Have You Ever Heard of the LCMS Seminex? With Rev. Dr. Gerhard Bode

Have you ever pondered the enduring legacy of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and its century-long journey through peace, growth, and controversy? Reverend Dr. Gerhard Bode joins us to unravel this narrative, revealing the pivotal moments that have shaped the LCMS, especially during the transformative post-WWII era. Dr. Bode's deep well of knowledge brings to life the Synod's pursuit of higher education standards and its commitment to mission work, while also examining the scars left by the Semenex controversy, a true testament to the church's complex history.

Our conversation with Dr. Bode ventures into the theological battlegrounds that have tested American Lutheranism, where modern scriptural interpretations have sparked fiery doctrinal debates. We step into the fray of gospel reductionism and higher criticism, pondering the balance between historical veracity and the potency of the unchanged Word. As we navigate these topics, Dr. Bode reminds us how these discussions have shaped ecumenical relationships and challenged the Lutheran Confessions to address contemporary issues without sacrificing the essence of the faith.

In a heartfelt discussion about the essence of the LCMS, we reflect on the necessity of doctrinal unity without compromising the missionary zeal that propels the church forward. Dr. Bode underscores the importance of maintaining harmony within the Synod while fostering a passionate outreach, and invites listeners to experience the fervor of Call Day at Concordia Seminary. Join us for an enlightening journey through the past, present, and future of the LCMS, where faithfulness to doctrine and an eagerness for missionary work promise to define the church's trajectory.

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:02

This is.

Speaker 3: 0:02

Lead Time. What a joy to have you with us on Lead Time, tim Allman, here with Jack Kauberg, and today we have the distinct honor and privilege to have Reverend Dr Jerry Bode. He has been serving at Concordia Seminary in St Louis for almost 20 years. He was a faculty mentor for me 20 years ago when I came to the seminary and this man's joy, his love of Jesus, his love of history I was a history major at Concordia Seward in Nebraska and so, coming in man, you and I were kindled spirits and I remember being in your Calvin class you probably don't remember this, it's some building that I don't think classes are there anymore and just your love of the Word and your love of history. And specifically we're going to look at today the struggle of the Semenex story. We still have the wounds of Semenex, some 50 years. We're remembering that journey, the kind of scars and wounds of Semenex.

Speaker 3: 1:00

Right now a number of people have written articles, and yours was so fair and balanced in the Concordia Journal, and so let's start out with we can kind of have these rose colored glasses as we tell any kind of history. And we know, jerry, that history is, it's in the gray, it's in the struggle. It's broken sinners trying to find their way to point people to Jesus. It's really God's grand story. It's his story, right, not ours, we're just a part of it. So we know that there was good, bad and ugly in the Semenex story, to be sure. But you, in your article, you kind of list the first 100 years of the LCMS story, from 1847 to 1947, as a century of grace. Let's start there. Thanks so much for hanging with us today, jerry.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Thank as a century of grace. Let's start there. Thanks so much for hanging with us today, jerry. Thank you, it's great to be with you guys. Yeah, the first hundred years of the Synod's history is really an amazing period and it's a time when Synod grows by leaps and bounds. We develop all kinds of new relationships with other Lutherans in America and it's really kind of an exciting time. It has its challenges, of course, but it's a time of relative peace and growth in the church and in Lutheranism in America at large.

Speaker 3: 2:14

And why do you have 1947 as kind of a breaking? I mean, I know it was a century and there was a lot that was written just after World War II century and there was a lot that was written just after World War II, but did things so between? I'd love to get just a general history of what was occurring between 47 and then 74 when the walkout came, because there was still a season of growth and quite a bit of rapid growth, especially out West, right During those seasons, that's exactly right and it's kind of doubled in size in its baptized membership.

Speaker 1: 2:41

It doubled between 1935 and 1962. And it was growing a lot in the areas that the country was growing. It moved west in California and Arizona and all up and down the West Coast. It was growing dramatically and farther in the South and Texas and places like that. It was really booming in those places as well.

Speaker 1: 2:59

But I think what happens after World War II is that the Synod really begins to in a sense kind of open up to new ideas. You kind of get the sense from people in the Synod and even here at Concordia Seminary during that time that we needed to open up the windows and let in some fresh air. There were challenges that we were facing in society in America. It's kind of interesting if you look at some of the faculty notes and some of the things that faculty were writing. In the 1940s there was a concern about what was going on in the country, that a lot of things changed after World War II. There was a kind of a moral decline in the country. We may not think about this. We think of post-World War II days as being kind of a heady time in the country and it doesn't seem to have been that way, at least from the faculty perspective here. What they wanted to do was more outreach. They were very mission-oriented and wanted to outreach to the people in society and try to have a salutary influence on bringing the gospel to people and also making things better in society as well. That involved better relationships with other churches too, and so this is a time when the Missouri Synod is very keen on trying to develop some relationships that we had not really done before and to improve relationships with other Lutherans where we had a lot of disagreement with them in the past. Now we want to get back together again. So there's kind of an ecumenical drive, a fellowship drive in the Senate after the after World War II. That has an impact on how we how we look at at at our neighbors and how we look at other Lutherans in the country. That's one thing that was changing during that time.

