Part One A Thirteen-part Documentary – The … Thirteen-part Documentary ... The first of Cottrell’s series of five articles ... This method is closely related to, if not

When a crisis occurs, it tends to bring us toa fork in the road. Decisions have to be made.The results can be with us for years to come.

Our denomination entered upon a crisis inthe early 1980s, but the decisions our leadersmade at that time were heavily influenced by aslanted report they read with closest attentiona couple years before the crisis struck.

This is an in-depth report on the entangledweb that caused our denomination to drawback—when the time came to stand for the rightthough the heavens fall.

— PART ONE —

THE COTTRELL REPORT

In the January 13, 1977, issue of Adventist Re-view (at that time called the Review & Herald), thefirst of a series of articles appeared. Authored byRaymond F. Cottrell, the articles told the story of adenomination whose leadership was too headstrongto avert a crisis which it could have avoided. Whenit struck, the crisis shook the entire denomination—yet it could have been averted if church leadershiphad been more willing to appease the dissidents.

According to the articles (January 13-February17, 1977), certain faculty and students at a non-Adventist seminary (Concordia) had legitimate com-plaints; and, if their concerns had been met, theentire problem could have been resolved with aminimum of difficulty.

That was the impression conveyed by the se-

ries, along with repeated admonitions to our ownleaders to be careful lest someday they also be con-fronted by a similar crisis, —and, instead of placat-ing the opposition, they stubbornly refused to adaptto changing situations.

Surely, Raymond Cottrell knew all about the situ-ation at Concordia. In his extensive Review report,he said he had researched into the matter over aperiod of several years, and had spent hours inter-viewing each of the two main protagonists: Drs.Preus and Tietjen.

Raymond Cottrell and certain others in ourdenomination knew what the rest of us did notknow then. That we were also headed toward aconfrontation—which could project us into a cri-sis of startling proportions, depending on howwe met it.

By 1977, when Cottrell wrote those articles, thetheological crisis in Australia was already far ad-vanced. Desmond Ford had very nearly gatheredthe entire Pacific Union College faculty, administra-tion, and many of the students into his camp; and amajority of the teachers at the Adventist Seminaryat Andrews University and faculty and religion teach-ers at Southern Missionary College (now SouthernUniversity)—had already shifted significantly fromhistoric Adventist theology. They were busily in-structing students as well as future pastors in, whatwould come to be known as, the “new theology”—the concepts that purity of heart and life and obedi-ence to God’s commandments were no longer nec-essary for salvation.

The Concordia CrisisA Thirteen-part Documentary –

– A Crisis that Affected Our Own Church

Part One

1 - The Cottrell Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 - When the Crisis Struck in Our Own Denomination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 - History of the Attempted Takeover in LCMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 - The Historical-Critical Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

2 WaymarksCottrell, a brilliant and liberal thinker, was

an associate Review editor at the time. His tiltedportrayal had the effect of freightening Adventistleaders toward a certain course of action. Forth-coming events would reveal that he achieved hisobjective.

Two and a half years later, our own latent cri-sis suddenly emerged into the open; when, onOctober 27, 1979, Desmond Ford delivered anAdventist Forum lecture at Pacific Union Collegein which he presented a sketch of our key doc-trinal beliefs as ridiculous, old-fashioned, inac-curate, and in need of major revision. (See thepresent writer’s How Firm Our Foundation—Part1-8 [FF–8-15], now in our New Theology Tractbookfor a rather complete presentation of, and reply to,Ford’s concepts in that lecture). In that speech, helampooned our basic beliefs as sheerest folly, andsaid it was time for a radical change.

Fortunately, a few stalwarts in the church heardthat meeting, or a tape of it soon afterward, anddemanded that Ford be ousted.

The crisis had arrived. What would our lead-ers do? Would they meet the iceberg head on, aswas done at the turn of the century, or wouldthey waffle and partly compromise with the in-surgents?

Undergirding the fears of our leaders was theworry that the denomination might split down themiddle if they did not deal very carefully with thesituation. It was decided that only moderate poli-cies and cautious actions could achieve cohesive-ness—that is, to keep a church of rampant liberalsand strict conservatives glued together.

As in the days of Chamberlain in the late 1930s,so it was again to be: “Peace in our time,” was thegoal to be reached. If the liberals would give a littleand the conservatives would yield some of their prin-ciples, all would be well.

Such a course naturally appealed to the lib-eral element in the church. They had everythingto gain by it. Year after year, they could continuemolding the minds of the young, winning themto their sides, as they moved forward in theirplan to take control of the church.

Have you ever noticed that, while the faithful arerubbing the sleep out of their eyes and wonderingwhat is happening, the worldlings are working inconcert, guided as by invisible strings from a singlepuppet master? Do the liberals really realize howably they are serving the devil? They could know ifthey would read the Spirit of Prophecy and com-pare their lives and objectives with its clear pro-nouncements.

