Why ATS Accreditation?

I am sometimes asked, "Why did you seek Association of Theological Schools (ATS) accreditation for ILT's Christ School of Theology? You already had Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) accreditation. Why wasn't that enough? 

While I have many friends at ABHE, gaining ATS accreditation was a very important step for us at the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT). According to the ABHE website, the following ABHE schools offer some type of doctorate: 

• American Evangelical University
• Beulah Heights University
• Bridges Christian College and Seminary 
• California Prestige University 
• Calvary University 
• Carolina Christian College 
• Columbia International University 
• Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary 
• Family of Faith Christian University 
• Georgia Central University 
• Henry Appenzeller University 
• Huntsville Bible College 
• International Reformed University and Seminary 
• Lancaster Bible College 
• Luther Rice College and Seminary 
• Mid-South Christian College 
• Midwest University 
• Northwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Moody Bible Institute 
• Olivet University
• South Florida Bible College and Theological Seminary 
• Texas Baptist Institute and Seminary 
• Universidad Pentacostal Mizpa 
• Veritas College International Graduate School 
• Wesley Bible Seminary 
• World Mission University 

Outside of Moody Bible Institute and perhaps Lancaster Bible College, it is unlikely that most reading this, particularly most Lutherans, have heard of many of the other schools above. Although there are no doubt wonderful faculty and students at these institutions, they have not in general gained academic notoriety.  Part of this is due to the credentialing of their faculty. Of schools approximately our size, about 47% of regular and adjunct faculty at ABHE schools have terminal degrees.  

Now consider the following truncated list of ATS schools that are approved to offer a PhD. 

• Boston University
• Brite Divinity
• Calvin Theological Seminary 
• Catholic University of America
• Chicago Theological Seminary 
• Columbia Bible Seminary 
• Concordia Seminary, St. Louis
• Dallas Theological Seminary
• Drew University Theological Seminary 
• Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 
• Graduate Theological Union
• Iliff School of Theology
• Kairos University 
• Knox College 
• Luther Seminary 
• Lutheran School of Theology Chicago
• McMaster Divinity School 
• Princeton Theological Seminary 
• Trinity College Faculty of Divinity
• Union Theological Seminary
• United Lutheran Seminary 
• University of Chicago Divinity School 
• University of Notre Dame Department of Theology 
• Villanova University Department of Theology 
• Westminster Theological Seminary 
• Wycliffe College 

Most people reading this has no doubt heard of the majority of these schools, five of which are Lutheran (including are Christ School of Theology). Almost all faculty in ATS institutions have terminal degrees.  

So, to which list ought ILT's Christ School of Theology be compared? 

We are Lutheran and 93% of our regular, adjunct and visiting faculty have PhDs. (When checking us out on the ATS website, always search 'Christ School of Theology at ILT'. We have been ATS-accredited for over a year. Find us here at the ATS site.)  Clearly, our faculty credentialing points to a deeper affinity with ATS than ABHE. 

In addition, Lutherans are accustomed to having their theological schools accredited by ATS who accredits 228 institutions in the USA and 263 total in North American.  (ABHE, by comparison, lists 117 accredited schools.)  A majority of the faculty at Lutheran seminaries in North America have been trained at ATS-accredited institutions, while very few if any hold PhDs from ABHE institutions. (Realize that both Harvard and Yale Divinity schools belong to ATS, but while both institutions offer PhDs, they do not do so through their divinity schools so are hence not on the PhD list.) 

The Institute of Lutheran Theology mission is to "preserve, promote and propagate the classical Christian tradition from a Lutheran perspective." To accomplish this, it must train not only pastors, but teachers of those pastors. This can be done only by providing the type of theological education found in our nation's best theological schools. While we could be credible perhaps training pastors in the Lutheran tradition without ATS accreditation, we cannot be credible training the teachers of those pastors. If we want to preserve and promote the Christian tradition, we must know it deeply, and this demands that the competitive set to ILT's theological programming be those schools offering ATS-accredited programming. 

It takes a very long time to build reputation in the accreditation world. ABHE is a very good accrediting agency, but it does not yet enjoy the reputation of ATS. While one might argue that the schools of ATS are more faithful to Scripture than the schools of ATS, this assertion would engender much opposition among ATS members whom I know. So what does ATS' reputation add for ILT? 

1) ATS-accreditation gives ILT's Christ School of Theology the opportunity to receive major grants from theological grant agencies, most of which do not provide grants to non-ATS school. ILT's Christ School of Theology has in the 2024-25 academic year been so far awarded an ATS Lead forward grant for $25,000 and a $50,000 Phase I Pathways grant from Lilly, and has other significant grant applications pending.   

2) ATS-accreditation allows us to build strategic partnerships that likely otherwise would not happen. We have made two new strategic partnerships in 2024-25, one with Global Methodists issuing in the Center for Wesleyan Studies, and one with members of the LCMS eventuating in the Center for Missional and Pastoral Leadership.  Stay tuned for updates on this front! 

3) ATS-accreditation allows us to attract a cadre of very accomplished faculty who might otherwise not associate with us. It is not unusual now to encounter faculty hoping to connect with us with PhDs from Chicago, Princeton, and Harvard, and with very significant publication records. 

4) ATS-accreditation allows us to pursue corporate and institutional gifts not otherwise available to us, and to fundraise in other areas of the world. ATS-accreditation is recognized around the world, and so it grants us more credibility with foreign donors.  

5) ATS-accreditation allows ILT and its Christ School of Theology to carry out global aims through possible reciprocity agreements with non-North American accreditation agencies which would allow ILT operations in regions of the world that might otherwise be closed to us. 

6) Finally, some students will only embark on study with us if we are ATS-accredited. I personally had discussions with four whom ultimately opted to study at ILT who nonetheless claim that the would not nave considered study here were we only ABHE-accredited. 

It is indeed a new day at ILT's Christ School of Theology. We are hoping to increase student enrollment by 25% from fall 2024 to fall 2025.  Browse our programming as well at our new Center for the Word and Christ College!  

What will the Institute of Lutheran Theology Become?

Some of you ask about the future of the Institute of Lutheran Theology and what we are doing now to actualize that future.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology began in humility. We were without adequate funding, had no faculty, and very definitely unaccredited. We had decided to do education online, but online programs were often dismissed by the academy as not sufficiently rigorous. At best, we were thought about as a well-intentioned group dedicated to "training a few Lutheran pastors."

Slowly we have been changing people's perceptions of us. While we had acquired a very good faculty by the end of 2011, we still were "unaccredited." After getting ABHE accreditation, we were disparaged as being "online" and only accredited by an "undergraduate accrediting agency." After theological education moved towards online education after Covid and ABHE became recognized by the USDE for its graduate programs, we still were charged for not having "ATS accreditation -- the gold standard for theology."

After receiving ATS accreditation last March, successfully bringing new partners to the table, and further developing our PhD program, we are sometimes now charged with "creating scholars, not pastors." While our "Center for Congregational Revitalization" initiative clearly counts against this, people continue to wonder about us, and what we want to accomplish.

Here is what we want to accomplish:

• Working through the creation of strategic partnerships, we shall grow the Christ School of Theology five-fold in the next decade, making us one of the largest (or largest) Lutheran seminary in the English-speaking world.

