 (NIV).
The human mind has a great way of messing
things up. Humans can rationalize anything. Luther knew that and cautioned
about “die Hure des Verstandes”, the whore of reason.
Unfortunately many of our brothers and
sisters in our ELCIC have decided to follow the wisdom of this world.
God is not an object that can be studied
objectively. Theology must approach the Word of God with humility and respect
and stand under the Word and not over it. The wisdom of this world must not
take control of Holy Scriptures. Article II of our Constitution is good and it
is very Lutheran.
We are totally dependent upon Holy
Scriptures to know anything about God.
No theological tower of Babel can penetrate
the heavens to get a glimpse of God.
That is why Lutherans (Sola Scriptura)
along with Christians of other denominations have such high respect for the
Bible as the inspired Word of God. Yes, God spoke through people and also
through a mule. But it was God who
spoke.
Luther insisted that we have to let the
Bible speak for itself and take the Word of God for what it says.
Those who won the vote told us, “but we
have to interpret the Bible”. True.
However, anybody
who knows more that one language and is able to interpret will know
that an interpretation is not valid if the
translation says the opposite of what it means in the other language. It is
simply a wrong interpretation when it says the
opposite of what Romans 1:26-33 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 say.
There are four critical “Ifs”:
- If the Bible is the revealed Word of God,
then we cannot mess around with it. We have to take it or leave it.
- If the Bible is not the revealed Word of
God but a human product, then the teachings of
the church do not carry any divine authority.
- If our knowledge of God is not based upon
the revealed Word of God, then everybody can
make up their own God.
- If reason is the ultimate authority, then
faith has no substance and you can believe whatever you like.
The Constitution of the ELCIC (Article II)
treats Holy Scriptures as divinely inspired (Article II, Section 3) and
authoritative for what we believe and do. But our current ELCIC treats Holy
Scriptures as either a human product that can be decided upon by a single
majority vote at a National Convention or at best as a mixture of divine and
human products which gives the National Convention the right to decide which is
which. This is the critical point at which we, the dissidents, tell our church,
“You are wrong and our Constitution is right.”
To say that this is just a work in progress
and that our individual congregations can state their own position in this
matter is simply a political ploy. It is an act of damage control in an attempt
to prevent congregations from leaving the ELCIC. There has been a paradigm
shift in the ELCIC. It is no longer the church we knew. That is why we are
here.
Our ELCIC did not hate homosexuals when it
refused to ordain homosexuals or marry them until the last National Convention.
It did so because of our understanding of Holy Scriptures. As a pastor of the ELCIC I have never witnessed a
refusal to minister to homosexuals. We
wanted to be faithful to the Bible.
Our National Bishop and Synodical Bishops
were not homophobic when, in 1991, they affirmed the Social Statement on Sex Marriage
and Family (1970). They took their stand because of Article II of the
Constitution of the ELCIC which confesses the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament
to be the “only source of the Church’s doctrine and the authoritative standard
for the faith and life of the Church.”
Like our former Bishops, we are not
homophobic; we just want to be faithful to the Holy Scriptures. That is why we
are here.
With its new theology, our church has become less of a Lutheran church and
more like the United Church of Canada or even the Unitarian Church. It must be
a real problem for other Lutheran Churches like Lutheran Church Canada to
relate to the ELCIC as if it were still a Lutheran Church in its confessions
and actions.
So we are now in a church that consists of
two groups of people:
Those who believe what the Word of God says
and those who believe what the Word of God should have said, according to their
opinion.
With its recent decision, the ELCIC no
longer takes the Bible as the sole source of the church’s teachings and
actions. That cuts to the very core of what we believe.
What hurts is that we all had so many
social relations through our church; so many
friends and connections. Now even some families are divided.
The vote was 61% to 39%. People like us are
in the minority. Can the majority be wrong? In Nazi Germany the majority of
Christians were wrong and people like
Bonhoeffer were right. Group-think can do
marvellous things. People have a psychological need to belong to the majority
and to please their superiors.
Yes, we are a minority. But the majority
that voted for the changes at the last convention is a huge minority among all the
Christians in this world.
The 5.6 million strong Mekane Jesu Church
of Ethiopia is cutting its ties with the ELCA and forming a strong relationship
with the North American Lutheran Church. Worldwide, our
ELCIC is on the outside of Lutheranism and of all Christianity.
Many of us are grieving. I have even shed
tears. What shall we do now? Where shall we go? Some dissidents may stay with
the ELCIC and test the claim that the ELCIC is a loving and welcoming church,
open to embrace diversity with hearts filled with love.
You might then conclude that this love
includes us dissidents who enrich the diversity of the ELCIC.
Many others simply cannot do that anymore. They
are looking for a new beginning. The greatest loss to the ELCIC will not be the
congregations which will now take their votes to leave the ELCIC. The greatest
loss will be the individual faithful members who will now leave their ELCIC
congregation and find another church home, or who will simply give up on their
church. No amount of damage control can prevent that.
As a dissident member of the ELCIC, my
message to leaders and pastors of my church is, “You
have abandoned the Word of God and are on a path of destruction. Repent or you
will perish.”
My prediction is that, unless my church
repents and returns to honour its Constitution, the ELCIC will dwindle and end
up merging with the Anglicans. This may be the
only way to get rid of Article II in our Constitution. That article is
unalterable and cannot be changed as long as the ELCIC exists. A merger with
the Anglicans requires a new constitution and would be a way to get rid of
Article II. That is a very attractive solution
to the constitutional problem.
What does the Word of God have to say to us
who are likely gathered like this for the last time?
Be of good cheer. The real church, which is
a spiritual and not an organizational entity, is as alive as ever. My
ecclesiology has changed. Leaving a denomination does not mean leaving the
church. It may simply mean a fresh start as it was in the case of Martin
Luther. Those who left the Roman Catholic Church during the Reformation did not
leave the Church of Jesus Christ. We are not dividing the real invisible
Church.
The Holy Spirit is active, still calling
and leading and guiding those who gather in the Name of Jesus; building the
real church.
Be of good cheer, take heart, have courage!
Jesus promised not to leave you. You may go
different ways and seek different church families. Some of you want to be in a
Canadian Lutheran Church like CALC or LCC. Some will find a home in NALC or
LCMC. It is important that we do not compete but support each other in the
cause to stand up for the authority of Holy Scriptures. We all need each other
and must work together.
These are good times for the Church of
Jesus Christ. Our congregations will not have all that many lukewarm Christians
anymore.
You will be with people who are not going
to church because it is a tradition. Yes, there will be some hurt. That always
comes with disturbed human relations. I personally find that to be true. Smile. Be of good cheer. God is with you! There are good days ahead
for you because they are God’s days.
The failure of dissent? Perhaps our witness
was not in vain. New beginnings or another reformation, a reshaping, forming
something different, a forming of a new wine skin?
If it is God’s will, the Holy Spirit will
guide you. May God have mercy on us all.