The first of Cottrell’s series of five articles(ultimately six) began with these words:

“The first week in December witnessed the for-mation of a new Protestant denomination in theUnited States—the Association of EvangelicalLutheran Churches. And thereby hangs a tale ofinterest and concern to Seventh-day Adventists, onewe shall do well to heed and from which we as achurch may learn lessons of importance and value.Willingness to learn from the experiences of otherscan spare us from inadvertently making the samemistakes. To neglect, or refuse, to learn from his-tory dooms a person, or a church, to repeat his-tory—to learn the hard way.”—Raymond F. Cottrell,“A Church in Crisis,” Review, January 13, 1977.That initial paragraph in the series clearly

revealed to whom Cottrell was writing: our lead-ers. He then went on to emphasize that our denomi-nation was peculiarly able to fall into the sameschism trap which opened before the feet of anotherdenomination, which was riven as if by lightning.

That denomination was the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) which split wide open:

“We can try to understand why schism came andwe can take appropriate measures to avoid repeat-ing the mistakes that led to it. Such is the purposeof this series of articles . . Primarily because LCMSis conservative, as we are, its traumatic experienceis particularly relevant to us. LCMS and SDA havemuch in common in addition to their conservativeapproach to Scripture, the ostensible bone of con-tention in LCMS.”—Ibid.The above sentence hints at what Cottrell was

repeatedly to point out: It was the fortress men-tality of LCMS, their overwrought concern to staywith the fundamentals (the historic beliefs), whena little doctrinal compromise could have keptthe split from occurring—which was the root ofthe problem.

Throughout the series, the portrayal was that itwas not the liberals who were to blame, but prima-rily the conservatives who refused to meet them half-way.

Cottrell pointed out that “LCMS and SDA oper-ate the two largest Protestant parochial educationsystems in existence,” and “today the Synod oper-ates 16 institutions of higher education in the UnitedStates. Missouri Synod’s early interest in Christianeducation remains a major emphasis in the life ofthe church” (ibid.). The parallels between the twodenominations were striking. Especially since, asCottrell noted, LCMS has historically been the mostconservative Lutheran denomination in America.

Thus the focus of this first article was that aterrible crisis had occurred in the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod, and that a similar cri-sis could happen to our own denomination, since

3The Concordia Crisisours is also very conservative and education-ori-ented.

The second article in the series, “The Author-ity of Scripture” (Review, January 20, 1977) wascleverly arranged, defining “liberals” as includingonly those who reject Scriptural authority outright.This article downplayed the possibility that theremight be any genuine liberals in that denominationor ours.

“This word [‘liberal’] is often used, particularlyby some conservatives, to pin a pejorative label onsomeone they consider more liberal and open-minded than they personally choose to be, whenas a matter of fact the difference between them istrivial and the person thus labeled is not ‘liberal’by any fair, objective definition of the term.”—R.F.Cottrell, “The Authority of Scripture, Review,January 20, 1977.Frankly, this categorizing of “liberals,” as only

including those who totally reject any professionof faith in the Bible, was obviously erroneous.We shall learn, later in this documentary, that itwas widely recognized that the insurgents in theMissouri Synod were clear-cut liberals. We shallalso learn that the standard definitions of liber-alism, used widely in Protestantism, includes theteachings of such men.

Most of our readers know from sad experiencethat there are many people in our local churches,and many preachers in our pulpits, who are in openrebellion against the teachings of God’s Word, yetall the while professing to love and revere it.

“In this series of articles, liberal denotes a per-son who rejects the Bible as the inspired, authori-tative Word of God; and conservative, a person whoaccepts it as inspired and authoritative.”—Ibid [ital-ics his].In later articles in the series, Cottrell used

that definition, aided by the omission of impor-tant historical details, to speak highly of the lib-erals who split LCMS.

Cottrell next asserts that “higher criticism” issomething we all do!

“The historical-critical method, . . is, in short, acareful study of the Bible in the light of historicalevidence. This method is closely related to, if notidentical with, what is known as higher criticism(strictly defined). Higher criticism stands in con-trast to lower, or textual, criticism, a study of theancient Bible manuscripts.”—Ibid.The historical-critical method is but a vari-

ant of higher criticism! The premise is that, notGod’s Word, but man’s is the supreme authority.He alone is to decide if there is any truth to befound in the Bible, or anywhere else. He mustdecide what truth, if any, is to be found in the

Bible. There are various patterns of liberal at-tack on Scripture, but they are all based on thethis premise.

No sincere Christian believes in, or practices,higher criticism.

“By definition, higher criticism is ‘the literary-historical study of the Bible that seeks to deter-mine such factors as authorship, date, place oforigin, circumstances and composition, purposeof the author, and the historical credibility of eachof the various biblical writings together with themeaning intended by their authors.’ ”—Ibid.

“As a matter of fact, all conservative Bible schol-ars, including SDAs, make at least some use of bothlower and higher criticism in their study of theBible.”—Ibid.Such a definition is farcical. Higher criticism is

deadly; it is not the study of the Bible, but a deter-mined attack to destroy it.