• Grow our current PhD program of 35 students to 125 excellent PhD candidates by 2034, making the Christ School of Theology the de facto center of Reformation-based theological education in the English-speaking world.

• Grow our undergraduate Christ College in ways of excellence so that the conferral of a degree from Christ College is highly-valued in the academic world. We shall grow Christ College in ways consonant with the overall developmental trajectory of the Christ School of Theology.

• Develop ILT's Center for the Word by developing its "centers," e.g., the Center for Congregational Revitalization, a Center for Wesleyan Studies, a Center for Pastoral Leadership and Mission, a Center for Forde Studies, etc. Being Lutheran means connecting with others taking seriously the classical Christian tradition.

• Establish a true "Institute of Lutheran Theology" at our Center for the Word, an Institute that shall connect important Lutheran theological emphases to the three audiences of which Edward Farley spoke: The Church, the Public, and the Academy. Through the Institute we shall perform the research necessary to engage deeply the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon, seeking to disseminate the results of our research through journals, monographs, and podcasts.

We shall not ask our wonderful individual and congregational donors to bear all of the costs of this developmental trajectory. Instead, we shall apply for and procure appropriate grants to help make this possible. We just received one from ATS, and finished another grant application with Lilly that we believe shall be funded as part of the effort to apply for a major Lilly grant in late spring. We will be applying for InTrust and Templeton grants within the next couple of months as well.

We ask for your prayers along the way. God called ILT into being, and I think He has rather big plans for us. We have the right technology for our time and scholars who are now with us, or who soon will be with us, to make this possible.

At the end of the day, we simply want to get the Good News of Jesus Christ proclaimed with passion and creativity in pulpits throughout the world. To do this means we shall have to disrupt the industry some, and that we will have to create a cadre of theological teachers and researchers recognizing the centrality of preaching "not cleverly devised fables," but the universal significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Make no mistake: truth is at issue. We shall partner with any and all of those who are called to such preaching and for whom truth is at issue.

Announcing VERBA VITAE

What does it mean to be the Christ School of Theology?

As many readers might know, the Institute of Lutheran Theology's seminary and graduate school is called the Christ School of Theology, and we are all about the accreditation of this institution. 

When checking our accreditation with the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) find us under The Institute of Lutheran Theology.  View our ABHE fact sheet here: https://app.weaveeducation.com/publicFiles/institutionprofilepdfs/Institute_of_Lutheran_Theology-ABHE_-_Association_for_Biblical_Higher_Education_Fact_Sheet.pdf.  We have been a full member of ABHE since initial accreditation in 2018.  We successfully achieved our first ten-year accreditation with ABHE at the 2023 February meeting of ABHE's Commission on Accreditation. 

When checking on us on the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) website, always look for Christ School of Theology. Christ School of Theology is the accreditable entity as for as ATS is concerned.  You can find us on the ATS website here: https://www.ats.edu/member-schools/christ-school-of-theology-of-the-institute-of-lutheran-theology.  While we have not been officially accredited by ATS's Commission on Accreditation yet, we are already Associate members of the ATS, and are engaged in many activities with them.  We are working hard to get our self-study complete this year, and anticipate an ATS visit in February of 2024.  

My thoughts in 2005-06 was that a new Lutheran House of Studies was needed that would serve all Lutherans -- especially ELCA Lutherans. This House of Studies, I argued, should be independent, autonomous and accredited, should assume the basic hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation on Scripture, and should be straightforwardly realist in its understanding of God and of theological language generally.  ILT, I thought, should be fully engaged with the question of truth, particularly the question of how to connect the truth of theology with the truths of the special sciences.   

ILT will begin its fifteenth year of offering classes in the fall of 2023 and, I must say, we are moving forward nicely. I always knew that ILT could produce pastors because we have from the beginning been blessed with great students and a renowned faculty. However, because we are not a LCMS, ELCA or Wisconsin Synod seminary, we don't have an already established market for students studying to be pastors. As our Wikepedia page says, we do prepare pastors for the Canadian Association of Lutheran Congregations, the Augsburg Lutheran Churches, Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) and the North American Lutheran Church (NALC).  We are happy to have such important work to do. 

However, other seminaries compete with us, particularly within the LCMC and the NALC.  While we believe we have the deepest program for students in these two church bodies, our program is quite traditional, with heavy doses of Biblical Theology, History of Theology, Systematic and Pastoral Theology.  It takes time to achieve an ILT education and not everybody wants to take the time, or perhaps has the time, to go through a program like ours. But I believe that our age demands more deeply prepared pastors than has perhaps been the case in the past.  Accordingly, we shall always serve these constituencies, and we shall always try to grow our ministry programs.  

To really effect change in the contour of Lutheran theology in North America, we would need to train perhaps 1,000 pastors over the next 10 years. 1,000 very well-educated pastor-theologians who would take very seriously the traditional truth claims of theology would likely alter the course of the church bodies we serve and the North American Lutheran traditions from which they were born.  ILT's Christ School of Theology will always take seriously the task of raising up the next generations of Lutheran pastors, and we hope to train 1,000 pastors -- though to do so in 10 years would demand that more markets become open to us. 

From the beginning, however, ILT has had another task, a task parallel to that of raising up the next generation of Lutheran pastors.  As I wrote already in 2007, we must raise up the next generations of Lutheran professors and teachers.  We must tend to our theological traditions theologically.  We need people involved in an effort that will issue in the making of a new class of theologians, theologians who know the the great Christian deeply as it has been understood by the Lutheran Confessions, people who have a profound grasp of the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon and who can adroitly relate this tradition to the contemporary horizon.  

From the beginning we have created opportunities in ILT for advanced study, but now we are experiencing something at ILT we could maybe not have expected 17 years ago.  Although I knew that ILT must train future theologians, I did not realize in 2005-06, the degree to which God would bless our efforts at building a real theological institute.  

The last three years have shown very strong growth in our post-M.Div programming: the STM, the Doctor of Ministry, and especially the PhD.  People are seeking us out to study because they trust us to allow them to encounter the great texts of the tradition in creative and fruitful ways.  We don't tell the students that the great texts of the tradition must be avoided because they are not sufficiently sensitive to issues of class, sex, race, orientation, etc.  We are not deeply suspicious of the western canon as some are.  Paraphrasing Barth, we believe that we should take the presuppositions of that canon at least as seriously as our own.  Since we trust the tradition, we encourage our students to engage it deeply. 

What does ILT's Christ School want to be when it grows up?  While I cannot predict exactly what the Christ School will look like in fifty years, I do hope that I know what it will mean to be the Christ School then.  To be the Christ School of theology is to take very seriously the Holy Scriptures and the traditions of interpreting those Scriptures.  To take these Scriptures seriously means that this texts are not something of the past, but living and breathing documents of today, documents which engage us and open for us possibilities of our being. God's grace is, after all, something he dispenses each and every day, even as we living within the paradigms of the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon.  Simply put, the documents confront us with the very question of salvation, the question that separates human beings from the beasts below them and the angels above, the question that will always remain orthogonal to the concerns of AI and the "machining of our culture."  

