Concern over the Ordination of Women to the Pastoral Ministry in the LCMS

Last December I was copied on the following email from a Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod pastor to his district president.

Dear Reverend Father....,

I am writing to request that Rev. Dr. Matthew Becker of the Northwest District, currently serving outside the LC-MS at Valparasio University, be called to repentance for his insistent, public teaching that women be ordained in the Office of the Holy Ministry. If he will not repent and recant he must be removed from our roster lest this teaching mislead the people of God.

There is a lot to read through. Dr. Becker seems to lack the ability to simply come right and say: "I believe women should be ordained." But his meaning is clear. That is what he believes. He has also demonstrated beyond a doubt that he knows the contrary position of the LC-MS. He is not holding to women's ordination in ignorance.

I did not go looking for Dr. Becker. He came to the Gottesdienst blog, of which I am an contributor, and posted his opinion there. s. From there I was led to his blog and if you'd like a link to it, I can find it for you. I think some of this is on there. He has also said that this will be coming out in a soon-to-be-published book from Daystar, which seems to be some sort of political action group outside of the LC-MS, but I haven't seen the book myself.

In any case, Dr. Becker has stated his position publicly at

http://gottesdienstonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/selk-reports-of-our-demise-have-been.html


There he also written that he teaches this in the classroom and also preaches it. He is currently serving an LC-MS Indiana district vacancy.

Here is an example of his confession from the Gottesdienst Online website that should be sufficient:

"Yes, times have changed and your outdated view is harming the mission of Christ's church in our western society. I would encourage you to take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul about Christian freedom: "To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law... I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I might share in its blessings." How many women have left the LCMS because they could not fulfill God's call to ministry? How many women have given up on Christianity altogether because they equate it with a male-only club? Does the spirit of the Apostle Paul in First Cor. 9 (a spirit found also in all of his--and St. John's--other anti-legal statements) really fit with the legalistic insistence that only men may serve as pastors in Christ's church? Well, you know my answer to that rhetorical question."

At face value, Dr. Becker's position violates 1 Cor 14:33, 37; 1 Tim 2:11-12; 1 Tim 3:1-2; and Titus 1:5-6. In fact, his position is worse than that. It violates the authority of the Word of God and the order of creation. Hidden in this are a host of errors like unto which we now see being active in the ELCA.

Dr. Becker and I cannot remain in the same synod. He seems to me to be mostly in agreement with this, for he has stated on the Gottesdienst Online website that those who hold that only men should be ordained
need to repent. Please advise me on how to proceed.

As always, yours in Christ,
So-and-so


cc: Rev. Matthew Becker
[circuit counselor]
Rev. Matthew Harrison, president LCMS


Since the email wasn't addressed to me, I filed it in my "heresy charges" file and didn't give it a second thought. I was pretty busy back in mid-December, what with the end of semester tests and papers, Advent, midweek services, confirmation, pastoral calling, and Christmas planning.

Then today I received an email from the guy, this time addressed to me and copied to his dp, his circuit counselor, and the synod president. Here's what he wrote:

Dear Rev. Becker,

I have been waiting to be reconciled to you since Dec 13. I trust that by now you've had plenty of opportunity to study the passages in questions, re-read the CTCR documents, and pray. Yet there has been no attempt at reconciliation and you have done nothing to undo the harm you caused by your public statement on Gottesdienst On-line regarding the ordination of women. I understand you are filling a vacancy in the Indiana District even though you are on the roster in the Northwest District.

Even if Valparaiso University believes that God wants us to ordain women as pastors, you are on the roster of the Missouri Synod and cannot abide by their position but must be faithful to your vows or renounce them. You are in violation of clear passages of Holy Scripture and impenitent. Your soul is in danger. Your flock is in danger. You need to have the courage of your convictions - one way or the other.

Please let me know how to proceed to help you or leave the roster. If you will not do either, I will ask President [So-and-so] to pursue removing you from the roster against your will. Whatever happens, I
hope you will not again dishonor the saints of old who suffered greatly, bled, and died for the faith by claiming to be a martyr while the students applaud and you continue to draw full salary and benefits. Perhaps you imagine yourself a hero but even you can't think this makes you a martyr, and even the most notorious despiser of Scripture must surely understand that man is honor bound to keep his vows and to admit when he can no longer keep them. No one likes a liar and a fake or grandstanding.