In the next two articles (“Decisions that Polar-ized the Missouri Synod,” January 27, 1977, and“The Parting of the Ways,” February 3, 1977), Cottrellbriefly overviewed some of the events in the dete-rioration of mutuality by the two sides. In his view,both sides consisted of sincere Christians who un-fortunately lost contact with one another and, there-fore, became unable to work out a satisfactory com-promise.

According to Cottrell, the conservatives in LCMSwanted to take an ax to, what they supposed were,liberals at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Mis-souri. This is what started all the trouble amongbrethren who should have been dwelling togetherin peace.

“The immediate chain of events that culminatedin schism within LCMS in December 1976 began alittle more than seven years earlier, in 1969, withthe election of Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus as presidentof the Synod and the appointment of Dr. JohnTietjen as president of Concordia Seminary. WithinLCMS these are considered the two most presti-gious and influential offices. Drs. Preus and Tietjenwere destined to play the two leading roles in theseven-year confrontation.

“Let us begin with their respective predecessorsin these two key offices, Dr. Oliver Harms as presi-dent of the Synod (1962-1969) and Dr. AlfredFuerbringer as president of Concordia Seminary(1953-1969). Dr. Harms, a conservative, pursueda moderating administrative policy and sought tobe fair to both sides of the ongoing debate. Hismoderation, however, was not acceptable to thegrass-roots conservative majority and their conser-vative pastors, who defeated his bid for reelectionin 1969 . . To them, Dr. Harms’s middle-of-the-road policy seemed vacillating at a time when theyfelt that vigorous action was needed. In effect, Dr.Preus thus came to office with a mandate from the

4 Waymarksconservative majority to ‘clean up the Synod.’

“That which the conservatives felt particularlyin need of cleaning up was the faculty of ConcordiaSeminary. (See “A Church in Crisis,” Review, Jan.13, 1977.) With a view to strengthening the aca-demic training of ministers to serve the Synod,President Fuerbringer had built up a strong facultyand established Concordia’s standing with theAmerican Association of Theological Schools, itsaccrediting association. Upon his retirement in1969 the Concordia Board of Control appointedDr. John Tietjen, who continued the policies of hispredecessor, which were designed to maintain aca-demic excellence. However, grass-roots conserva-tives were unhappy with the choice which they sayas perpetuating at the Seminary, the situation towhich they took exception—use of the historical-critical method of interpreting Scripture, in thetraining of future ministers. (See “The Authorityof Scripture,” Review, Jan. 20, 1997.)

“The coming of Drs. Preus and Tietjen to officeconfronted them personally and the Synod with anopportunity and a challenge either to resolve, on amutually acceptable basis, the differences of opin-ion that had been troubling the Synod for a num-ber of years or to escalate the differences into anadversary relationship that could be resolved onlyby victory for one side and defeat for the other. Forbetter or for worse, the Synod chose the lattercourse, and its conservative majority vested initia-tive for action in the newly elected administration.The stage was thus set for the domino series ofevents that followed. Given the Synod’s frame ofmind in 1969 and thereafter, events seem, in ret-rospect, to have followed an inexorable, predeter-mined, course with schism in December 1976, asits inevitable conclusion.”—R.F. Cottrell, “Decisionsthat Polarized the Missouri Synod,” January 27,1977.Cottrell next cited two incorrect decisions leg-

islated by the LCMS denominational headquar-ters which produced the terrible crisis that fol-lowed: (1) The board decided that LCMS wouldmaintain certain standards, and (2) they decidedthat the Seminary was not adhering to those stan-dards. Then, instead of being willing to compro-mise in order to maintain harmony among breth-ren, they became intransigent:

“Two decisions LCMS made between 1971 and1973 were crucial, and their subsequent implemen-tation (1973-1976) completed the process of po-larizing the church, and precipitated schism: (1)the formal authorization of A Statement of Scrip-tural and Confessional Principles “as a tool to iden-tify theological and doctrinal issues which theSynod needs to consider and resolve,” and (2) the

Synod charge that a majority of the faculty ofConcordia Seminary were teaching false doctrine.With these decisions the conservative majority wenton the offensive and set out to purify the Synod ofwhat they considered heretical tendencies. Bothsides appear to have been utterly sincere; whetherin retrospect, their wisdom was always equal totheir zeal is a matter of opinion. These two closelyrelated decisions determined the course of eventsthat followed.”—Ibid.The two sides gradually hardened in their posi-

tions, with the conservatives thinking they shouldstand by the Bible, and the liberals (Cottrell callsthem “moderates”) declaring that more flexibilitywas needed.

“To Synod conservatives, A Statement simplyaffirms what they have always believed about theBible . . To the ‘moderates,’ however, A Statementdoes not identify and deal adequately with the veryreal problems with which it professes to deal. It issimplistic with respect to ‘very technical matters’that ‘need much careful study.’ ”—Ibid.“ ‘Large sections’ of the Statement, which listed

basic historic beliefs, the liberals charged as being“ ‘merely traditional; that is, they reproduce theo-logical opinions about the Bible which frequentlyhave been taught in the Lutheran Church-MissouriSynod’ ” (ibid).