The Christ School of Theology is growing rapidly, particularly at the D.Min and PhD levels.  How big might we be next year?  If the trends I am seeing continue, we will have between 30-35 PhD students studying in the fall of 2023,  20-25 D.Min students, and 10-15 STM students.  This means that 60-75 of our students next fall will likely be doing advanced work in theology.  

We celebrate this! It is a God thing! The students are coming from almost all of the Lutheran traditions and beyond these traditions as well.  Our ATS headcount of 96 in the fall of 2022 could see another 15% increase next fall.  We are building the Christ School of Theology not by watering down who we are, but by embracing it the more deeply.  We are not a divinity school, but a flesh-and-blood Lutheran seminary dedicated to taking seriously Lutheran truth claims.  In a time in which seminaries are shrinking, ours is growing.  

I have been discussing here our seminary and graduate school and have not addressed our undergraduate school, Christ College. Nor have I talked about ILT's library and all of the publishing planned to flow from it.  These demand separate posts.  Here I have simply wanted to remind all what it means to be the Christ School of Theology.  We live the commitment to our heritage while at the same time being wholly vulnerable to our intellectual and cultural horizon.  This way of living is, we think, what the theology of the Cross is all about.  

ILT Commencement Address June 2022

It was an honor to offer the first commencement address for the Institute of Lutheran Theology's graduates from Christ School of Theology and Christ College on Thursday, June 16, 2022.  There were 14 students who walked last week.  Congratulations all!  

__________________________

Grace and peace to you in the Name of the Risen Lord! 

 

You made it!  Some of you made it just this last semester, and some semesters long ago.  Regardless of when you completed your programs, we are proud of you!  

 

We just completed the ILT Board Meeting this morning. We talked about operations, policies, budgets and the future.  And we talked about you!  You are so very important to us, and I want you to remember this throughout what I shall say today. 

 

This summer some of my PhD students are reading two very important books from the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995): Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being.  Levinas in these texts does something bold and new. He claims, in fact, that most of the western intellectual tradition has simply missed what is completely obvious: There is much more to things than just our thinking about them, our categorizing, explaining and knowing of them. 

 

There is the Other, he argues, that which is truly not-I, but is irreducibly more than merely not being I. Levinas claims, in fact, that the Other is infinite; we can never think deeply enough or sense precisely enough to be able to grasp the Other as other than my grasping of it. We have an inexorable Desire for this Other, says Levinas. We want to escape our world and flee into it.   

 

This Other, declares Levinas, resists the Totality of the Same. It halts every effort to comprehend it. It confronts my life of freedom with demand.  I encounter the Other though the human Face. The Face and eyes of the Other place a demand upon me that limits the freedom of the world I have built and in which I dwell. According to Levinas, the Face of the Other is a trace of God. Accordingly, religion pertains to the irreducible, unbridgeable gap between my activity and my projects and the Face of the One whose meeting cannot be comprehended in and through my activity and my projects. 

 

The Other meets me as demand, but every fiber of my being wants to deny the pull of the Other and to make the Other into the Same, that is, into more of me. Accordingly, I who am drawn to the world of the Other, want a world without an Other, for I can dwell comfortably in such a world. I am quite at home in the sameness of my world until the Other’s nomadic sojourn, until this Stranger arrives. The Other announces itself to me in and through my discomfort. Now I, who am no longer at home, must have a face-to-face encounter with one who is not of my world. 

 

Levinas has a particular take on the philosophical notion of transcendence.  His teachers Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger thought mightily on this topic. Husserl believed that the I transcends itself when it knows what is not it. Because consciousness is directed toward an object, conscious life is ecstatic.  To be conscious, to be self-conscious, is to be conscious of that which is not the self.  In Husserlian talk, every noetic act has noematic content, and all noematic content presuppose a noetic act.  

 

His student Heidegger too was concerned with transcendence.  Human being is that “being-there” which is being-always-already-in-a-world.  To be is to have a world in which to be.  Human existence for Heidegger is thus ecstatic.  To be is to be always already outside oneself. There is no bare identity to the self.  The self is the self in being other than a mere self. It is what it is in the world which it is not.  

 

Levinas thought that both Husserl and Heidegger were not bold enough in conceiving transcendence.  He argued that both philosophers ultimately tried to understand the Other on the basis of the same, and thus never really go to the Other at all. Instead Levinas opts for a real encounter with the Other, an Other that can be no part of the Same.  We live, dream, plan and execute in the Totality of the Same.  Our lives, dreams, plans and deeds are the deposits of our own freedom.  We are comfortable. Then comes the Other from a place outside the Same, an Other that pushes us beyond ourselves, beyond the boundaries of the Same. We transcend toward the Other.  

 

In the Face of the Other, in the vulnerability of his or her eyes, I am lifted beyond my own projects. I am no longer the one I seemingly inescapably am, no longer the one trapped in the freedom and comfort of my self-narrative. The Other grants me an ecstasis beyond being all I can be, beyond being who I authentically am, beyond being the one who in its being lives the possibility of no more being. The Other seizes me and all my dreams of self and Same are shattered.

 

So what does the relation between the Same and Other have to do with you who graduate from ILT?  Why have I started my commencement speaking by speaking in such a way? 

 

You have all been to graduations, and you know the drill. Graduation day is the day to talk about the graduates, their lives as students, their overcoming of adversity, their accomplishments, skills, dreams, and opportunities.  Graduation Day celebrates the student after years of emphasizing the professors.  Graduation day is pregnant with future possibilities.  

 

But the President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology cannot talk about you in this way. Why?

 

Because you are neither your possibilities nor your actualities. You are, in fact, not you. You are beings who in your being are ecstatically connected with something not of your world. Accordingly, you are beings who shall preach and teach without a career. You are beings who shall pray and serve in denial of searching for or finding yourselves.  You are beings who are not who you are, but are only in pushing beyond to what you are not.  

 

Let me make this clear. ILT has not prepared you to live fully, but rather to come and die. ILT has not offered you opportunities to get ahead in life, but has pushed you to the edge of life.  ILT has not given you courage to be yourself, but has robbed you of the illusion of self.  Why say such things on this day of days?  

 

When Christ calls a person, He calls that person to come and die. This death is the death of the self, the end of the Totality of the Same, the abnegation of the creaturely life of enjoyment within the Father’s creation. This Call from the Stranger, from the One who perpetually sojourns, is a call to live outside the self and upon the boundary, it is a call back from the monotony of being into the rupture of meta-physics, a call to that which is beyond physics and all its being. 

 

Let me make this even more clear. ILT is not about its students, its faculty, its curriculum, its staff, its Board, its alumni or its donors. ILT is not about ILT. ILT is not at all about the Totality of the Same, but rather about the ecstasy of the Other. ILT is about that which ruptures all of its own projects.  ILT is in the call toward what is not. ILT is about the Christ.  

 

Graduates of ILT, you have been called to extraordinary lives, because you are called to a life that ends your life. You have a serious task at hand, a task much more serious than your life. Your task is witness to that Other who displays His traces in the eyes and faces of those you encounter. The master lives in his own house, but the servant lives in another’s. You servants who face Faces of divine traces, have ultimately one and only one otherworldly task. You must listen!  