Speaker 1: 4:47

One thing I also would add is that a lot is changing here at Concordia Seminary.

Speaker 1: 4:52

It was right after World War II that for the first time, concordia Seminary tried to become accredited as an educational institution, and we think, well, what's the big deal with that?

Speaker 1: 5:02

I mean, well, it meant that we could offer academic degrees so our students could graduate with a Master of Divinity degree or we could grant a Master of Sacred Theology or a Doctor's degree from an accredited educational institution. We were kind of, in trying to be accredited, we were kind of telling the rest of the seminaries in the country that we're playing with the big boys. Now we're a big school, we have a lot going on here, we have high standards for academics and for pastoral training, and in order to do that we had to be able to offer academic degrees and we had to have professors that could serve our students better, and so they needed to have doctor's degrees themselves. And so the level of academic training and the qualifications that we had really began to rise here at Concordia Seminary during that time and I think after a while that began to change the outlook at the seminary and kind of the mission of the seminary itself. So things were really changing a lot in that post-World War II period.

Speaker 4: 6:12

It's interesting. I've talked to people of the older generation of the church and I was blown away to find out that the ELCA and the LCMS used to collaborate in church planting. They would actually say, okay, you plant your church here and then we'll plant ours here and then you plant yours. Like they were actually would coordinate where they were planting churches. That's exactly right. In places where they knew that developed. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:35

Yeah, well, we were. It was kind of like turf respect, you know. I mean we were going to go open up a new mission start someplace across the street from where another place was operating a mission start. Even back earlier in the 20th century you had situations in places like Minnesota, where I grew up, where they actually divided up according to counties. So there were some places where Missouri Synod would do the, some counties where Missouri Synod would do a lot of the mission, work and congregation, you know, planting, and then other Lutheran synods would take other counties and work there and it was all coordinated. We're respecting one another but we're also trying to really trying to further the mission of the church at large and we're not so terribly concerned about which denomination we were, which Lutheran church we were involved in.

Speaker 4: 7:25

But you're right, jack. It's a much more open-handed approach. It seemed like, yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 1: 7:32

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:35

Well, things changed, and things changed a lot due to the walkout of 74. So talk a little bit about the underlying um, underlying causes that led, because it it wasn't in a vacuum, right, there were a lot of things and you tell this story well in your, in your uh article. Uh, what led up to the walkout?

Speaker 1: 7:57

Well, there are a lot of factors. You were talking earlier about history, tim and, and this is a very complicated story, and usually the best history is a complicated one. There's a lot of moving parts to this. Some of it's theological issues or doctrinal issues, some of it's issues of personality. There's a lot going on here. I think most of it, however, is probably theological in nature.

Speaker 1: 8:24

The conflict was largely theological. There are other things involved, but, for example, I think we often think of this time period as a time of modernization in American Lutheran churches, and what that meant for a lot of people was using more kind of academically accepted methods of, say, interpreting the scriptures. The influence of higher criticism came in Now. This higher criticism had been around for a very long time, certainly back in Europe in the period of the Enlightenment and afterwards. It was there, but it really began to have a greater influence in North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and over time it came into the Lutheran churches even here that are part of the Missouri Synod and our partner churches and things like that were influenced by this as well. So, for example, what does this look like?

Speaker 1: 9:20

You might have a situation where a theologian may begin to question, based on his reading of a text. For example, they might question whether or not some texts that have normally been assumed to be historically true, or that we have a literal interpretation for these things. Later on, people begin to suggest, well, maybe a figurative interpretation would be better. People began to suggest, well, maybe a figurative interpretation would be better. For example, take Genesis 1 and 2, the creation narrative, or maybe even Genesis 1 through 3, including the fall narrative as well.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Some people began to suggest, by the 1940s and 50s in the Missouri Synod, that maybe the better interpretation for those texts would be, you know, read it as a myth, read it as a story, read it as a story rather than as a description of a true historical event. So that begins to yeah, that begins to raise other questions. You know, are we're adam? Need real people? Um, is there, was there, was the creation of the world, was it? You know, did god do that in the way that he describes it in Genesis 1 and 2? Or are we to interpret that some other way? So I think what was happening in the Missouri Synod was not so much that our historians or theologians were determining a new way to interpret the scriptures and saying, for example, that it had to be considered as a myth or something.