“To the conservatives, then, the issue on doc-trine is one of accepting or rejecting the Bible asthe inspired, authoritative Word of God. To the‘moderates’ that is not the issue at all, for they, too,acknowledge its inspiration and authority. As theysee it, the issue is not on the level of inspirationand authority at all, but on the level of traditionalinterpretation versus an objective examination ofthe evidence. The issue is a matter of opinion.”—Ibid.Apparently, the liberals in the Lutheran Church-

Missouri Synod were obviously as clever as thosewe are confronted with in our own denomination.Our beliefs are merely “opinions”; and theirs,learned at outside universities, are better.

In the fourth article (“The Parting of the Ways,”Review, February 3, 1977), it was implied thatTietjen’s charges may have been correct. But, moreimportant as we shall learn later, Cottrell saidnothing about the multitude of devious misstate-ments and mischievous activities carried on byDr. Tietjen, president of the Seminary.

If the truth of what Tietjen and his associ-ates actually did had been told, the reader wouldhave drawn far different conclusions about theConcordia rebellion.

More WAYMARKS - from ——————————HCR 77, BOX 38A - BEERSHEBA SPRINGS, TN 37305 USA

PILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTContinued on the next tract

Continued from the preceding tract in this series

In the fifth article (“Postmortem on the LCMSConflict,” Review, February 10, 1977), Cottrell at-tempted to summarize how the crisis could havebeen avoided. He cited four factors—and said theconservatives were responsible for each of them.

The first factor was the nature and authority ofScripture. Cottrell said the conservatives were atfault, since the liberals were only using the his-torical-critical method which was totally harm-less. The conservatives would not admit this fact,and refused to learn the facts:

“The controversy began with the charge thatmembers of the Concordia Seminary faculty wereteaching false doctrine with respect to the nature,authority, and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.These charges came to a focus on the use of thehistorical-critical method of interpretation, whichwe discussed at some length in the second articleof this series.

“The ‘moderates’ affirm the validity of the his-torical method within a conservative, evangelicalview of Scripture, as a means of attaining a moreaccurate understanding of its messages for ourtime. To the conservatives, however, this approachto Scripture seemed incompatible with historicLutheranism and equivalent to rejecting the Bibleas God’s inspired message to man. To our knowl-edge this charge involved only the Concordia fac-ulty.

“Both sides seem sincere in their convictions;we know of no reason to think otherwise. The prob-lem appears to have been basically one of under-standing and communication. We understand thatthere were protracted discussions at a lower levelprior to the escalation of the conflict to crisis pro-portions five years or so ago; but, since then, toour knowledge, the two sides have never sat downtogether, as brothers in Christ and with open minds,to investigate the substance of the points at issue.Under any circumstances there never seems to havebeen real communication between them on theSynod level, no real opportunity for a meeting ofthe minds. Those who brought the charge seem tohave assumed that they understood the ‘moderate’position fully, that their own conclusions with re-spect to it were right, and that the faculty was there-

fore necessarily wrong. They were so sure of theirjudgment in the matter that they did not considerit necessary even to listen to what the other sidehad to say. As a result they never dealt objectivelywith the real issues involved. And if the real issueswere never clearly identified and defined to themutual satisfaction of both sides, how could theirdifferences of opinion over the issues ever be re-solved?”—R.F. Cottrell, “Postmortem on the LCMSConflict,” Review, February 10, 1977.Mark those points well: Cottrell maintained

that the historical-critical method was perfectlyall right and that the conservatives never triedto find out what the Seminary faculty were re-ally teaching. We will learn, later in this docu-mentary, that exactly the opposite was true.

The truth is that Tietjen, and his associates, re-peatedly said they were totally in agreement withhistoric conservative Lutheranism—when theywere teaching rank liberalism; that is, claims thatvarious portions of the Bible were only legends(Genesis 1-2, the miracles of the Bible, etc.);Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, and others did not reallywrite any Biblical books; etc.

But Cottrell said not a word about that; in-stead, he repeatedly refers to, or quotes, Tietjen’sstatements that he was totally in agreement withhistoric Lutheranism.

“In his Christianity Today reply to Dr. Preus,Dr. John Tietjen, president of Concordia Seminaryuntil February 1974, said Dr. Preus’s charge thatthe authority of the Bible is the main theologicalissue in LCMS ‘is a smokescreen. The authority ofthe Bible is not at issue in the Missouri Synod . . Ifully accept the authority of the Bible. I am totallycommitted to the Bible as the inspired and infal-lible Word of God . . Everyone in the Synod acceptsthe authority of the Bible.’ ”—Ibid [quoting J.H.Tietjen, “Piercing the Smokescreen,” ChristianityToday, April 11, 1975].Tietjen frequently issued false statements such

as that.The following comment by Cottrell, in explain-

ing the difference between ‘moderates’ and conser-vatives, is an accurate statement of what liberalssay:

“The moderates consider the message of the



Part Two

6 WaymarksBible, the ‘gospel,’ that which the Holy Spirit andthe inspired writers intended to convey as truth,as inspired and authoritative (the ‘material prin-ciple’); whereas the conservatives consider the en-tire Bible, in all its parts, to be inspired and iner-rant (the ‘formal principle’).”—Ibid.According to liberals, it is not the Bible that

is inspired, but the “message of the Gospel” init. It is the work of the liberals to find that mes-sage, and discard the rest. The deciding factoras to what shall be thrown out is their own opin-ion.