 

You, whose lives are not your own, you, who have no careers, you, who live the discomfort and displacement of all that makes you you, you must listen to a Word that cannot be your word, a Word that destroys your illusions to lead, a Word that  annihilates the deepest pleasures of Creation itself, a Word that seizes you,  strangles you, and suffocates the last vestiges of your own freedom, a Word otherly distant but proximately fascinating. 

 

What advice can I give graduates of ILT?  

 

Live in the ecstasy of this Word. Dwell not in the meadows of the Same, but rather in the desert of the Other. Listen to this Word from that place beyond being that calls you to a deep service of your neighbor, a call not built upon the reasonability of such service, but rather gifted by the absurdity of the call itself.  Live, hearing the Word that propels you to the ultimate boundary of this world, live the Word that demands, but loves in and through those demands.  

What advice can I give to graduates of ILT?  “Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom.12:2), a renewing that can never be of this world, but can be only in being otherwise than being, can be only through the free grace of Jesus the Christ.  What I am saying should now be clear. Hear the Word that loves, graces, frees, transforms, and renews; hear this Word not as words about the Word but as the Word itself, as the Word that assumed flesh and dwelt among us.  Hear the Word whose doing in you drives you away from yourself and towards the Spirit, the Holy Spirit who will ultimately equip you for ministry.

 

Graduates, we have learned from you and have been changed by you.  Your faces among us have made us more than we are. Your time here was precious for us. We know that you are not ours, but His. We now wait, listening for the Word that words in and through your words. We wait as you preach, teach, and witness to that Other, an Other that sounds forth from where we ought to be, but can never find ourselves.  We wait as the Word that words in your words reclaims the Same for service of the Other, an Other who is wholly holy.  

 

We are created as nomads who profoundly prefer to wander in the labyrinths of the Other than settle in villages of the Same. But we have exchanged our birthright for a mass of pottage (Gen 25:29-34) and have become squatters upon the Same, thus erasing and defacing the Other. But then the Word spoken by your lips, graduates, speaks Truth. You are not your own, but His, so you need no longer worry about being you. 

So what ultimate good could come from the goodness of life when compared to wandering in the wilderness of the Holy? 

 

ATS Fall Headcount and FTE for Lutheran Institutions and an Update on Progress at Institute of Lutheran Theology

It is time for my yearly update on the growth of the Institute of Lutheran Theology with respect to Lutheran Seminaries in North America. 

ILT had a combined headcount of 101 in the F 2021 and a FTE of 81.26. The graduate school alone, Christ School of Theology, had a headcount of 79 with an FTE of 68.72.  This places ILT in ninth place in size among the 21 Lutheran seminaries. Below are the numbers for the fall of 2021, with the first number reporting headcount and the second in parenthesis giving the student FTE. ATS schools numbers are easiest to find, and I must confess to almost guessing on some of the other institutions.   

Of real interest is that the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary is now ATS accredited and claiming to have a FTE and headcount of 174. This would make it the sixth largest Lutheran institution in North America. 

ILT's Christ School of Theology is beginning the process of ATS accreditation, having had its first ATS visit in February. I am very optimistic the partnership we will have with ATS going forward. 

Concordia Seminary (LCMS) 603 (377)

Luther Seminary (ELCA): 476 (330)

Concordia Theological Seminary (LCMS): 307 (217)

Warburg Seminary (ELCA): 231 (198)

United Lutheran Seminary (ELCA): 342 (184)

Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary (WELS): 174 (174) 

Martin Luther University (ELCIC): 134 (110)

Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago (ELCA): 129 (103) 

INSTITUTE OF LUTHERAN THEOLOGY: 101 (81.26), 79 (68.72) grad school alone

Trinity School of Ministry (where the NALS is housed): 152 (65)

Lutheran Theological Southern (ELCA): 57 (46.3)

Trinity Seminary (ELCA): 43 (35)

Bethany Theological Seminary (Brethren): 55?

Pacific Lutheran (ELCA): 49 (40)

Lutheran Brethren Seminary: 40?

Free Lutheran Bible College: 25?

ALTS (AALC): 25??

Bethany Lutheran Theological Sem (ELS): 16?

Concordia Lutheran Ontario (LCC): 19 (14)

LTS Saskatoon (ELCIC): 17 (11)

Concordia Lutheran Edmonton (LCC): 7 (7). 

Documents Pertaining to the Founding of the Institute of Lutheran Theology: A Lutheran House of Studies

There was once an organization called the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans (FOCL), and they had a publication which I recall was called FOCL News. I penned this article on the new "Lutheran House of Studies" for that publication in order to get the word out. I believe it was written and published sometime in the summer of or fall of 2006.  You can see that I was interested from the beginning in establishing a theological ethos at ILT, and wanted to address this question: Given the different interpretations of subsequent traditions of foundational documents, what can ILT do to vouchsafe some normative approach to interpreting those documents? Theological realism, semantic realism, and the possibility of theophysical causation are advanced as possible "grammars" by which foundational documents could be read. 

__________

A Lutheran House of Studies

Dennis Bielfeldt, Ph. D. 

WordAlone earnestly desires to establish a new confessional Lutheran theological house of studies.  But some ask, “Why?  Why does Lutheranism need another place trying to train pastors confessionally?  What is so wrong with what we have?  While things aren’t perfect, perhaps, they aren’t that bad either.  Why does WordAlone think it can establish an institution more confessional than what has already been planted in ELCA, LCMS or WELS soil?  Why does it believe that the effort and expense will bear good fruit?”

These are important questions, of course, and it seems that the so-called “Director of the WordAlone Lutheran theological house of studies” (my official title these days) should have ready answers to them.  When the WordAlone Convention in May adopted a plan for implementation of the house of studies, it voted on a report in which I spoke of several challenges facing seminary education within the ELCA.  At that time, I saw six major issues:  

• an economic challenge
• a sociological challenge
• a leadership challenge
• a theological challenge
• an authority challenge
• a rights challenge

I still believe that these identify the major difficulties facing theological education within the ELCA, and I recommend that FOCL readers examine the Report and form their own opinions as to its accuracy. This report, I believe, gives the rationale for why another Lutheran institution is necessary for the training of future pastors and teachers.    

If this list is accurate, however, and is successfully answers questions of why we need a confessional House of Studies now within the ELCA context, it does not address the further question of the general theological contour of that house of studies.  Given that the house of studies is “confessional,” what does “being confessional” mean for its curriculum and teaching?   Even more profoundly, what does “being confessional” mean within Lutheranism generally in our time?  

The easy answer to the question of what “being confessional” means is this: For an educational institution to be confessional is for it to privilege the historic confessions of its tradition such that they become foundational (and normative) for the piety, teaching and research of the institution.  

Unfortunately, this definition is inadequate.  Because our postmodern times allow (and often encourage) multiple readings of texts, two or more institutions grounded on the same confessional texts might have quite different theological trajectories.  All the ELCA seminaries can make a claim to privilege Scripture and the Lutheran confessional writings, yet it is obvious that some have departed more significantly from traditional Lutheran theological affirmations than have others.  Many celebrate this departure from the tradition as a departure entailed by the radicality of God’s love for us in Christ.  (This is clearly true with regard to the sexuality/homsexuality debate raging within the ELCA.)  