Speaker 1: 10:40

I'm not sure that they were really doing that, but they were suggesting that these new ways of interpreting may also be acceptable along with the traditional way of interpreting text. So you had kind of multiple views now rather than just one kind of standard acceptance of these events as historical fact. And there are a lot of examples we could give from the scriptures In the Old Testament. People would talk about, you know, the Exodus narrative. You know to what extent was that a accurate historical depiction of these events or was it just a kind of a myth that the people of Israel told later on about their origin story? You know, where did they come from? How did they get to the promised land? Or later on in the New Testament as well, you could see these kinds of things come up, questions about how to interpret a lot of the narratives from the life of Christ and the miracles and things like that. Did Jesus actually walk on water or was that simply something that the early Christians had said about Jesus and his ministry? So those things are kind of called into question. And it's based on historical, higher criticism of the biblical texts. And you know this is kind of a difficult thing. We do historical criticism on other things we may take ancient, like the Iliad and the Odyssey. Well, we can do all kinds of analysis of those kinds of texts, but should we do them to the scriptures or not? That's kind of the question. And some people said, yes, we can do that and we can still be faithful to the message. And other people would say, no, the scriptures are not. That's not the way we should read them, that's not a responsible way to address the biblical narratives. So those kinds of things come in. I want to mention one other thing that in regard to this that I think is related, and that is, if you want to have relations with other Christians, or better relations with other Lutherans, for a long time in the 19th century, and especially in our own church body, we had been really concerned about making sure that we had a common understanding of the scriptures and the teachings of the church, and maybe even that we would interpret individual texts in a very similar way, sometimes because we were rather firm on how we interpreted things. That firmness might be a barrier to having good relations with other Lutherans or other Christians. Well, if you open it up now in the mid-20th century and begin to assert, well, you can interpret it that way. If you want or someone else can interpret this text another way, well, that makes church relations a little bit easier when you have acceptance of varying views on things. I think that's part of what's going on. The ecumenical drive, the church fellowship drive, is a really strong one in the 1940s and 50s and 60s, and that's certainly part of this.

Speaker 1: 13:27

One other doctrinal issue that I would point out that I think is important is sometimes we call this gospel reductionism, and this is certainly something that was around during this time in the Missouri Synod as well, in Concordia Seminary.

Speaker 1: 13:40

The idea of gospel reductionism would be the reduction of the message of the scriptures down to the gospel content, in other words, that the real message or teaching of the scriptures, what you really need to know and the part that's really reliable and true, is the simple message of the gospel of Jesus. His death, his resurrection, his message of salvation for the world, is what you really need to know. The rest, what we have in the Old Testament and much in the New Testament, many would say well, that's kind of open to interpretation. If you want to believe that, that's kind of a myth that people have that Christians have told over time, that's acceptable. If other people want to believe that it's all historically true, that's acceptable too. That's kind of what's happening around in the in the by the 1960s and seventies. That really raises some significant doctrinal issues for a lot of people.

Speaker 4: 14:35

Yeah, yeah, so would you describe the gospel reductionism as a sort of soft antinomianism? Is that kind of how-?

Speaker 1: 14:44

It can be that way, jack, it can be that way. And so, yeah, certainly the antinomianism comes back during this time, like the idea, even to the point, of denial, of the third use of the law. Of course there's a big debate about this in the 16th century, even among Lutherans. The question is whether or not the law should be preached or taught to Christians. Do people in church on Sunday need to hear the law? Some said, yes, they do need to hear the law, and others said, no, I'm a Christian. Jesus overcame the law for me. That doesn't apply to me anymore. Well, yes and no to that. But of course this comes back again in the 20th century among Lutherans. This issue of the third use of the law comes back, and part of it comes from Germany, where there's a move to kind of go back to more of an authentic Lutheranism, or what was claimed to be an authentic Lutheranism. Luther himself did not actually teach a third use of the law. It's something that comes out and Melanchthon begins to teach it, and then it comes out later on among Lutherans. But that question comes back again in the 1960s. In fact there was a debate here at Concordia Seminary sometime around 1970. I'm still looking for the audio tapes. The audio cassettes have got to be someplace in the archives. But there was a great big debate here at Concordia Seminary between two professors and one was Robert Bertram and one was Robert Preuss and they had a great big debate in one of the large classrooms here and apparently they just packed them in. Students all wanted to hear this and it was a debate on whether or not there is such a thing as a third use of the law and should we be teaching that? And Robert Bertram said no and Robert Preuss said yes, and that was the debate. Now we could have a really interesting conversation about that.

Speaker 1: 16:43

And how do we understand the role of the law in the life of a believer? That's something Lutherans have been talking about for a long time. But part of the problem is that when you get into a dispute or a controversy, like we were at that time, it becomes kind of easy to say, look, you've got to hold to it, you've got to believe it, because we have our synod holds to a confessional basis. We hold to the scriptures as the written word of God and the only rule and norm of faith and of life, and we hold to the Lutheran confessions as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the word of God. That means all the confessions, including the bits about the third use of the law, which are pretty clearly taught in the formula of Concord.

Speaker 1: 17:26

So it gets to the bigger question then what does it really mean to be a Lutheran in America at this time? And there are varying answers to that question. Some are much more open. It can mean a broader acceptance of things and some somewhat kind of a narrower definition of that. I think one way of thinking about it is that we're kind of the Missouri Synod is kind of asking itself do we want to be a big tent church where we have lots of differing views on doctrine?