But the definition sounds inviting. That is theway the liberals win you over. They are doing anexcellent job capturing your children whom yousend to our colleges, universities, and Seminary.

We should be kind to the liberals the way a hawkis kind to the snake found in her nest, gorging onthe eggs.

Conservatives take God’s Word—both theBible and Spirit of Prophecy—just as it reads.But the liberals use confusing labels and com-plicated theories to cover over their hideous be-liefs. And they are hideous, for they lead to doubtand agnosticism in regard to Scripture. Frombeginning to end, these men are devious. Theirwords are mysterious; their theories are confusing.Because they have been trained in the universities,they are supposed to be smarter than you; so, as-suming that if you were more intelligent you couldunderstand what they were talking about—you yieldyour mind to their control, and you are hooked.

Again, Cottrell emphasized that the liberals atConcordia were presenting perfectly correct, safe,teachings.

“Both affirm every major Lutheran teaching setforth in the Bible and the [Lutheran] Confessions,including the doctrine of Holy Scripture . . The con-servatives adhere to the traditional method of in-terpretation, while the ‘moderates’ follow the his-torical method, as do most conservative, evangeli-cal Bible scholars.”—Ibid.Cottrell placed “moderates” within quotation

marks because he earlier stated that both sideswere really conservatives, but that he would termone “moderates” to distinguish them. Yet, laterin this documentary, you will be shocked to learnjust how rampantly liberal they were.

Notice the definitions implicit in the second sen-tence, quoted above: The “moderates” think forthemselves; the conservatives are too dumb to.

The second factor which Cottrell cited, as caus-ing the Concordia crisis, was theology—and theconservatives were to blame for that.

“The basic theological factor responsible for themisunderstanding in the Synod, we believe, is a

concept of Biblical inerrancy and inspiration thatgoes beyond anything the Bible claims for itself.”—Ibid.That is not true. Even a casual study into the

actual events during the Concordia Crisis revealsthat. All that the conservative leaders requestedwas that the Seminary teach the Bible as thoughit was true!

In order to elaborate on his contention that thesmarter way to figure out Scripture is by readingnew ideas into it, Cottrell goes to some length toexplain that, like Christ, the Bible is a combinationof divine and human—and therefore needs our hu-man interpretation in order to make it come alivefor us. In contrast, the conservatives stubbornly,narrowly, imagine the Bible is only “divine,” andrefuse to add to it the “human dimension.”

“As Christ was the living Word of God manifestin human form, so the Bible is the Word of Godwritten in human language, in order to express in-finite truth in terms comprehensible to humanbeings. As with the nature of Christ, there is a bal-ance between the divine and the human dimensionsof Scripture . . Fundamentalist conservatives stressthe divine aspect of Scripture almost to the exclu-sion of any real human dimension.”—Ibid.So, when you sit at the feet of the liberals and

learn of them, you receive in their theories the “hu-man dimension.” But when you prayerfully read theBible for yourself, you encounter divine truth. Whichdo your want?

This concept of needing to add our human di-mension to God’s Word is but a lame excuse usedto justify the devastating historical-critical method!Carl Walther, one of LCMS’s earlier leaders fearedthat the liberalism in the other denominations wouldcreep into his beloved LCMS. Realizing that theteachings of such men as Harnack of the Germanhigher-criticism school, if allowed to creep intoLCMS, would destroy it, Walther wrote this:

“We must apply this [liberalism] to the so-called‘divine-human character of Scripture’ as that termis used by the modern-conservative theology: Be-ware, beware, I say, of this ‘divine-human Scrip-ture’! It is a devil’s mask; for at last it manufac-tures such a Bible after which I certainly would notcare to be a Bible Christian, namely, that the Bibleshould henceforth be no more than any other goodbook, a book which I would have to read with con-stant sharp discrimination in order not to be ledinto error. For if I believe this, that the Bible con-tains errors, it is to me no longer a touchstone butitself stands in need of one. In a word, it is un-speakable what the devil seeks by this ‘divine-hu-man Scripture.’ ”—Carl Walther, quoted in Biblein the Balance, Harold Lindsell, p. 249.

As Cottrell sees it, the third factor which led to

7The Concordia Crisisthe crisis at Concordia was church “authority andpower.” Denominational officials were picking onthe Seminary faculty, when those good men wereactually teaching what everyone else was teaching:the historic beliefs of the denomination.

“There does not seem to be sufficient doctrinaldifference between the ‘moderates’ and conserva-tives in the LCMS to justify schism, no valid rea-son why the two differing points of view could notabide at peace with each other, on the basis of thegolden rule. Both believe in the inspiration andauthority of the Scripture, and within that frameof reference there should be room for more thanone method of interpretation.