Your position, as stated publicly, and unsolicited, on Gottesdienst On-line, violates 1 Cor 14:33, 37; 1 Tim 2:11-12; 1 Tim 3:1-2; and Titus 1:5-6. It is directly contrary, as well, to numerous synodical resolutions, CCM rulings, and CTCR documents, and has no weight or merit at all in the early church or Lutheran fathers. For the sake of your soul and your flock, repent.

I remain hopeful that God will open your eyes to the constant witness of the Church in history and the clear passages of His Holy Word and bring us restore us again in His fellowship.

Yours in Christ,
So-and-so

Here's what I sent him today:

Dear Pr. So-and-so,

The biblical procedure is for you to come to me ("...Go to your brother..."), if you truly think I have sinned against you or have committed some public sin. I would welcome such a visit.

Warm regards,
Matthew Becker

He then sent me this:
Dear Rev. Becker,

I don't know why you would doubt that I think you have sinned against me and have committed a public sin. Was there something in my email that led you to believe I was uncertain?

I had thought this need not turn into a contest centered on keeping the by laws and looking for loopholes. Name the time next week and I will come to Valpo and meet with you. I will bring a bible so that I can show what it says.

Of course, Matthew 18 doesn't require this. It is not morally required. But I will do it in the hopes that your eyes are opened.

Yours in Christ,
So-and-so

And then I sent him this:
Dear Pr. So-and-so,

I am free on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday of next week. My office is located in Huegli Hall, room 338. Huegli Hall is across from VU's chapel and library. Perhaps we could work through one of my essays and study the Scriptures in tandem with that.

BTW, Jesus says, "If your brother sins against you GO..." Our Lord doesn't say, "WAIT for your brother to come to you..."

My views on this topic are well-known and quite public. One can visit the online journal, The Daystar Journal, and find materials about this matter there by yours truly and others.

2011 Confirmands at Immanuel

Ms Barb, Jordan, Jacob, Nate, Grant, and me

This week is busier than usual. Not only is this the end of our university's spring semester (graduation is this Sunday), but Sunday also marks the end of the four-year process of confirmation instruction for four eighth-graders at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Michigan City.

Because of the sudden, tragic death of Immanuel's pastor last October (Pr. Kevin Palmer), I was invited to serve as fill-in pastor until the congregation can form a committee to call another pastor. Since the congregation has decided to take some time for reflection and self-study before starting the call process, I will likely continue in this role for the next year or so. I am pleased to do so, for a whole host of reasons.

One of those reasons is the joy that one experiences from participating in the confirmation instruction on Monday evenings. Ms. Barb Herzinger, Immanuel's deaconess, has been the principal instructor for our seventh- and eighth-graders, and I have served as commentator and occasional resource person. Since I usually engage university students and faculty in issues of faith and theology, interacting with middle-schoolers has been a nice addition to my academic world. We've really had some great discussions over the past seven months--and I'm grateful for Ms. Barb's leadership and patience in this regard. With these students there's never a dull moment!

Immanuel still follows the older Lutheran custom of having a "public examination" of the confirmands. This took place last night. The 90-minute event allowed the students to share with the congregation what they have learned about the Christian faith and how it has become a more vibrant part of their own lives. While we are not saved by our religious knowledge--only God can do this through his grace that we receive by trusting in Christ alone--this public event gives these students an opportunity to express their faith, begun in their baptisms (all were able to tell us the date on which they were baptized!), and to articulate the essential elements in that faith as these are explained in Dr. Luther's smaller catechism.

I must say that the young men did a great job of taking us through "the six chief parts" of Dr. Luther's classic intro to the faith (the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, Baptism, Office of the Keys, and Lord's Supper). There were a total of 95 questions that yours truly asked. All got answered, even if the deaconess and I had to assist occasionally with a few clues and hints.