Speaker 1: 17:59

Maybe those may contradict with one another and they may be at odds with one another. Do we want to be a big tent church or do we want to be a small tent church where we all agree to believe and teach and confess the same thing? That's a really hard question to address because it may mean that we separate from people or there's going to be discord and conflict and that can be enormously painful. And of course working through that could be great if you can do it, but if it doesn't. It can be, it can be tragic, and that's really what's happening here with the time of the walkout.

Speaker 3: 18:37

Well, exactly so let's get in. That's such a good background story there, jerry, thank you. So a statement, this document, a statement of scriptural and confessional principles, it kind of took on a life of its own.

Speaker 3: 18:51

Kind of the foreman the primary author was Ralph Buhlman, you can talk a little bit about how that then was kind of the fuel that fired up the fact-finding committee that went into the seminary and John Tijan Reverend Dr John Tijan, the president at Concordia Seminary, st Louis at the time, called it a fishing expedition that put a cloud over every member of the faculty with the thought that they were guilty until proven innocent. So I can think and we talk a lot in this podcast, dr Bodie, about both like sociology and really culture and how that mingles with theology and what we have here is a perfect storm of, I would say, dysfunctional triangles being created, relational bridges and not being kind of built up enough so that we could challenge with trust. And it appears as if and I'm not, I'd love to get your thoughts on this it appears as if Ralph Bowman and President Preuss at the time they kind of in a from on high position, present this statement to Dr Tijan, and you're going to get defensiveness when it comes down like this. And now I'm sure there were a lot of conversations that had taken place up to this point, but anytime from on high synod puts a fact-finding committee in place, I could see how he would say this is a fishing expedition because I'm sure you know, not everyone on the faculty had, you know, hook, line and sinker gone into the higher critical. This is the best thing ever. We got to get behind it.

Speaker 3: 20:30

But the split came because relationships came and then we've got this statement kind of coming to Senate and Convention in New Orleans in 1973. And things just appear to kind of spiral almost in a. There was no way the train was down the track and it didn't appear, because the relationships had been mostly severed, that there was anything other than a walkout that could occur. And that makes me very sad and I say this today because we do not want this to happen in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod today, around anything. Now I'll say this statement before I get your kind of perspective. We are not battling over a higher critical method.

Speaker 3: 21:14

I am appreciative, while I think the story is messy. I'm appreciative as where you know you could use big tent, small tent. Okay, I think our small tent ought to get bigger. Let's just say that to reach more people with a shared, common confession of the gospel by grace, through faith centered in the Lutheran confessions. I think it ought to get bigger, but I'm glad that there was this refining boundary setting time. I just and this is my take in reading your article I just don't know that the boundary was set in the healthiest way to keep relationship, especially those that were relationally tied into Concordia Seminary, maybe tighter than they were, synod and obviously synod and convention. So that's the general story. It was very messy. What did I miss and what would you like to go deeper into, jerry?

Speaker 1: 22:03

Well, I think your take on it is good and it's insightful. I think one of the things that you see is that really, the solution that was applied by the Senate at the time was really a political one. And in one way, I think we can kind of regard this entire controversy as one great big test of the Senate's constitution and bylaws. And on the one hand, it passed and the bylaw, the constitution of bylaws, worked. They may were pressed over time, but it actually worked. Now, is that the way you want to resolve conflict in a church, really through political or legal means? I don't. I don't think anyone would want that, but that's that's what happened in this case. That's kind of interesting. You know that if, but that's what happened in this case. It's kind of interesting that if you look at what John Tegin has to say throughout this controversy, he frequently says you know, why can't we follow Matthew 18? Why can't we just sit down with one another and talk this out? I think the problem was that by 1970, there had been so much water under the bridge this conflict had been going on for simmering, really for decades that it was kind of too late for that. You've got suspicion of the faculty at Concordia Seminary, going all the way back to the 1920s and certainly after World War II, you begin to have calls for the investigation of the faculty of Concordia Seminary. So that had been going on for about 25 years before we get to this fact-finding committee, and they never really seemed to have been able to sit down and discuss or to work out these kinds of problems.

Speaker 1: 23:42

And I think that the synod and its polity, the way it was designed all the way back at its founding, the polity of the synod, was designed to require people to sit down with one another and hash this stuff out, to talk about stuff, to resolve their differences. If somebody wants to argue about theology, let's do that, but let's do it in a fraternal way where we respect and love one another in these discussions and we work together towards the common good of the synod, not in an adversarial relationship. So I think what happened by the late 60s and early 70s was it was kind of too late for that and that people had really gotten entrenched in their positions and had been fighting back and forth for that, and that people had really gotten entrenched in their positions and had been fighting back and forth for decades. I could tell you a lot of stories about what's going on since the 1930s. In this way I mean threats of lawsuits and people very unhappy with one another, so nothing was really getting fixed. The solution, I think, really came from.