“Why, then, was the Missouri Synod controversycharacterized from the very first by an adversaryrelationship that waxed more intense and bitter astime went by?”—Ibid.Cottrell says the problem was that leadership

wanted to exercise authority and push peoplearound. —But you are going to learn that the situ-ation was far different! It was a matter of liber-als determined to take over the denomination,just as liberals have been regularly doing through-out the 20th century.

“The grass-roots majority and the elected admin-istration took issue with a small but important seg-ment of its intellectual community. With both knowl-edge and administrative authority and power gocertain responsibilities and obligations . . One ofthe first responsibilities of an administrator is touse administrative authority and power with dis-cretion, moderation, and impartiality.”—Ibid.Cottrell explained to our leaders, who intently

read this riveting, frightening, series, that theyshould treat their own “intellectuals”—the ad-ministration and faculty of Adventist colleges anduniversities—with extreme care. Be nice to them;go along with them. Avoid a crisis in our ownchurch.

“To the conservatives, then, the issue was one ofaccepting or rejecting the Bible as the inspired,authoritative Word of God. But to the ‘moderates’that was not the issue at all, for they too acknowl-edged its inspiration and authority. To them thesubstantive, doctrinal issue was one of followingthe traditional, subjective, deductive method in in-terpreting Scripture versus an objective inductivestudy of Scripture. Again and again the ‘moderates’appealed to the conservatives to face up to whatthey considered the ‘real issues that are troublingthe Synod’—‘a false understanding of authority inthe Church,’ a ‘threat to the rights of congregations,’the ‘effort to settle doctrinal issues by majority voterather than [by] the Word of God,’ ‘ethical issues,’and other actions that have divided the Synod.”—Ibid.“Deductive” was a key word, above. The so-

called “moderates” wanted to be inductive; that is,approach the Bible by reading in their ownimaginings and theories instead of accepting it forwhat it said.

Note, in the above paragraph, that Cottrellcriticized a special kind of “authority in thechurch,” which he termed a “threat to the rightsof congregations”—that is, settling doctrinal is-sues by “majority vote.”

—That is why the conservatives won and theliberals lost at LCMS. It was the members, notthe leaders, which sent delegates to the Synodmeetings (comparable to our General ConferenceSessions),—and they convened every year insteadof every five. They demanded that the liberalsbe eradicated from Concordia. That was why theliberals were routed! Leadership, by itself, neverwould have had the nerve to make that decisionotherwise.

Leaders always fear splits and strive to hold theorganization together, regardless of the integrity ofprinciples which might be lost. But, unlike the Sev-enth-day Adventist denomination, the LCMS syn-ods were composed of members from the local con-gregations. Ever since the 1950s, their sons hadcome home with stories about the increasing liber-alism at Concordia—and by the 1970s it had got-ten so bad, they demanded changes!

Unfortunately, our own Session delegates are au-tomatically packed with over 51 percent churchleaders and subordinates; the agenda is preplanned,so no major crisis can come to the floor of the Ses-sion for vote. Only 7-12 percent of the delegates arelaymen.

In contrast, within the Lutheran Church-Mis-souri Synod, the laymen and their local pastors heldthe deciding votes in every Synod!

Raymond Cottrell knew that our liberal cri-sis would break within five to eight years (it brokein two). In the above quotation, he was warningour leaders not to let the “majority” have thesay in settling the coming crisis.

In the very next paragraph, Cottrell amplifiedon his thought:

“The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is a bodyof dedicated Christian people who purpose to bearfaithful witness to Scripture, to the principles ofthe Reformation and to historic Lutheranism. Theconservative, grass-roots majority are disposed topreserve their traditional way of interpreting theBible and their traditional concept of what it meansto be a Lutheran church.

“The Synod ‘moderates’ are likewise loyal toScripture and to historic Lutheranism, but they donot look upon this loyalty as obliging them to ac-cept traditional opinions about Scripture or meth-

8 Waymarksods of interpreting Scripture. In their Biblical stud-ies they purpose to react positively and discrimi-natingly to the very considerable body of factualinformation about the ancient past now available—within the framework of conservative Lutheranism.They seek to study, understand, and interpretScripture inductively and objectively, in the senseintended by the inspired writers, in order to hearwhat God is saying to us today.”—Ibid.Cottrell warned our leaders to be wary of the

“conservative grassroots majority” of members,who might want to “preserve their traditional wayof interpreting the Bible and their traditional con-cept” of what it means to be Seventh-day Adven-tists.

He said our leaders should have confidencethat the so-called “moderates” are themselvesequally “loyal” to God’s Word and to our “his-toric” beliefs.

“Historic” Adventism, Cottrell explained, isnothing more than a stack of timeworn opinions; itis the task of the wonderful “moderates” to “posi-tively and discriminatingly”—and “inductively”—present us with something better, and what is it?“what God is saying to us today” (not in the 1st or19th centuries).

The fourth factor which Cottrell claimed to bethe cause of the crisis—was also attributable to theconservatives!