I suppose one could liken Confirmation to the Jewish ritual of the "bar mitzvah," since the Lutheran rite of Confirmation is the formal way in which eighth-graders become adult members of the congregation. They will now be full communicant members of the "new covenant" that has been established through Christ's death and resurrection. While we Lutherans do not consider Confirmation a sacrament, as some other Christians do, we think that this rite is an important step in the process of becoming a more mature disciple of Jesus.

The challenge now is to encourage these young men--and the other young women and men in our confirmation program--to stay active within the congregation. Confirmation is not "graduation" from church, but a milestone that is marked by a deeper commitment to the Christian faith and Christian discipleship.As such, it is indeed an important "transverse marking" in the lives of these young adults.

Bach's Jesu, meine Seelen Wonne on Wood

If you are a lover of all things J. S. Bach, check out this link:
http://www.youtube.com/user/sakura4250


Bach used this chorale to end each part of Cantata 174, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. The English title of the 1926 transcription of Martin Jahn's (c. 1620-1682) hymn text, Jesu, meine Seelen Wonne, which was done by English pianist Myra Hess (1890-1965), is Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. This was sung at the wedding of my parents--and also at my own.

Pericopes for the Week: Christ's Love and Our Enemies

On January 23, 1938, at the secret and illegal seminary in Gross-Schlonwitz, Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), who would later be executed by the Hitler regime for his involvement in the plot to assassinate the German dictator, delivered a sermon on "Christ's Love and Our Enemies." The biblical text that served as the basis for this message was Romans 12:17-21.

I was thinking about this sermon in light of the euphoria that some have been expressing since Sunday's announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a U. S. commando unit on the orders of the President. Like many others, I have been troubled by this assassination and the subsequent dancing, not because bid Laden was a good person--he wasn't--but because I don't think God wants us to gloat over the deaths of any human being, however justified those deaths might be "in the civil realm."

When Bonhoeffer himself participated in the conspiracy to murder Hitler, he knew that he was sinning. He followed the Luther-an dictim, "sometimes it becomes necessary to sin boldly--that any course of action or inaction in a given situation is marked by sin--so one must sometimes 'sin boldly' but believe in the grace of God more boldly still." If Hitler had been killed, I cannot imagine that Bonhoeffer and his sober associates would have been dancing in the streets and shouting prideful slogans. He hints at this in his letter to his friend, Eberhard Bethge, on the day after the July 20 plot failed: "...By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world--watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; and that is how one becomes human and a Christian (cf. Jer. 45!). How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God's sufferings through a life of this kind?..." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Eberhard Bethge, July 21, 1944, in A Testament to Freedom, ed. Geffrey Kelly and F. Burton Nelson [HarperCollins, 1995], 510)

And from the 1938 sermon:


"'Never be conceited'--lest you become murderers of your brothers. Don't believe that you know on your own how to get along with other people, or how to deal with enemies, or what good and evil are, lest humankind devour itself completely. 'Never be conceited'--rather look to God's way with us, with our enemies, that way, which Scripture itself calls foolish, the way of God's love for our enemies, which God demonstrates to us by sending God's Son all the way to the cross. The best wisdom is recognizing the cross of Jesus Christ as the insuperable love of God for all people, for us as well as for our enemies. Or are we of the opinion that God loves us more than God loves our enemies: Would we believe that we are God's favorite children? Were we to think that, we would show ourselves to be of like mind with the Pharisees, we would have stopped being Christians. Is God's love any less for our enemies, for whom God just as much came, suffered, and died, as God did for us? The cross is nobody's private property, but belongs to all; it is intended for all mankind. God loves our enemies--the cross tells us that. God suffers on their account, feels anguish and sorrow because of them. God gave the beloved Son for them. That is the whole point every time we encounter enemies we remember at once: God loves them, God gave everything for them. Therefore, never be conceited" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Christ's Love and Our Enemies," A Testament to Freedom, 285).

Canonical and Non-canonical Gospels

Through the work of Elaine Pagels, who is a professor of religion at Princeton University, our understanding of early Christianity has been deepened. She has written a number of best-selling books that explore the complex nature of early "Christianities." Her early work on the Gnostic gospels (1979), which won several awards, including the National Book Award, continues to be among the top-selling books on Christian Gnosticism.