Speaker 1: 24:51

I think this fact-finding committee idea really came from Martin Charlemagne, who had been a professor here at Concordia Seminary, new Testament, for a very long time and he was a military guy. He was in the Air Force. He'd been an Air Force chaplain. He was actually a brigadier general in the Air Force in the reserves at the time. He was later on the faculty here and he came up with this idea of having a fact-finding committee. Well, so this was supposed to be a neutral committee that would actually go and find the facts, not render judgment on anything, but just go and investigate and then hand over that file, that information, to others for them to deal with. That's kind of a military approach to dealing with something. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It works. You can do this in other avenues as well, but that's kind of the way they decided to do this. The truth is that the polity of the Synod it's true today and it was true back in the 1960s the polity of the Synod really doesn't have a mechanism for dealing with these kinds of big controversies in the church, oversee the faculty, but the Synod president really does not have that much authority to come in and fix things in a seminary. It relies on everybody working together. So that's the way the Synod is designed to work.

Speaker 1: 26:15

So this fact-finding committee I think was more of a political approach to address the problem at Concordia Seminary and I think once they started down that road it was kind of a foregone conclusion about how it was going to go. It was, you know, especially when the faculty who are interviewed we have the faculty interviews and transcripts and things like that in the seminary archives and the faculty many of them are perfectly normal Lutherans. They don't sound like liberals at all, they're just regular guys doing their jobs and I think that we need to make that clear. I think the vast majority of people on the faculty were not doing anything that we might consider to be unorthodox or something, but there were definitely some that were and they're pretty frank about it in these interviews and in what they write.

Speaker 1: 27:12

But it's not very difficult to see where this is going to go, that you have the results of this which will be evaluated by other people. The basic teaching of some of these faculty members is kind of open for everybody to see and people will have a problem with it in the church. That's the result of this and of course, in the, the statement of scriptural confessional principles ends up being kind of the you know the measurement by which you evaluate this teaching and uh, it's, it's a, it's an important document from that respect. But then it goes on and has this other life as a doctrinal statement in the Synod too.

Speaker 3: 27:48

Well, it goes to Synod and Convention and it's put up and adopted as a doctrinal statement in New Orleans in 1973. And a vote to adopt it and this sounds. I've been to the last three Synod Conventions and the numbers here sound very familiar.

Speaker 3: 28:05

It's only adopted by 562 to 455. So why did over 40% of the delegates vote against a statement? I mean, in telling the story up to this point, it has to be because of how it was executed and the relational bridges that had been severed up to that point, rather than because I always hear in a lot of the debates we just need more time for relationship, for trust to evolve. I can't imagine that over 40% of those who were attending at this point really understood oh, this is over the higher critical method and we want to make sure this is. I mean, you know, and we got to protect the higher critical method. There's no way. I think it was because relationships had largely been. There was a lot of triangles that were going on and a lot of these men and women could see man, this is, this is unhealthy. There's got to be a better way, do you?

Speaker 3: 28:53

think that's a fair take, Jerry.

Speaker 1: 28:54

Yeah, I think well, yeah, and I think that part of it is just the again the way the Senate is designed to work. We should be trusting one another, right, and and I think that was that was under under pressure at this time as well. I think one of the things with with this statement was the question of whether or not we should even have something like this in the church. You know, if you think about it. I mentioned our confessional basis earlier. We hold to the scriptures as the word of God and we hold to the confessions as a, as a true statement of of what the scriptures teach. That's always been our confessional basis. What else do we need, right? We still hold to that today. Our students still pledge to that today. They just did it a few weeks ago here at the seminary. That should be enough, right, and in fact.

Speaker 1: 29:42

So the question is what about introducing some new standard into the mix? If we have a doctrinal statement, like a statement of scriptural confessional principles, can we require, can Synod require, the pastors and teachers to preach and teach in accord with this? I think, tim, that's really the question that they're after. They're at New Orleans in 73. They had been talking about this going through the 71 convention. They raised the issue there too. Can we do this and can we expect the preachers and teachers to teach in accord with this? But see, the issue is, the presupposition is that there's faculty at Concordia Seminary that are not holding to the traditional doctrinal position of the synod. But we don't really have that written down anywhere in an official way. So we have what the scriptures teach, about the scriptures. We don't really have an article in the Lutheran Confessions on the doctrine of scripture.

Speaker 1: 30:38

It has a lot to say about the word of God and about the scriptures, but it doesn't address the kind of problems that we were addressing in the 20th century. This is a 16th century document, and so how do we resolve conflict in the church? Well, one way would be to sit down and persuade one another on how we see this, but the way that the Synod had traditionally done this in the past was to adopt a doctrinal statement. We hadn't done it a lot, but we had done it a few times, and that seems to be the approach that they wanted to take in the past was to adopt a doctrinal statement. We hadn't done it a lot, but we had done it a few times, and that seems to be the approach that they wanted to take in the 70s, thinking that if we have this doctrinal statement, that'll be a regulator for the preaching and teaching in the church.

