Putting the Focus Back Upon Congregations

The Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT) has embarked on a new venture called the Center for Congregational Revitalization (C CR). In some ways, of course, there is nothing new at all about ILT being concerned about congregational revitalization. Back in 2001-1008, I was a member of the WordAlone Network (WAN) Board of Directors, and we were deeply concerned about congregational revitalization.  In fact, one could argue that ILT was formed directly to deal with problems within congregations, because we were in those days very interested in theology, especially the "working theology" of denominational structures like the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  

Many reading this blog probably recall these days prior to the epic collapse of the ELCA as a relevant and important denominational body in North America. Many of us wrote extensively for WordAlone. The WordAlone Network was formed, one might argue, to save the ELCA from itself. What we did was try to lift up again some of the important features of traditional Lutheran piety and practice in North America. 

The ELCA in those days was becoming more and more convinced that the transcongregational denominational entity to which individual Lutheran congregations belonged was itself the church, e.g., the then ELCA Secretary Lowell Almen famously quipped that this entity is the Church and that the congregation is "an outpost of the church." I argued that what needed to be lifted up in that time was that the church for Lutherans had historically been interpreted both in a high and low sense. While high ecclesiology emphasized the role of the Church as the means of grace, and spoke strongly of the identity of the church with the Body of Christ -- the Church in its divine nature --, low ecclesiology emphasized the Church as a fellowship of sinners gathered around the communion rail and accordingly thematized the human nature of the institution. What was needed at a time when the divine nature of the Church was being proclaimed was a reminder of the human nature of that selfsame Church: We are all simply sinners begging at the communion rail for the Word in Body and Blood delivered to each of us.  

Clearly, the Concordat and Called to Common Mission that sought a common understanding between the Episcopal Church USA and the ELCA of the historic episcopate were documents that presupposed a very high ecclesiology. Just as the Law must be preached in a context of complacency and the Gospel in a context of despair, so must the church be reminded of its very human nature when it is tempted to think that the Holy Spirit itself speaks through the votes of the baptized at a churchwide gathering.

But we within WordAlone were often misunderstood. Instead of understanding the criticism of high ecclesiology dialectically, people believed that low ecclesiology was the position of WordAlone and its minions itself. People thought that the WordAlone critique of high ecclesiology meant that we were non-dialectically committed to a low ecclesiology, and that, accordingly, we could not confess that the Church was the Body of Christ and itself the means of grace.  

But I could confess this and did on many occasions.  Accordingly, some people were upset that from the beginning I not only allowed but encouraged people from traditions other than a Fordean-style radical Lutheranism -- the genesio position -- to teach and study at ILT.  I reasoned that if ILT were to be true to is Lutheran roots, it must allow other Lutheran traditions to be present as well, e.g., Evangelical Catholics, pietists, neo-confessionalists, Grundtvigians, etc.  In fact, I thought ILT could not be deeply Lutheran if it were to choose one strand of Lutheranism and proceed as if the other strands were simply misunderstandings or mistakes with respect to that one true tradition. After all, Lutheran congregations in North America are not monolithic in their theological ethos. Thus, to serve actual existing congregations, ILT had to be a bigger tent. If ILT were to be the seminary of a group of committed congregations, it needed to be able to understand the ethos of those congregations, acknowledge their theological ethos as Lutheran in its roots, and actually help those congregations to be faithful and effective in the proclamation of the Word.  

We have traveled a great distance at the Institute of Lutheran Theology in the last 17 years. We now have over 160 active students and strong DMin. and PhD programs. We have had accreditation from the Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) since 2018 and are having our accreditation visit from the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in March 2024. We continue to gain respect as a theological institution, and our faculty is acknowledged as first-rate. As a school we have never been stronger. 

But I think that we are missing something, something that was present at the beginning. While we teach undergraduates, STM, DMin and PHD students well and see increasing numbers from these groups every year, we notice there is one key group of students where we are not seeing stellar growth: ministry students! Yes, you heard me correctly. While ILT is growing in its academic programs -- particularly its academic graduate programs -- it is underperforming on that for which it was called into being: getting faithful and effective pastors into congregations. This we must do better!  

But there is actually a very good excuse for not doing this. Everywhere in the North Atlantic countries we see lower numbers of people studying to become pastors. The reasons why this is so are apparent: Pastors no longer enjoy the respect of American society in general and they are poorly recompensed. Why would anyone want to be a pastor when they could do something that our society could value and understand? While we can excuse our performance in growing ministry students by pointing to the fact that pastors are under-compensated and under-appreciated, making an excuse does not solve the problem. We simply must work to get more people into congregational pulpits. 

Congregations in North America are increasingly aware of the difficulties in finding pastors. There are, or will soon be, extreme pastoral shortages in most all of the Lutheran denominations in the United States and Canada. Rural congregations are immediately affected, for their very survival is often at stake. If a rural congregation cannot find somebody to fill the pulpit, it likely will not able to remain open.  Closing congregations has, however, devastating consequences not only for the religious life of those within those congregations, but also for the rural communities in which these congregations reside. Often, the last institutions to close in a rural community are the bar and the church.  

We at ILT remember our beginnings. We were called into being in order to get pastors into congregations, and thus advancing congregational life is within our very DNA. Accordingly, to be ILT is to care about congregations and their challenges and difficulties. It is with this in mind that we announce our new venture of congregational revitalization. The time is upon us. How does congregational revitalization work at ILT? 

• We enter into formal and informal arrangements directly with congregations, pledging that we shall help them in their search for pastors and that we shall do everything possible to help them keep pastors in pulpits. What we want to create is an ILT league of Lutheran congregations.  
• We create a funding mechanism to help support the educational costs associated with the training of pastors. We want to make it as easy as possible for those with a passion for congregational ministry to attain it. No serious student should be stopped merely because he or she has insufficient funding.  
• We work with congregations to develop new ways to deliver theological pastoral candidates into congregations. Clearly, for small rural congregations hoping to find somebody willing to serve them, the completion of a full M.Div degree may not be needed. We have since our inception worked to grant pastoral certificates to those lacking the time, opportunity or means to attain a full M.Div degree. 
• We work with successful pastors already in the field to create new educational programs and structures that can produce pastors on an ad hoc basis for the ad hoc and dynamic ministry situations that shall increasingly obtain. This means that we design M.Div, MM, and MCM degrees that prepares students deeply to face the kind of situations they will likely face.  
• We partner with donors who have a passion actually to change Lutheran congregational life in North America. While we know much of what must be done, we don't presently have the requisite resources to address those things necessary to ameliorate Lutheran congregational life. Committed donors can change what we do, but they need to see what can actually be done to improve the situation before they can donate deeply. 
• We put people in touch with each other to address the issue at hand. We act as a Lutheran clearing house for the normative task of delivering proper theology to congregations. We don't allow the ILT focus to stray from the congregational horizon. Lutheran theology is incarnation, not excarnational.  We can never be primarily concerned with the theological rectitude of abstract theological propositions, but rather with the incarnation of these principles in congregational life, i.e., in the lives of concrete men and women leading the Christian life within their communities.  

Much more needs to be envisioned and developed as we consider the creation of the ILT Center for Congregational Revitalization (CCR), but this will be the subject of many papers and articles that will be written and evaluated within CCR over the coming months and years. I want here simply to alert everybody that ILT is coming home to its congregations. We intend to focus on you and your needs. We want to be friends with you and we want to learn from you how we can do what we do better. Blessings!  

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. 

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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.