Among her assertions is the claim that the attacks on Gnostic texts by orthodox theologians in the second and third centuries were the result of institutional and political factors in the early church and not primarily a matter of theological disagreement and conflict. She is particularly troubled that women, who were accepted as spiritual leaders in Gnostic Christian circles, were marginalized and subordinated within the emerging catholic orthodoxy of these early centuries. This marginalization, too, was the result of political factors and not the result of theological concerns.

While there is much to learn in Pagels' work, many scholars are not persuaded that the Gnostic Scriptures, with their alternative understandings of Jesus, are just as authoritative or normative or historically reliable as the central canonical texts (the authentic letters of Paul, the synoptics, John, First John, First Peter). Even the Gospel of Thomas, which may, in very small part, be based upon early traditions about Jesus, strikes many as fundamentally at odds theologically with the teaching and narrative structure of the synoptic gospels. A careful theological comparison of the canonical texts and their stories with those that come from the later Gnostic and other apocryphal ("hidden") texts must lead one to make a choice: either the canonical or the apocryphal. They can't be reconciled with each other since they present essentially contradictory portraits of Jesus.

And yet the view that the apocryphal texts are just as valid as the canonical texts in their portrayals of Jesus ("many Christs") has its many supporters. For example, in the latest issue of Church History, the quarterly journal that is published by The American Society of Church History (of which I am a member), includes a book review by Timothy Miller, who is a professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas. The book is Alternative Christs, ed. Olav Hammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Miller's review, which appears in the March issue of Church History 80/1 (March 2011), 206-208, ends with the following statement:

"As Hammer concludes (290), there is no reason to believe that the canonical Jesus stories are any more historically reliable than the 'heretical' versions. Indeed, it could be argued that the fact that huge swaths of Christianity emphasize a rigid doctrinal and textual orthodoxy impoverishes us, giving us only one narrow slice of a great story" (ibid., 208).

Not a single reason to believe that the canonical Jesus stories are any more historically reliable than the gospels of Thomas, Philip, Peter, Judas, or any of the other twenty-plus "apocryphal gospels?" What about the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas? Or the Secret Gospel of Mark? Did the gospels that are contained in the New Testament come into the canon only because of "political" reasons? Or were there legitimate theological issues at stake that related to the nature of the good news itself as it had been delivered to the early church and maintained by the faithful (see First Corinthians 15:1ff.; 11:2, 23; a similar idea is present in Second Thessalonians 2:15). These biblical texts provide the earliest of Christian traditions.

That there are at least two conflicting views about the status of the canonical and non-canonical gospels is also reflected in one of the latest sales catalogs from "The Great Courses." Today's mail brought that company's "The Annual Sale on Religion and Theology Courses," which includes "The Real Story of Christianity's Beginnings" and "How Has Christianity Changed over 2,000 Years," both taught by Bart Ehrman, professor of religion at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and "What Do the Gospels Reveal about Jesus?," taught by Luke Timothy Johnson, professor of religion at Emory University.

Ehrman takes an approach that complements that of Pagels. Both of them build on the work of the German scholar, Walter Bauer (Orthodoxy and Hersey in Early Christianity), who tried to demonstrate that some early forms of Christianity that were eventually deemed heretical at a later time had been in fact quite popular in their earliest stages. What would come to be called "orthodoxy" at a later time might have been a minority view in the early decades of Christianity and what was "heresy" in later decades might have been quite popular. Hence, the subtitle to Ehrman's second course: "Lost Christianities: Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication."

Johnson, an orthodox Roman Catholic scholar, takes a very different approach. He begins with questions about "Jesus in the memory of the church," and how the earliest apostolic preaching about Jesus had a distinct and normative shape already in the earliest decades of the post-resurrection Christian community (again, see First Corinthians 15:1ff.; the kerygmatic speeches in the Acts of the Apostles). After exploring the canonical gospels and the problems attendant to them, he moves to discuss how early Christians rejected some texts that claimed to be "Christian" but were not, marginalized some texts that were not necessarily "heretical" but were not "canonical," and accepted others that had been widely used and were viewed as having a continuity with that earliest apostolic proclamation.