Speaker 1: 31:18

And again, it's kind of a political solution, but it's one that this is the way that they decide to go. But it's one that this is the way that they decide to go. I don't know that the majority in the synod, the synod leadership and the majority of delegates at that convention in 73, I don't know that they see another option at that point, because it's just too far gone, or at least it's enough of a crisis that they're willing to do it, because they think it'll stop the controversy. But it's a pretty.

Speaker 4: 31:49

You already have. You already have a constitutional requirement to be, you know, to adhere to scripture and the confessions. And it seems to me like what's happening and I'm I'm an outsider looking in that this new rule goes beyond that and says not only do you must, must you adhere to scripture, but you must adhere to now, an even narrower interpretation of what that means for confessions, for example. So there's people that may say I'm confessional, but when I read third use, I may interpret third use a little bit differently than you, while still kind of affirming it.

Speaker 4: 32:30

Now you bring in a document and you narrow that down and say no, you have to interpret it this way, right? Yeah, it seems to me like that can be very problematic.

Speaker 1: 32:37

I don't know. It certainly is when, when a lot of these things I mean. Third, use of the law. I mean, you know we can have a pretty if we sit down and have a conversation about this. I think you can probably reach agreement on this. I mean, you know you just think about this a different way, but it's kind of like yes or no.

Speaker 1: 32:55

It ends up being a rather black and white kind of thing, a rather blunt instrument for dealing with these kinds of questions, and on the one hand it works. But it's still a blunt instrument, yeah, and on the one hand it works, but it's still a blunt instrument.

Speaker 4: 33:08

Yeah, it's a blunt instrument in that you can show the door to people that don't agree. Like rather than arguing with people, you just show them the door.

Speaker 1: 33:14

Right, right, that's right, yeah, which.

Speaker 4: 33:18

I don't know. That's the healthiest way to deal with things honestly. I mean, if you really believe in your interpretation of scripture and confession, you should be able to defend it really well and.

Speaker 4: 33:30

I don't know, not necessarily have to resort to strong-arm tactics to get that down and at the same time I can see where a higher critical approach. I mean we see this this is very prominent now in the ELCA. It is a big thing. That's informing the way that they understand Scripture and you can make the case that if you take it to its furthest conclusion, that you're not a Christian anymore. That's a good point, jack.

Speaker 1: 34:02

I think they were kind of afraid that we were going to continue to go in that direction. So they're trying to stop it before it goes too far.

Speaker 3: 34:10

I think that's what they were thinking a subversion of the authority of scripture as a formal principle and I'm, I'm, I'm, I like that. I'd rather not do that by introducing gospel reductionism. I'm not a fan of gospel reductionism and a denial of the third use of the law. I'm a I'm a fan of the third use and I think we could have some more discussion. We're actually this is still a very real timetime conversation today in modern-day confessional Lutheranism. On second and third use Conservative.

Speaker 3: 34:50

In conservative Lutheranism to be sure. So we're actually trying to set up some of those conversations so students and just lay leaders can learn together, pastors can learn together, all centered in the Word. But because of those three kind of variances doctrinal variances President Tijan is suspended in January of 1974. And the walkout occurred in February, the next month of 1974. So just give us, we've all seen well, maybe not all of us, but if you've looked at any of the articles, you've seen the pictures of the guys kind of carrying out. You know the placards and the statement boards on, you know we're out of here. But in the way you tell it it was kind of not as kind of grandiose and over the top kind of rah-rah as we may be prone to think about. So talk, get under the hood, if you will, of what the actual walkout experience was like there on Concordia Seminary's faculty, if you happen to be there in February of 74.

Speaker 1: 35:47

Well, I think the first thing that you'd see was the division. I mean, you have some faculty members. There's a small group about five of them that don't participate in the walkout or anything associated with that. You have about 10 to 15, 20 percent of the students who do not participate in any of this and there's a lot of pressure applied especially to the students that did not walk out. There was a lot of pressure. They really wanted to have everybody together in this, in this. In a sense, it's kind of a protest that they're doing.

Speaker 1: 36:20

I think that that, although, on the one hand, I think the people that walked out thought that they thought that they were doing the right thing, they thought that they were making a statement for what they believed. They believed that they were being, in a sense, persecuted because of their faith and the way they held to it, and I think that they really believed that they thought they were doing the right thing. At the same time, I think the people that stayed believed they thought they were doing the right thing. At the same time, I think the people that stayed believe they thought they were doing the right thing. You just kind of have an impasse over this and both sides kind of want to know, want other people to know where they're at, where they stand and why they're doing what they're doing. So there's kind of a lot of especially on the side of the people that walked out, there was a lot of, you know, promotion of this. They're calling the media to come and see and film and see the demonstration that they're making. I think there's also kind of an appeal for the hearts and minds of the rank and file people in the Missouri Senate. You know this is what we stand for. Are you with us? And I think that you know, in the sense, both sides would kind of be disappointed that they didn't get the full support that they maybe had wanted.

