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Dear
President Kieschnick,
Your
memo of the 30th of May to the Council of Presidents and the CTCR
is deeply troubling.
You urge the District presidents to exercise “evangelical
admonition and ecclesiastical discipline” towards all who signed the
document That They May Be One. Yet
the reason for this appears to be purely bureaucratic/organizational, rather
than doctrinal or theological. You
cite yet another CCM ruling, and refuse to await the theological evaluation
by the CTCR, to whom that document had been officially transmitted by the
Council of Presidents. What
seems to matter is simply the technicality that it is an unofficial
doctrinal statement-never mind its content!
You must know perfectly well that the document in question says
nothing new or different from what our Synod has always confessed about
church fellowship, most recently in The Lutheran Understanding of Church
Fellowship, adopted by the Synod in 2001.
The increasing reliance on CCM rulings is a deplorable departure from
our Synod’s confessional foundations.
The idea that previous approval by an “ecclesiastical supervisor”
overrides prima faci contradiction of our Synod’s biblical confession, is
a deadly instance of what Sasse called the “institutional lie”.
Permit me to quote him in full:
“Theology knows that the most dangerous lie are those which are
proclaimed with what the world calls a “good conscience”…
Alongside the pious and dogmatic lies, there stands an especially
dangerous form of lie which can be called the institutional lie.
By this we mean a lie which works itself out in the institutions of
the church, in her government and her organization.
It is so dangerous because it legalizes the other lies in the church
and makes them impossible to remove (Union and Confession [Synodical
President’s Office, 1997], vol.1,pp.2,3).”
I earnestly beg you to reconsider this whole approach, and to return
to the authentic biblical standards of our church.
And why is nothing said about disciplining the blasphemously named
“Jesus First” pressure-group, and their divisive propaganda?
Or that of the neo-Pentecostal “Renewal in
Missouri
”?
Finally, what about the many responses by military and civilian chaplains to
your inquiry of
6 January 2003
? Many excerpts from these
responses-officially reported by you to the CTCR at its last meeting-favor
close, even cozy, relations with their ELCA counterparts.
Here we have, on record, clear advocacy of positions contrary to our
Synod’s official position on church fellowship.
And, according to your report, these facts are also before the
Council of Presidents. Why then
is there no call for doctrinal discipline?
If open attacks on Synod’s doctrine do not call for discipline, but
the defense of the position does-just because it takes the form of a new
document is that not, objectively, the rankest hypocrisy?
With the
plea that the Lord would grant us all His undeserved mercy,
Yours in
Him,
K.
Marquart
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