The vote to pass the “social statement” required a 2/3rds majority. That is what it got, and not a vote more. The vote two days later to permit local congregations to “call” openly gay and lesbian pastors only required a simple majority. It passed easily. Regardless of the margins, the ELCA has made up its mind. Its collective devotion to the Bible as the Word of God is a façade. Notwithstanding individual members, as a church body, culture speaks to them louder than the Bible. In the LCMS, our prayers are two-fold: first, for repentance in the ELCA and second, for those lonely men and women who have remained in the ELCA and continue to fight these waves of false teaching.
Unfortunately, the news reports and papers are already lumping all Lutherans together with the ELCA. The Denver Post’s Thursday morning head-line is a good example: “Lutherans allow differing views on homosexuality.” It would be ambitious to expect the Denver Post to care about the differences between the ELCA and LCMS (to say nothing of WELS, ELS, AALC, etc.) Nevertheless, differences there are. So, once again, we are given the unenviable task of stating loud and clear that we are Lutherans that do not support the ELCA’s position on this issue. To put it in the simplest terms, this decision of the ELCA is a clear-cut refusal to heed the obvious, relevant Bible passages: Leviticus 18:22,24, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, to name the clearest. Evasion of these passages requires pages and pages of duplicitous, interpretational gymnastics, an obnoxious example of which is provided in the “social statement” just passed by ELCA convention delegates.
Beyond this, however, we are wise to consider what precipitated such a decision and take heed lest the early seeds of this false teaching be found in our own midst. An old Latin phrase puts it: Obsta principiis or Resist the beginnings!
Many of you will be asking yourselves how a church of the sola Scriptura could be so unconvinced by the manifold biblical prohibitions against homo-sexuality. The answer to your question goes a long way back…
…All the way back, in fact, to the advent of women’s ordination.
Oddly enough, much of the rhetoric used to justify women pastors has been recycled and spruced up to justify gay and lesbian pastors. In fact, the pattern is remarkably predictable. Lutheran or not, nearly every church that chose to ordain women is now facing similar pressures to ordain homosexuals, and there is not a single church which currently ordains homosexuals which doesn’t already ordain women. I don’t think this is a coincidence.
Don’t get me wrong. The two issues are not exactly the same. Homosexuality is sinful. Woman-hood is not. But, ordination of either betrays certain dangerous presuppositions about the biblical words that we cannot afford to ignore. Here, in my view, are those presuppositions:
- The appeal to Galatians 3:28. The assumption here is that, for Christians, their inclusion in Christ Jesus has freed them from their existence in the order of creation. As a Christian, it is argued, there is no meaningful distinction between Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female nor, for that matter – you guessed it – straight or gay. Those distinctions may have mattered before, under the Law, but not for those who are freed from the Law by the Gospel. Thus, whatever might have been important concerning “maleness” and “femaleness” no longer applies. This wrong opinion can be summarized thus: the only difference between boys and girls is biology. How wrong! You already knew from creation alone that boys and girls, men and women, are deeply distinct from one another, to say nothing of words in Genesis “male and female He created them.” St. Paul uses this deep-seated distinction rooted in creation to prohibit both women’s authority in the church (1 Timothy 2 12,13) and homosexuality (Romans 1:26,27).
- The notion that the Biblical writers were conditioned by their culture and time, so that what they said then concerning significant moral issues had only temporary significance; “what it meant” then is not necessarily “what it means” for us today. Thus did the ELCA argue 40 years ago to favor women pastors; thus have they argued recently to favor homosexual pastors. I think you can recognize the danger here. If we approach the Bible as a culturally conditioned document rather than a timelessly divine document, who decides what is and what is not culturally conditioned? Who says what is right and wrong, true and false? In the ELCA, apparently, the judge and jury is no longer the text of Holy Scripture, but rather the transient whims of a bi-annual church convention. Not good.
- The compliance with faddish cultural movements rather than sturdy biblical understanding. Women’s ordination in the ELCA (and every other church body, for that matter) came on the heels of the women’s liberation movement in the United States. The Bible hadn’t changed. There were no revolutionary biblical discoveries or new theological insights. Cultural forces, formidable indeed, tricked a majority of the members of the ELCA to compromise and ordain women. A generation later, when winds of change demanded recognition for the legitimacy of the gay lifestyle, the same church body has compromised again. St. Paul’s words of warning are apt: “The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Timothy 4:3)
What warnings might we heed in the LCMS from what we have witnessed in the ELCA? Mainly, we should commit ourselves again to the order or creation. “Maleness and femaleness” matter. Boys and girls should be treated differently, not as though one were more valuable or superior than the other, but as unique creatures in the sight of God. In the church, we should not try to homogenize the role of men and women. Some things are given by God for men, such as preaching and teaching and leading, and some things are given by God for women, such as nurturing and serving and caring for children. If we permit this basic biblical affirmation to be degraded or limited, blurring the distinction between men and women, we have significantly weakened our ability to answer the question, “why can’t a woman preach?” And, if we can’t answer that question with clarity and resolve, the next one in line, “why can’t a woman marry another woman?” will be no easier.
All in all, the saddest aspect of these ELCA decisions is not the sidestepping of the Law of God, but rather the sidestepping of the Gospel. We poor sinners need the Gospel. The Word of God offers no other consolation. But, the only person who will hear this Gospel of Christ is the person whose sin has been called what it is – sin. So, all we do by excusing real sin is to rob sinners of the consolation they need to hear in the Gospel. It should break our heart that a 1000+ person assembly debated strenuously for over four days to find a way to excuse a sin for which Our Lord had already atoned and which could have been speedily absolved in His name had they merely been willing to repent. May the Lord have mercy on us and deliver us from the same fate.