“The sociological root of the problem in LCMSwas the ultraconservatism of the grassroots ma-jority, pastors and parishioners . . It was this con-servative majority that elected Dr. Preus to officeand gave him a virtual mandate to ‘clean up theSynod,’ that called for and voted the doctrinal state-ment, that charged Dr. Tietjen and his faculty withheresy.”—Ibid.Although giving it a different name, Cottrell only

said what he said earlier, under what he termed the“theological factor.” According to him, the problemwas the “grassroots ultraconservativism,” which henow adds is dangerous.

The cry of the liberal is, It is dangerous to bea conservative and defend the historic beliefs ofthe denomination! It is dangerous to listen totheir complaints and let them have any say inwhat goes on. They might return us to obedienceto God’s Word!

Notice that, so far, Cottrell has not blamed theliberals; all the problems were caused because theconservatives wanted to defend their historic be-liefs.

“We believe that the sociological factor—theprejudgmental, exclusive frame of mind of the con-servative majority and their unwillingness, as itseems, to communicate meaningfully—was deci-sive in causing the split in the Missouri Synod. Theissue was not one of conservatism versus liberal-ism, of Bible believers versus Bible doubters. The‘moderates’ consider themselves conserva-tives.”—Ibid.We have here a clear-cut statement of condem-

nation of the conservatives, and it all turns on thephrase “consider themselves.” The conservativesknew that, year after year, the Concordia Semi-nary was corrupting the students and sendingout liberal pastors. But the teachers and admin-istrators at the Seminary protested that theythemselves were as doctrinally pure as the drivensnow.

These deceptive tactics caused perplexityamong some of the LCMS members (just as ithas for years created confusion in our own church),but the majority knew that Concordia was corruptand elected Preus to “clean it up.” They did right! Itis not wrong to do right! It is not wrong to reprovesin; it is not wrong to cast the lump out of the church(1 Corinthians 5).

Alternating between one point and then the other,Cottrell keeps hammering at both: (1) The cause ofthe church split was that the conservatives irratio-nally stirred up trouble, when they did not need to.(2) The liberals are our friends, our bosom bud-dies. Instead of arguing with them, we should listento what they say. They have new light, advanced in-formation they have learned at outside universities.

“Missouri Synod ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates’apparently represent two different frames of mindwithin a genuinely conservative tradition . . To aconservative, the old ways are, ipso facto, better;to the ‘moderate,’ new ideas and ways of thinkingare worth at least exploring. The conservative pre-fers to remain in his own familiar home valley; the‘moderate’ is an explorer at heart. The conserva-tive feels secure in adhering to the heritage of thecenturies, to the letter; the ‘moderate’ feels moresecure in applying the principles inherent in thatcherished heritage to the world of reality as he findsit today. The conservative places a premium onuniformity; the ‘moderate’ believes that a diversityof ideas can contribute to a clearer definition oftruth and thus to a firmer, more viable faith. Theconservative prefers to be guided by traditionalpreconcepts and to weigh evidence subjectively anddeductively from his presuppositions (if, indeed,



he is aware of them); the ‘moderate’ is willing thatother conservative points of view shall coexist withhis own, and is willing to respect those who holdsuch views as people of integrity.”—Ibid.The above paragraph is packed! It is an en-

cyclopedia of reasons why we should fall at thefeet of the liberals and heed their counsels. Theyare smarter than we conservatives. While we slav-ishly remain at the Tree of Life, eating its leaves(MH 199, 6T 230, 7T 195), the liberals havefound a tree with different knowledge. The ser-pent told Eve that day, “Think for yourself; don’tjust take what God says in His Word!”

The liberal “is an explorer at heart,” and “feelsmore secure” in his “cherished heritage,” “the worldof reality” he discovered at the universities. The lib-eral scorns “uniformity,” when he can have “diver-sity of ideas” that give him what Eve thought sheobtained: “a clearer definition of truth.” Her faithhad been transferred from God’s Word to her ownopinions and feelings; but that automatically placedher in subjection to Satan.

So it is with the liberals. The devil promisesthem new freedom. He promises that they willenter upon a higher experience as they makethemselves the normative standard of truth, and“weigh evidence objectively.” Liberality and plu-ralism is the cry. The liberal is actually saying,“Give me freedom, freedom to believe as I wishand do as I wish.” “Above all,” he says, “let medevise a new set of beliefs, a new theology, whichwill enable me to sin all I want, without fear ofthe law of God or a coming judgment.

Before passing on to the next point, it should benoted that the concluding phrase of the above-quoted statement by Cottrell, about conservatives,is simply not true. Liberals are not in submissionto the Word of God and its standards and laws,and are not pleasant people when they are in con-trol.

“The doctrine which, from the very first originof religious dissensions, has been held by all big-ots of all sects, when condensed into a very fewwords, and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is sim-

ply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong.When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerateme; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when Iam stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my dutyto persecute error.”—Sir James Mackintosh, Criti-cal and Historical Essays, Vol. 1, pp. 333-334.

