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There was a time when the Synod would only elect a
president who was willing and able to answer questions about God and the
Bible. This writer was
threatened with expulsion from the Synod by the current Synodical President
for telling the truth about God.
This is the same President who lectured the entire 2001
Convention about the importance of keeping the Eighth Commandment, while Dr.
Waldo Werning published his false doctrine about the Trinity to every
Convention delegate.
Now after nearly a year of covering up Werning’s
false doctrine, the LCMS President suddenly informed me through the
Praesidium that the charges against me were “terminated.”
In response to my letter asking President Kieschnick
what he believed about the Trinity, I received a two-line response telling
me that he had received my letter. The
LCMS has a President with a burning desire to save the lost but who will not
answer questions about God.
The following is a quotation from “Essays For the
Church” by C. F. W. Walther, Volume I CPH, 1992, pages 60-61.
Here Walther brilliantly explains why God cannot be
divided as Werning divides God. The
South Wisconsin District President also writes that I have broken the Eighth
Commandment for telling the truth about God while he defends Werning’s
lies.
In the following quotation, Walther currently explains
that whoever wants to recognize God outside of Christ, eliminates the
equality in essence between Son and Father and must accept either several
gods or deny the true essence of the complete fullness of the Godhead in
Christ [cf. Col. 2:9] as Werning does.
Justification, Fifth Western District Convention
Addison
Ill.
Beginning
May 5, 1859
, 6,III,(P)
Following Zwingli's shameful example, the Reformed
sects also destroy the doctrine of justification by their false doctrine on
the person of Christ. Like him,
they deny to this day that God suffered for us [and] that God's blood was
shed for us. Where Scripture
expressly testifies to this, they want to see only a rhetorical figure of
speech, which says something different from what is meant.
Thus one brands the language of Holy Scripture as that of a swindler.
A mere man is said to have died for us on
Golgotha
. It is inconceivable how a
person who claims to be a Christian could arrive at such a godless doctrine,
it is true, of course, that God as such cannot die, but Christ, who is true
God, could die since He had assumed human nature, so that Godhead and
manhood now form one person in Him. A
human being's soul as such can, of course, also not die; yet the
"whole" human being, consisting of body and soul, dies, and the
soul is indeed most affected thereby. So
also the most important thing for us is that the One who died for us is true
God. If God had not died for us,
then no one would be saved. However,
whereas we now can sing, to our great comfort in life and in death, “O
sorrow dread! God Himself is dead; upon the cross He died," yet this
very hymn is an abomination to the true Reformed.
In complete harmony with Zwingli's gross rationalism,
according to which he does not seriously believe that Christ was true God
and [true] man in one person, Calvin says it wouldn't help anyone if he
would simply confront God with Christ, but that God accepts Christ's work as
fully sufficient only because of eternal election.
In his thinking, too, only a man died.
"Christ is God's Son and true God” therefore even now means
nothing more to the Reformed Church than that God dwelt in the Lord Jesus in
a higher degree than in other people, about as He dwelt with His glory
particularly in the temple at Jerusalem.
But even if the Reformed say that the whole God dwelt in Jesus, they
still speak of a God outside of Him. Thank
God, there still are simple souls among the Reformed, who hold that it is
meant seriously when also there the words are still used, "Christ is
true God and man in one person," and one relies thereon in faith.
If someone were to ask how the truth that there is no
God outside of Christ harmonizes with the article on the Trinity, the answer
is: There is no difference in the essence of the three persons of the
Godhead, which is why it also cannot be divided.
Nevertheless, what appears three times in the Trinity, namely the
person-hood, occurs only once in Christ.
But whoever for that reason still wants to recognize God outside of
Christ, eliminates the equality in essence between Son and Father and must
accept either several gods or deny the true essence of the complete fullness
of the Godhead in Christ [cf. Col. 2:9].
When Christ lay in the crib and hung on the cross, there was no other
God than precisely the One in the crib and on the cross.
Of course, one must not bring mathematical computations
to bear here. If the mystery of
the Trinity would cease being a mystery to us, then we would first have to
know what is mean by the words "born" and "proceeding"
as used of the persons of the Godhead. And
if we are asked in objection how the Godhead could have become so small as
to dwell incarnate in the man Jesus, we answer:
"No change took place in the Godhead through the personal union
with human nature; it did not become smaller thereby, but human nature
became larger. Human nature did
not assume the divine nature, but the other way around: The divine
nature assumed the human nature.
Zwingli would not agree that "the Word became
flesh" [John
1:14
], but held that it should only say that the Word is the flesh that is has
become ("das Wort ist gewordeness Fleisch"), i.e., through the
incarnation of Christ. He stopped being God, and His deity was, so to
speak, transformed in Jesus into humanity (for only so was He said to be
able to die), and only after that did He again become great God. So
here [in Zwingli] we hear today's heterodox theology ("After-theologie").
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