Speaker 1: 37:32

But it is, I think it's. I suppose it's kind of a bittersweet thing for the people involved, especially who walk out, because there's a lot of uncertainty you know they don't know exactly how this is going to go of uncertainty. They don't know exactly how this is going to go. They're walking away from their jobs, walking away from their classrooms and it's just really kind of a risky thing to do. But again, they believed. I think that they thought they were doing what was right and good for the church and by making this kind of stand, even if it's kind of a protest, they thought that they were kind of calling the church to witness what was going on.

Speaker 1: 38:09

But I think ultimately the majority of people in the synod kind of saw this and said, well, okay, fine, go ahead, do your thing, but don't expect us to support you in doing that. That's kind of what happened. There were some that did support the guys that walked out, but many that didn't. So it's just it's a difficult thing for the, for the synod, and, of course, the seminary really is on its knees at this point. You have you have 40, you know 85 percent of its students leave, the vast majority of its faculty are gone and a lot of staff that some believe that Concordia Seminary would be dead.

Speaker 1: 38:54

It couldn't survive this kind of departure from from its faculty. And these these were people that were these faculty members, were very well educated, these were leading theologians in the church and all these students, all these future pastors, were now leaving and it's just a very traumatic, very difficult thing for everybody involved. You can kind of understand why there's so many people from that time are reluctant to talk about it, because it was just so painful. Families were divided over this, friendships were damaged or even broken up because of this kind of a conflict. You know, we wouldn't wish this on anybody and I think even though the one side, you know, they left and they felt that they were doing the right thing and felt kind of like they were justified right in what they were doing, the people that stayed believed that they were justified in staying and what they were doing, the people that stayed believe that they were justified in staying. But I think it's I think everybody is is has a hard time as a result of this.

Speaker 2: 39:55

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:55

Super tough and I would, I would pray that nothing like this happens in our denomination and I am.

Speaker 3: 40:03

I am grateful. I am grateful for the stance. This is how I you know, as a third generation LCMS pastor, I'm grateful for the stance that President Preuss took got to that point and that reason, connected to scripture centered in relational trust, didn't win the day in over the course of a number of years you could say even a decade, two decades there for us to work it out together. And the wild thing is, the reason I'm grateful is we're not arguing over whether the Genesis account or Jonah or, for goodness sake, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the center point of the gospel story is accurate both historically and theologically. These things happened. Every word of scripture is true. It's not just metaphorical or analogous, it is very much literal interpretation. I'm great with that. God is above me and I don't have to be God and kind of figure out. If God says it, I believe it. If God wants to make certain things that seem beyond my purview, my world experience, happen walking on water, et cetera why wouldn't I trust he's Lord of creation, for goodness sake. So we're not. People could look at us, at the ULC and some of the stuff that's a little bit edgy that we're doing, all we're talking about in the ULC is multiplying confessional Lutheranism with a missional edge to multiply disciples, if you want to go back and just that, that's it. And we have some wounds that I think are Seminix driven and and some really poor behavior that has been allowed, even over the last 50 years, to occur.

Speaker 3: 41:51

I'm going to make a statement. I'd love to get your take on this. I don't think and it's hard, maybe harder for you to say that as I look, just as a commentator in the LCMS, looking at the landscape, I don't think we disagree agreeably. I still don't think we have a culture of hospitality and care and, out of building trust, challenging one another. I still think we love to sit in our little camps, our little tribes, and say you know, inappropriate or less than honest things, to develop caricature, so that I feel more self-righteous about being in the right camp, around whatever it is and you could say, around confessional Lutheranism, around the liturgy or around contemporary and kind of this entrepreneurial spirit, like we can all live under that tent because we all believe in the inerrancy of scripture.

Speaker 3: 42:39

What they battled back then is not what we're battling right now. What we're battling I use that very metaphorically what we're battling is, hey, a declining church body, hey, 700 plus pulpits that need Word and Sacrament preachers to fill them so that people can hear the Word of God and respond to it empowered by the Holy Spirit. We need more collaboration and entrepreneurial ways to start new churches in a secular, post-christian culture Like. I wish we were having more robust debate around that today, and let me just put a pin in it right now. I know that that conversation just happened at the Council of Presidents, around a number of us who are eager to explore ways to amplify the ministry of both of our seminaries in partnership with co-vocational and bi-vocational ministers.

Speaker 3: 43:24

I believe that if we have an open-handed posture, not toward counter theologies, for goodness sake, but just an open-handed posture say, holy Spirit, could the book of Acts come alive in a confessional Lutheran denomination today? And if, whatever side of the confessional traditional you know contemporary, you say, I'm going to set that aside we agree, we have all pleasure, the exact same things. Let's go in mission and let's do the messy work of staying relationally tethered to one another in our varying contexts. Let's not demean one another, let's put the best construction on everything and let's be the church, the messy church. Let's live out John 17,. For goodness sake, I mean the world will know that we're followers of Jesus by the way that we love one another. We're united to Christ. We're united to one another. This is what communion is is our common union to Christ, forgiveness of sins and our walking together as a people of God. I don't know that we're living like that today, and I think a lot of it goes back to because I'm a historian right along with you.