Contrary to Miller's claim, the synoptic gospels contain material that is more historically reliable than the apocryphal, non-canonical gospels. Robert Grant, who taught early Christian history at the University of Chicago, has demonstrated that there were at least five implicit criteria at play in earliest Christianity to help Christian communities identify that which was in continuity with authentic apostolic teaching and that which conflicted with this teaching:

(1) A first criterion was apostolicity.  That is, a book had to have been written or dictated by an apostle, or at least have the authority of an apostle behind it, to be recognized as authoritative. For example, in the late- first or early-second century, Papias of Hierapolis (in Phrygia) wrote about his memories of early Christian traditions that make reference to Mark's memories of what Peter proclaimed in Rome, and Justin Martyr wrote about the gospels as "memoirs" of the apostles.

(2)  A second criterion, closely related to the first, is the antiquity of a particular writing.  The older the better. Since all of the apocryphal gospels, with the exception of the Gospel of Thomas and the Infancy Gospel of James, were written after A.D. 180, they fall far short of being in close proximity to the apostolic witness to the words and deeds of Jesus.

(3)  A third criterion was correct doctrine, i.e., adherence to the regula fidei (“rule of faith”) as handed down orally and in writing by those who were "eye-witnesses" and "hearers of the word." Unless a book could be shown to be in conformity with apostolic doctrine, it was rejected. Gnostics who claimed to be Christians ran afoul of other Christians because the former held that the God of the Old Testament was an inferior God to the Father of Jesus, that the god who created the world was an evil god, that the world is an evil creation from which one's soul is to escape, that Jesus was merely a revealer of secret knowledge about the human soul ("a spark of the divine" inside of a human being), that Jesus is only concerned about saving this "spark" inside of people, and that Jesus wasn't really human, that he didn't really die on the cross.

(4)  A fourth criterion was catholic use, how wide-spread was a text used in worship, teaching, and edifying the faithful. Some writings were accepted and used by nearly all who called themselves "Christian" in the first and early-second centuries (the letters of Paul, the synoptic gospels, the Gospel of John, First John, First Peter), whereas other writings (James, Hebrews, Revelation, Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and many others) were not as widely used and had questions about their authorship, age, and orthodoxy. The apocryphal gospels also fell far short of being as widely used as Pagels seems to suggest.

(5) A final criterion, related to the other four, is the public succession of faithful bishops in certain key cities (Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, Byzantium, Alexandria, Rome) to be generally reliable transmitters of apostolic texts (and accompanying authoritative lists of the Scriptures read and used in their liturgies) and teaching, and to be reliable critics of alien texts, such as the apocryphal gospels, epistles, acts, and apocalypses.

There were good reasons for why Gnostic texts did not win wide acceptance in early Christianity, for why the canonical texts are understood to be more historically authentic than later texts that claim to be apostolic and ancient, for why the canon looks the way it does. For persuasive refutation of the Bauerian thesis, see Robert Grant, Heresy and Criticism: The Search for Authenticity in Early Christian Literature (Westminster/John Knox, 1993). This work also provides a solid critique of Pagels' view of Gnostic Christianities as legitimate forms of Christian understanding. See also the helpful overview of scholarly work on the formation of the New Testament canon by Brevard Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Fortress, 1985), 16-33.

Finally, if the apocryphal gospels are just as historically authentic (or inauthentic) as the canonical gospels, then why do nearly all scholars who investigate the problem of the historical Jesus limit themselves to the canonical texts, even in view of the notoriously difficult nature of the canonical gospels as primary historical sources for Jesus? To quote from one of our premier New Testament scholars, E. P. Sanders: "I share the general scholarly view that very, very little in the apocryphal gospels could conceivably go back to the time of Jesus. They are legendary and mythological. Of all the apocryphal material, only some of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are worth consideration. This does not mean that we can make a clean division: the historical four gospels versus the legendary apocryphal gospels. There are legendary traits in the four gospels in the New Testament, and there is also a certain amount of newly created material… Nevertheless, it is the four canonical gospels that we must search for traces of the historical Jesus" (E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus [Penguin Press, 1993], 64-65; see also the complementary discussion by John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 3 vols. [Doubleday, 1991--], 1:1-201 [which takes one through the various internal and external sources for understanding the historical Jesus]).