So how can this situation be fixed?  Indeed, how might one fix the interpretations of the Confessions so that they might not drift?  What kind of interpretation of Scripture can block interpretations attempting to say that Scripture itself says nothing about the sinfulness of homosexuality?  What kind of interpretation of the Confessions and the confessional tradition can block interpretations saying that the Reformers “earnestly desired” to retain Bishops in historical succession with Rome, and thus that Lutherans are mandated by their own confessions to seek visible, ecclesial unity with Rome? 

In the absence of a present normative consensus as to what the texts of the Confessions mean, it becomes important to make clear from the beginning that it is not the text itself that grounds a tradition, but rather a particular interpretation of the text.  A particular reading of the text, established in part by its situational context, functions normatively and determines, at least partially, the character of any educational institution regarding that text as foundational. 

My motivation in offering the WordAlone “fundamentals” is to try to determine if there is sufficient theological clarity in the WordAlone movement to establish normatively a range of interpretations of the Lutheran confessional documents.   Given that Lutherans holding to Scriptures and Confessions believe many different things about what Scriptures and Confessions mean and presuppose, is there sufficient clarity within WordAlone to be able to determine for these documents a range of appropriate meanings?  What “take” on Scripture and Confessions has seemed to be operating in the WordAlone movement since its inception, a “take” that might be worked up into a list of central theological affirmations or assumptions? 

My own attempt at articulating these affirmations of WordAlone appear on the WordAlone website, but I include them also below.  I believe that these assertions function as the differentia which give WordAlone its identity as a species within Lutheranism.      

• Theological statements have truth-conditions
• God is real, that is, God exists out and beyond human awareness, perception, conception and language
• God is causally related to the universe
• All temporal structures, institutions and conceptual frameworks are historically-conditioned      Nothing finite is infinite
• The true church is not visible, but remains hidden
• The Holy Spirit works monergistically, not synergistically, upon sinners effecting saving faith

While all seven statements are important, the first four are especially significant in our theological context and thus I have developed them quite extensively in a longer article that I hope to have published soon. I have space here only to touch upon the first four. 

The first assertion makes the semantic claim that what makes a theological statement true is some extra-subjective reality that is relatable to the subject.  This statement clearly denies that theological language could merely refer to the self, or to the attitudes, values and orientations of a community.  In addition, it claims that theological statements must be more than simple rules by which a community organizes its religious life together.   Theological statements function as rules, I believe, only if the community believes them true, only if it thinks these statements state what is, in fact, the case.   

The second and third assertions are ontological.  They claim that there is some reality to God that is not merely reducible to human experience.  Over and against the dominant theological tradition of the last 200 years, the third claim is that God is causally connected to the universe, that there are at least some physical events that would not have obtained had God not causally-influenced them to do so.  These two assertions are important because they bring God out of the “causal isolation” presupposed in the development of much Lutheran theology since the time of Kant in 1781.  For Kant, God could not be a substance causally-related to the universe, but was instead an “ideal of pure reason.”    

Finally, assertion four has epistemological consequences.  All objects of knowledge, and all acts or knowing, are denizens of time and are thereby limited by other events within time.  Thus, there can be no knowledge of any such objects that are not affected by history.  Every act of knowing is historically-conditioned.  We have no immediate knowledge of things as they are in themselves, no “bird’s eye view” from which to gaze out on things and know them absolutely.  This is so for all acts of knowing, even when it is the divine that is known.  This affirmation clearly admits that God is hidden, but does not thereby make a diminished ontological claim about God simply because we cannot know God as He is apart from Christ.   

So how is it that the proposed house of studies might successfully establish a normative standpoint on the Confessions such that they become the foundational documents which they must be if they are to govern the subsequent educational trajectory of the institution?  How does the WordAlone House of Studies guarantee that it will not become just another expression of a liberal Protestant ethos in North America?

The simple answer is this:  If the WordAlone Network can agree on some rather key theological issues, it can establish its house of studies upon on the ground of this consensus.  Without some normative theological underpinning, a WordAlone house of studies will drift and shift according to the prevailing theological winds of the day.  Let us examine how establishing a normative theological center might affect the house of studies.    

Lutherans within and outside the WordAlone Network will likely agree that God confronts us in Law and Gospel, and that the address of the Gospel has salvific significance for its auditors.  Lutherans within and outside WordAlone will emphasize the performative nature of first-order statements - - statements referring to the primary objects of theology - - bespeaking God’s grace in and despite human sinfulness.   But clearly a majority of folks within the ELCA see no tension between this emphasis and the practice of a mandated historic episcopate.  Thus, there is a disconnect between a lively Law/Gospel application of Scripture and “issues of church organization” like the acceptance of the historic episcopate.  The problem is a very deep one, and it goes to the very heart of some rather profound theological issues.  

I believe that a presupposition of much ELCA thinking is that second-order theological language - - statements dealing with the relationship of theological objects and the first-order sentences bespeaking them - - does not literally have truth-conditions (that is, that its statements are not literally true or false).  While all can agree on the abundance of God’s grace in the linguistic encounter in sermon and text, many will assume that further statements about God are unwarranted and even misleading.  For instance, why would one ever want to say that ‘God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language’ or that ‘God is causally-related to the universe’?  Why would one need to say these things, if the reality of God’s grace is communicated through first-order language?   For many liberal Protestants, the problems begin when one begins to speak about God.  If this is true, why would one want to affirm statements about God?  

The response to this is two-fold: 1) We need second-order language about God to state what it is we actually believe, and to ground what it is we shall teach about God; and 2) What it is we actually believe about God does influence the hearer’s appropriation of the words of Law and Gospel.  

In regard to the second response, we must point out that the logic of being forgiven entails that there is one to forgive.  In like manner, the logic of living under divine wrath requires that there is a God who is righteously angry. While one might have an experience of being forgiven without there being God, or might have an experience of being under divine wrath without God, one simply cannot be forgiven by God or truly live under divine wrath unless there is a God.  Moreover, the contour of the experience of wrath and forgiveness is related to whether or not there is One whose wrath is kindled, and who nonetheless graciously and mercifully forgives.  What human beings believe about God dialectically links to howGod confronts us in Law and Gospel.  For instance, if John doesn’t believe God has a personal agency, then the experience of grace John has hearing the Gospel will surely be different than what he would have had were he to have held that God was a personal God.         

As another example of this, take the words of Scripture ‘fear not!’  In a particular situation, these words spoken can be words of Gospel and grace.  They certainly were so for people like Luther who understood the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness over and against a backdrop of divine wrath.  Luther and the reformers actually thought that God existed outside of them, and that this God could (and did) adopt particular attitudes about them.  Luther thought that God in his hiddenness was so awe-full, that he counseled others to keep their eyes riveted on the Christ.  The Words of Gospel promise are so sweet because the human condition before the inscrutable will of the hidden God is so dire.  