Speaker 3: 44:25

I think a lot of it goes back to the wounds of Semenex not being healed. So there's my little rant. Talk about your top three things that you think the LCMS, especially leaders today, who are, whether you're a president of a seminary, a Concordia University of Synod, or you're kind of in the infrastructure, the bureaucracy of Synod. What are you praying? We learn today from the walkout Sherry?

Speaker 1: 44:46

Well, one thing I would say. It was just to kind of echo what you were just saying. Thank you, tim. Thank you for saying what you said. One difference is that we're all pulling in the same direction now, at least in terms of doctrine. I think that we are, and I actually think that we need to care more about doctrine than we currently are. We may pay lip service to that or act as if we are, but I think we actually need to start taking it seriously, in part because what you just said, tim, is so right.

Speaker 1: 45:17

We're bringing this word of God to the world, but we're not putting any conditions on it. We're not telling the Holy Spirit how it should be. This is different from the way that some people in the synod back in the 50s and 60s wanted to do this. They wanted to kind of accommodate the word of God. I think the reason that they went into the higher criticism stuff was so that they could find a way to present the word of God to modern people in a way that they would accept it. So, in other words, kind of willing to change the message to accommodate. We don't. We're not doing that now. We're bringing the word of God. We're trusting that the spirit will work in the hearts and minds of people and and create faith and sustain faith, and we're not making any excuse excuses for what God says in his word, and I think that's really important.

Speaker 1: 46:01

Another thing that I would I think is important to keep in mind is that that, at least in the past, we had a lot of energy and zeal for bringing the word of God to people. I think what this, what has always made the Synod work effectively, is number one dedication to the teaching of the scriptures and the Lutheran doctrine. We've always had an emphasis on that, but we've always paired that with a zeal for outreach and mission. If we're not doing both of those things, then we're sunk right. If we just pick one, then we're in trouble, but both of those go together. I think the church should always be reminding of itself and here's maybe something that we really need to trumpet today that the central task of the church is mission and outreach, and with that comes the word of God to bring to the world.

Speaker 1: 46:59

The other thing that I would say in connection there's a lot we could probably say about this, but the other thing that I think is really, really important for us to remember and this is something that comes out of this controversy as a reminder that we have a polity and a structure in the Missouri Synod that requires us to deal with one another as Christians. So we don't have a pope or a bishop or some little consistory on the top who just tells everybody what to do. What we have are people working together, and not just pastors, but pastors and lay people and all the church workers who are all working together for the fulfillment of the mission of the church and bringing God's word to people, holding each other accountable, being responsible in our work and working together. It's a community, collective enterprise and we are obliged to deal with one another as Christians in this whole process, and that means sitting down and resolving our disputes when they arise.

Speaker 1: 48:03

Uh, we, we can never forget that, because if we, if we end up just browbeating people, we, we, that's not the way the church, we're not called to be like that in the church. That's something else, but it's not the church. I could go on for a while, but but I think you, I hope you see.

Speaker 3: 48:21

Let's just close with this. I really appreciate you and what you mean, what your voice means for our church body in 2024 and beyond. So we're probably with Jesus 50 years from now. Our kids and grandkids are, are kind of leading the charge of the church at pray. The Lutheran church Missouri synod is still kind of in the kingdom expanding game here in the United States of America at that time, what do you hope? What do you hope we're known for 50 years from now, Jerry faithfulness to God's word with, with joy and with a missionary zeal and bringing God's word to people.

Speaker 3: 49:03

That's it, Jack. Any final comments.

Speaker 4: 49:06

No, I couldn't add any more to it. I would mirror that same desire for myself.

Speaker 3: 49:13

Amen, Amen and Jerry, if people want to connect with you, how can they do so? Brother, in the work that God's doing at Concordia Seminary.

Speaker 1: 49:18

Well, you can find me on the website, my email address bodig at csledu, or my phone number, 314-505-7391. I'd be happy to talk more.

Speaker 3: 49:29

Love it. I am Tim Allman. With Jack Kauberg, we got the privilege of hanging out with the one and only Reverend Dr Jerry Bodie. You are a gift to me, a gift to the church. Keep it up. If you hear the clarion bells in the background, we are recording this on call day. It's a festive day. Church workers, pastors, call and ordain servants of the word in time being sent out for love and good deeds, to care for churches. And this is, if you're one of those new graduates to care for, to shepherd well the congregation to care for, to shepherd well the congregation, and maybe, just maybe, identify others in that congregation who could do the same and maybe, just maybe, you start other churches In that growing area. We need more churches today in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to be sure where word and sacrament can be rightly taught and administered and the mission of Jesus can go forward. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. What a joy. Thanks Jerry, thanks Jack, thank you.

Speaker 4: 50:24

God bless.

Speaker 3: 50:25

God bless.

Speaker 2: 50:30

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