For Luther, the necessary condition for being a hidden God with inscrutable will that terrifies man and woman outside of Christ is that God is a real being having causal relations within the universe.  God is no mere idea of reason, no abstract thought about the unity or mystery of all things.  God is a living reality that is a threat to sinners - - and all of us are sinners.  It seems, that even though God is hidden, some reflection upon, or encounter with, God’s being is necessary if one is going to understand the situation as Luther did.  It should come as no shock that the confessional documents read in quite a different way to those who believe that God has independent existence outside the self.  At that point, all thinking about the gift of language stops and we are thrust back into the primal experience of awaiting a word of Gospel from God- - not because it is a word, but because it comes from God.  

Much more could be said about these things, but the point is clear.  If WordAlone can arrive at some consensus of theological opinion, then there is a foundation upon which to ground a Scripturally-engaged, and confessionally-grounded Lutheran theological house of studies.  If WordAlone is unable to define clearly what it is to be both Scripturally-engaged and confessionally-grounded, then its house of studies shall likely not prosper, and the critics who claim it ill-advised and wasteful to have attempted its establishment will themselves perhaps be vindicated.  As with most human endeavors, it is extremely important to start correctly.  

Early Documents Pertaining to the Founding of the Institute of Lutheran Theology: Proposal of the Lutheran Theological House of Studies Task Force

I would love to tell you that the 15-year old document below really was a "committee document" of a functioning task force. While I had many conversations with people, at the end of the day I simply had to write a proposal that I thought made good sense. This "Report" had weaknesses and was much too brief to establish the points I was trying to make.  However, it had to be presented at the 2006 WordAlone Annual Convention with the hope of getting the requisite votes to move forward. As I recall, the motion carried with about 87% voting the affirmative. 

__________ 

Proposal of the Lutheran Theological House of Studies Task Force

By Dr. Dennis Bielfeldt, Chair of HOS Task Force Subcommittee

Minneapolis, April 2006

Preamble

In its 2005 Annual Convention, the members of the WordAlone Network directed the “WordAlone Board to appoint a Task force to develop a plan and proposal to establish a ‘Lutheran Theological House of Studies’ using the gifts of theological teachers employing the scriptural hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation.”  I was charged to head this effort with an initial task force consisting of President Jaynan Clark Egland, Board Chair John Beem, Director Mark Chavez, and the Rev. Randy Freund.  Later, Treasurer Irv Aal joined the group. 

Over the last year members of the task force have had conversations with numerous people interested in establishing this house of studies.  We have talked to potential teachers, administrators of potential sites, potential supporters, and the WordAlone constituency.  We have visited with the Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (LCMC) Board about their hopes for a Lutheran house of studies, and had subsequent discussion with key leaders of that group.  We viewed some potential sites.  Although we have not yet listened to all of the possibilities, we are reasonably confident that we have had sufficient conversation and reflection now to bring forward to this 2006 WordAlone Convention a preliminary house of studies model that we believe has the best chance of perpetuating a Lutheran confessional witness in North America.

Options

Selecting which house of studies model to implement demands we first know the plethora of options consistent with the initial charge to “establish a Lutheran Theological House of Studies using the gifts of theological teachers employing the scriptural hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation.”  Should the house of studies be a small group of professors that semi-formally or formally pledges a commitment to solid Reformation teaching wherever they might be, or should it be a faculty with a specific geographical location?  Should it be autonomous with respect to a host institution or be freestanding?  Should it be a virtual house offering most of its courses on-line or should it be geographically located while yet having an on-line option?  If geographically located, should it use single or multiple point delivery (satellites)?  Should a house of studies be located at an ELCA seminary?  Should the house of studies offer a certification option accepted by the ELCA?  Should it offer academic degrees?  If so, how might this be done?  What should the house of studies’ task fundamentally be?  Should it exist basically to train new pastors or rostered lay leaders, to deepen the theological apprehension and acumen of existing pastors, to provide theological programs for interested laity, or to educate future teachers in the ELCA and LCMC by delivering quality graduate education?  The possibilities are really quite overwhelming.

In ordering the available options, the task force tried to determine what were really the most significant questions for building the house of studies.  We isolated the following:

• Should the house of studies seek accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS), the agency accrediting 250 graduate schools offering post-baccalaureate education in the United States and Canada?
• Should the house of studies have a geographical center, a place of location symbolizing its continuing existence as an option for post-baccalaureate theological education within North American Lutheranism?
• Should the house of studies be housed at an ELCA Seminary?
• Should we seek ELCA approval for graduates of the house of studies, i.e., should we ask the ELCA to certify or accept our graduates into its candidacy process?
• What is a realistic price tag for building such a house of studies?

Why a House of Studies?

The first step in determining the proper house of studies model is to grasp fully the present context to which the house of studies is to respond.  What is the current situation of theological education within the ELCA driving the WordAlone desire to establish a house of studies?  We believe that there are economic, sociological, leadership, and theological challenges confronting the ELCA and its seminaries, challenges so profound that we think it necessary to develop and implement a bold house of studies initiative.

The Economic Challenge

Because ELCA funding of seminaries continues to decline, seminaries must increasingly rely upon tuitional dollars to fund their educational programs.  This economic fact must not be ignored.  Seminaries today must offer programs that attract a broader range of students than was necessary in previous generations because attracting these students is requisite financially for seminaries to survive and offer any program at all.  This appeal to new constituencies has resulted in a gradual broadening of mission away from the narrow specialty task of training Lutheran pastors and lay leaders, to the broader task of offering graduate theological education to many different kinds of students, some of whom will be Lutheran pastors and rostered lay leaders.  This subtle augmentation of mission and constituency has forced seminaries to broaden beyond their traditionally focused and solidly confessional center.  Given this context, it is important that our Lutheran house of studies intentionally constitute itself to stay narrowly focused and solidly confessional in all that it does.

The Sociological Challenge

Two generations ago students matriculating at Lutheran seminaries were 22-26 year old males seeking to become Lutheran pastors.  This situation has changed dramatically.  Increasing numbers of nontraditional, second-career students, male and female, now attend seminary, many of which already have families, and many who find it exceedingly difficult to give up their occupations and move to an ELCA seminary to study.  In addition to having to pay for the majority of their seminary education, these families find that they sometimes have to live in expensive areas of the country in order to acquire this education.  As many have pointed out, the cost of seminary education is very high relative to the expected financial rewards of becoming a pastor or rostered lay leader.  Our Lutheran house of studies must address this problem of high-cost resident theological education by offering flexibility through multi-site delivery options.

The Leadership Challenge

Present leadership throughout most of the ELCA and its educational institutions came of age in the late sixties and early seventies, at a time in our nation’s history where the practical political and social demands of ending civil rights injustices and the war in Viet Nam seemed to trump deep theoretical concerns.  ELCA leadership even today tends to privilege praxis over theory, and concrete action over profound reflection.  The prospect of effecting political and social change seems, among many, to generate more excitement than penetrating theological reflection and analysis.  In a leadership ethos privileging praxis over theory, confessional particularity is correspondingly de-emphasized.  Leadership is concerned with “practical” issues of political and ecclesiastical policy rather than confessional specifics.  But our Lutheran theological house of studies must take its confessions very seriously, and it must know that responsible concrete political and social action is ultimately grounded in our confessional substance.

The Theological Challenge

The ELCA Bishop Mark Hanson affirmed last year Dr. Craig Nessan’s assertion that there were two irreconcilable yet valid ways of interpreting Scripture in the ELCA, one traditional and the other contextual.  There is great irony in his comment, for the necessary condition for saying that there are two equally valid ways to interpret Scripture is to say that the traditional way that sought in Scripture the norm and rule of faith and life cannot be sustained.  Clearly, if autonomous human reason has determined that there are two equally valid ways, it has already stepped outside the traditional reformation hermeneutic on Scripture, a hermeneutic that denied that human reason could autonomously apply external hermeneutical forms to Scriptural substance.

If, in fact, Hanson and Nessan are correct and human reason can properly apply different methods to the reading of Scripture in order to get different results, then we are in a position not unlike that of the late Middle Ages when Luther criticized the fourfold method of Biblical interpretation.  According to that method, all of Scripture can be read for its literal/historical, allegorical, tropological and anagogical senses.  Luther criticized this because it made human beings master over Scripture; it made it the work of human beings determine what a passage really meant or ought to mean.  By eliminating all other senses than the literal/historical, Luther allowed Scripture to be its own interpreter.  Human beings do not control what Scripture means, only Scripture does.  Scripture interprets itself.  The Word of God in Scripture is sufficient for its own interpretation through the activity of the Holy Spirit carried upon the wings of this external Word.  To the degree to which revisionist ways of appropriating Scripture reject the internal clarity of Scripture, they must be rejected as inconsistent with the hermeneutic of the Lutheran Reformation.  Our Lutheran theological house of studies must assume the Reformation hermeneutic of the internal clarity of Scripture, believing that the Word alone is sufficient for its own interpretation.

Concomitant with autonomous reason’s adoption of a revisionist hermeneutic on Scripture, there is a general tendency within the ELCA and its educational institutions to downplay the notion that theological language has truth-conditions, i.e., that it makes definite statements, some of which are true and others false.  The dominant theological agenda over the past two hundred years has tried to offer an analysis of theological language that does not assume a realist view of God and God’s relationship to the universe.  Oftentimes theological language has been taken to be merely expressive of the utterer or his or her cultural values.  Remember, however, that the great theologian Karl Barth once said that one cannot talk about God by talking about man in a loud voice.  Our Lutheran theological house of studies must dare to be realist with respect to the semantics of God-talk, and realist with respect to the ontology of the divine.

The Authority Challenge

A related challenge concerns the nature and foundation of authority.  Every religious tradition presupposes authority, for without such authority no tradition can survive.  Within Christianity historically, the Church functioned as the requisite authority, finally determining what Scripture and Creed really meant.  Within the Lutheran tradition, however, Scripture and Confessions have always constituted the final authority for the tradition. But what happens when we are no longer sure what Scripture and Confessions mean?  In the ongoing debate within the ELCA on the sexuality issue, it is apparent that people read Scripture in quite different ways.  Some say that Scripture proscribes homosexual activity; others say it does not.  In this situation, how does one decide who is right?  Moreover, how does one choose among vastly alternate readings of the Lutheran Confessions themselves?  These are difficult issues.  Our Lutheran theological house of studies must find its authority in the Word alone as it confronts us in the Biblical witness, and as it is testified to in the Lutheran Confessions.

The Rights Challenge

Another problem concerns the nature of rights.  We live in a time where talk of human rights often predominates in our churches even over gospel proclamation.  We deeply believe that all human beings have equal rights.  We believe this so profoundly that we worry about offending someone or violating his or her rights when we share our Lutheran-Christian values with them.  At all costs it seems, we don’t want to be ethnocentric; we want to avoid claiming that values of our faith tradition are objectively right and true, and that they should therefore be normatively determinative of the values of other cultures.  In our rush to avoid any trace of ethnocentrism, we often adopt the problematic view that our values, while “right for us,” are ultimately only one option among many options, no one of which is ultimately more justifiable than another.  Accordingly, we often believe that others have the right not to have us proselytize to them.  This fear of ethnocentrism and our penchant for rights has adversely affected the logic of Christian mission.  It is very difficult to share the Gospel with non-Christians without making a normative claim that the other should adopt the “religious values” of the one doing the sharing.  When the Christian story is assumed to be one cultural value among others, the perceived danger of ethnocentricity seems to preclude the very possibility of sharing it.  But our house of studies will not privilege the rights of the citizen above the scandal of the Cross.  It will steadfastly ground itself on the notion that the Christian story ought to be shared because it is true, not merely because it is or has value for us.

A final challenge exists that we have not yet mentioned.  We must always ask in what ways the putative truths of our Lutheran Confessional heritage connect to truths within the other disciplines.  There has been an unfortunate tendency within confessional traditions to ignore the difficult task of relating theology to the other academic disciplines, especially the sciences.  If theological language is to be true, it must in principle be relatable to the disciplines generally regarded as offering true theories:  the natural and social sciences.  Part of the apologetic task of our time is not to allow theology to become a marginalized discourse, relegated merely to the valuational margins of our lives.  Our house of studies must be intentional in its desire to connect confessional Lutheran theology to the intellectual horizon of our day.

In summary, there is a language challenge, an authority challenge, and a rights challenge within the current ELCA educational context.  Coupled with the economic, sociological, leadership and theological challenges already specified, these challenges have resulted in the tendency within ELCA seminaries to lose thecogency of the Gospel message, to manifest a diminished confessional competency in proclaiming that message, and to become unclear about the nature of the religious authority supposedly grounding the proclamation of that message.  What is needed is a house of studies that focuses on the Confessions, iscompetent in relating the Confessions to the world in which we live, and that recognizes that proper authority can be located in the Word alone.  In developing a house of studies proposal, we must always take seriously the question as to what such a house of studies is for.  If either there is no problem for the house of studies to address or if the house of studies is incapable of addressing the problem, then such a house of studies ought not be established.

Our Proposal and Rationale

The Question of Accreditation

Probably the most important question as to the nature of any educational institution is whether or not it should be accredited.  Our task force has concluded that the challenges are so great in the present ELCA educational context that only an institution having strong academic qualifications can address them.  It is our sense that we are faced with a “confessional crisis” within North American Lutheranism, and that we owe it to our Savior, and to our Lutheran tradition, to offer an attractive vehicle by which to train future pastors and perpetuate the Lutheran confessional tradition.  Accreditation does three things:  1) It provides an external motivation to build academic excellence; 2) It provides increased opportunities for students; 3) It symbolizes to all that taking the Confessions seriously does not mitigate taking academics seriously.

Firstly, the very nature of external accreditation demands that our house of studies will have an adequate research library and fully qualified faculty.  While we might have good intentions in building excellence into a non-accredited house of studies, the natural discontinuities of temporal life make it difficult to achieve academic excellence in the long-term without institutionalizing external accreditation demands.  Accreditation implements externally our internal demand for excellence and keeps us honest long-term when hiring faculty and acquiring educational resources.

Secondly, being accredited allows greater student flexibility and opportunity.  Students can transfer in and out of accredited programs.  Each is treated fairly in accordance with objective standards developed and monitored by the accrediting agency (ATS).  In addition, accreditation grants greater flexibility for people studying at different schools and seminaries.  In accredited programs there can be certain assumptions about standard courses that are not found in nonaccredited curricula.  Preparation for becoming a pastor is more “seamless” when there is a general program of preparation clearly defined, whose various parts can, to some degree, be gotten in different places.  Moreover, an accredited house of studies allows students to prepare not only to fill pastoral pulpits, but also be educated to be teachers in the church.  We wish to nurture an academic competency in teaching and relating Lutheran confessional theology within the marketplace of ideas.  It is our hope to offer advanced academic opportunities for highly motivated students.  We hope not only to train pastors for the future, but also to train teachers of those pastors.  While we could possibly train pastors short-term on a non-accredited basis, we cannot educate teachers of pastors.

Thirdly, accreditation symbolizes the consonance within our Lutheran tradition of confession and academic competence.  Lutheran theology was born in the university.  The “new theology” at Wittenberg was debated in academic halls and written in scholarly tracts and books.  It is a university-bred theology that sought to be captive to the Word alone.  We live in a time in which the pastor often serves congregations with members more educated than she or he is.  In an environment in which the very plausibility of the Christian worldview is up for grabs, we need educated pastors who know the intellectual terrain of the various disciplines, and who are able and willing to give an account of that which lies within them.  Thus it is manifestly important that future pastors have good libraries, great professors, and an intellectually stimulating campus environment, precisely the characteristics of accredited programs.

The Question of Location

We thought seriously about the option of a fully “virtual” Lutheran house of studies.  We thought perhaps that such a house of studies could function as a “brokerage house” bundling a number of programs happening elsewhere, and somehow delivering them to those who needed them.  However, as we reflected on this, we decided that this could not be our principal approach in the house of studies. We desire to be more than a “brokerage house” connecting confessionally starved Lutherans with already existing programs.  We rejected the brokerage house model because we determined that the demands of theological education called for something bolder, something more integrated, something more intense than such a model could deliver.  We believe it important for students to actually meet and be mentored by their professors, and we thought that it would not be possible for true theological mentoring to occur in a virtual program.  The medieval and Reformation traditions knew the importance of one-on-one mentoring in the perpetuation of a theological tradition.  Given the hermeneutical latitude of our time, we thought it unlikely we could develop a truly normative theological position without having a geographical location in which to do it.  We need office and classroom space for students to interact with faculty and, just as importantly, faculty to interact with each other.

The Question of Normativity

Early on in our discussions, the question of the deep task of the house of studies surfaced.  What is this house of studies to be actually?  Should it be a place of increased theological/academic competency over and against many ELCA educational institutions, or should it be a place of theological rectitude?  How open ought the house of studies be to faculty who believe that Lutheran theology allows the practice of the Anglican historic episcopate, or who believe that the Joint Declaration of the Doctrine of Justification is consonant with the historical conception of justification in the Lutheran tradition?  We believe it important that a WordAlone house of studies should assume the theological principles of the WordAlone movement; we believe the house of studies should have a normative edge that defines us theologically over and against the ELCA seminaries.

The Question of Critical Distance

So where would the LHOS locate its accredited program?  After much discussion, phone calls, correspondence, and personal visits, we make the following recommendation:  The primary site of the WordAlone Lutheran theological house of studies should be located preferably on a seminary campus with a good library, congenial faculty, a Lutheran ethos, and institutional support for the program.  It is my opinion, and the opinion of the Committee, that we are best served if we locate the primary site of our house of studies on a non-ECLA campus.  Why is this?  The short answer is that the Lutheran theological house of studies must have critical distance.  In order to offer a prophetic voice within the present ELCA context, the house of studies cannot be institutionalized at an existing ELCA seminary.  There are a number of reasons for this:

• The WordAlone Lutheran theological house of studies must never be limited by its institutional affiliation in what it can or cannot say, or in what it can teach or not teach.  It must have full curricular autonomy.  There must be sufficient academic freedom for it to do the task set before it.  The house of studies cannot ever be in a position of having the sharpness of its critique blurred by ecclesiastical politics within the ELCA.  Just as the WordAlone movement has been a fully autonomous critical movement within the ELCA, so must its house of studies project be both autonomous and critical.
• The WordAlone Lutheran theological house of studies will take positions that may sometimes be quite critical of the ELCA or its institutions.  Housing such a house of studies at an ELCA seminary could easily cause problems and tensions at that seminary, both among students, faculty and administration.  The requisite autonomy of the house of studies could easily be problematic for any ELCA seminary housing it.
• The WA house of studies should ideally establish its primary location at a place where most of the voices of the faculty are not theologically more liberal than its own confessional witness.  Having almost the entire faculty being more liberal than it will lessen the capability of the confessional witness over time.  I believe, theologically, that it is easier to start from a more conservative position and move to embrace the Reformation hermeneutic, than to start from a very liberal position, and try to work back to the right.
• Although we are not trying to establish theological purity at the WordAlone house of studies—we are not trying to establish a “sausage faculty”—we recognize that most of the voices students have been exposed to in their lives are not Scriptural/confessional voices.  Therefore, we do not think there is any particular danger in heavily exposing students to confessional theology within the context of their theological studies.

ELCA Endorsement

We take Bishop Mark Hanson at his word when he affirmed that there are two equally valid ways of interpreting Scripture.  We believe, however, that the present ELCA seminaries have privileged the revisionist over the traditionalist approach.  Because there is no ELCA educational institution wholly committed to or embracing the traditional approach, it is our hope that the ELCA will endorse our house of studies as a place in the ELCA where students will be exposed to the time-honored way in which Christians have historically read Scripture.

A Preliminary Mission

In contradistinction from the prevailing ethos in Lutheran theology since the time of Kant, the WordAlone Lutheran theological house of studies will proclaim the priority of ontology (being) over epistemology (knowing).  Being is prior to any knowing of being.  Instead of ontology recapitulating epistemology, the house of studies shall tirelessly proclaim that epistemology recapitulates ontology.  Accordingly, the house of studies shall be:

• Realist with respect to the ontology of God.
• Realist with respect to its semantics.
• Realist with respect to divine causality.

However, it shall never forget the infinite qualitative difference between time and eternity, between human beings and God. It understands the problem of history, and the difficulties attending any effort to invest more in the finite than it can deliver. Accordingly, it is:

• Aware of the problems of granting absolute certitude to creedal and confessional statements and,
• Aware of the Protestant Principle, the view stating that all attempts to absolutize the finite are quasi-idolatrous, whether or not these attempts are Biblicistic or ecclesiastical.

In addition, the Lutheran theological house of studies shall be solidly theocentric.  It holds that only the divine can save, and that human beings cannot add anything to their own salvation.  Instead of the divine being a category in human experience, the human is a concern only for divine experience.

Accordingly, the Lutheran theological house of studies will exist to accomplish the following:

• Provide solid Biblical foundation for understanding and articulating the Lutheran theological tradition
• Provide solid confessional basis for understanding and articulating the Lutheran theological tradition
• Provide the requisite philosophical equipment to understand and articulate the Lutheran theological worldview within the context of the plethora of options for postmodern man and woman.