With the leadership of the entire Seventh-dayAdventist Church hanging on each word pre-sented only 32 months before Desmond Ford’sOctober 27, 1979, lecture which began our owncrisis,—Cottrell summed up the problem. He toldwhat our leaders must do to prevent such a splitfrom ever occurring in our own church. Thatsolution was what he has been saying all along:(1) Do not try to protect the conservative posi-tion. (2) Do not let the conservative majority takeover matters. (3) The liberals are actually con-servatives, except that they are more intelligent.(4) Placate the liberals, and everything will turnout fine.

“How shall we fit all of the pieces of the MissouriSynod Puzzle together into an accurate picture, withmeaning and value for Seventh-day Adventists? . .We find no evidence that the original issue withrespect to the inspiration and authority of Scrip-ture, or the charge that the majority of the concordiafaculty was teaching false doctrine, had any sub-stance in fact (though there may have been indi-viduals of whom it was true). The ultraconserv-ativism of the grass-roots majority, pastors andparishioners, prejudged the issue without reallyunderstanding it, drew a tight little theological circledesigned to exclude the faculty as credible mem-bers of the Synod without hearing them, and wasunwilling to enter into meaningful communicationwith them. They were also responsible for an arbi-trary use of administrative authority and power toachieve their objective of conforming the Synod totheir particular mode of thought. As an instrumentto denounce the ‘moderate’ position, A Statementof Scriptural and Confessional Principles was falseand misleading despite its clear delineation of theboundary between conservative and liberal viewsof Scripture. The blanket charge against the ma-jority of the faculty seems to us grossly irrespon-sible.”—Ibid.The Statement, mentioned above was merely

an official statement of historic Lutheran beliefs




Part Three

10 Waymarkswhich the liberals at the Seminary were required toassent to, and which they refused to do.

At this juncture, Cottrell finally affixes someblame, though the lightest possible, on the “moder-ates.” He says the conservatives should have triedto share their beliefs more with leadership, so itwould be understood that there really was no doc-trinal problem.

“We wish that, before passing the point of noreturn, both sides had attempted a full-fledgedpeace conference, examined all of the facts and is-sues candidly and objectively.”—Ibid.As you will learn later in this documentary, Dr.

Preus, the leader of the LCMS conservatives, triedrepeatedly to do just that! But, each time, Seminarypersonnel sidestepped and refused to say exactlywhat they believed. This happened over, and over,and over again! The only reply was that they wereconservatives, they believed in the Bible, and theywere faithful to historic Lutheranism. But not on asingle, specific point would they freely say so. Occa-sionally, some of their real teachings slipped out,but it was not their intention that they be made pub-lic.

The entire crisis was just like the one inheaven when Lucifer talked out of both sides ofhis mouth, all the while buying time to win asmany over to his side as possible—all the whiletrying to edge closer to his goal of taking over allheaven.

That concluded the fifth part of what was ini-tially said to be a “five part” series. But, by this time,Cottrell had decided to add a sixth article, entitled“An Ounce of Prevention” (Review, February 17,1977).

The theme of this final article was the need for“brotherly love” and “maturity” in our own ranks.We must love one another, even when they believesomething different. We must grow up and no longerchildishly fuss when something we perceive as er-ror is taught in the church.

Here are a few brief examples of this compro-mising line of thinking:

“The gospel makes a spirit of brotherhood un-der the golden rule paramount under all circum-stances.”—R.F. Cottrell, “An Ounce of Prevention,”Review, February 17, 1977.

“A mature Christian will not permit differencesof opinion on nonessentials, or circumstances, toundermine the spirit of brotherhood . . Men of goodwill can associate and work together at peace, withmutual respect and confidence, despite differencesof opinion.”—Ibid.

“The fundamentalist mind-set of the LCMS ma-jority, it seems, predisposed them to an exagger-

ated concept of inspiration and inerrancy, to mis-judge the moderates, and to use questionable tac-tics to achieve their objective. We do not for a mo-ment question their sincerity in so doing. Thismind-set, nevertheless, inspired A Statement ofScriptural and Confessional Principles, designedto prove that the moderates were teaching false doc-trine and to purge the Synod of them. Mind-set—afixed way of thinking—was crucial in the LCMSconfrontation. A person should have conviction,but he should also be open to truth.”—Ibid.

“One feels more secure with objectively estab-lished facts, even when they may require an ad-justment in thinking; the other feels more securewith familiar facts and thought patterns, and tendsto feel threatened by unwelcomed facts. One re-spects sincere convictions that conflict with its own;the other prefers that all conform to a particularmode of thought, and tends to be judgmental andexclusive.”—Ibid.

“Mature, responsible persons will recognize andrespect mind-sets that differ from their own. Theywill accord conscientious convictions full honor andrespect, and make adjustments as may be neces-sary in order to relate meaningfully to people whoseway of approaching a problem differs from theirown.”—Ibid.

“Mature, responsible Christians . . will listenintently and with respect to points of view that dif-fer from their own, and endeavor to evaluate themobjectively. They will avoid drawing lines that havethe effect of excluding as credible church members,persons with views differing from their own.”—Ibid.

“The very conservative LCMS concept of inspi-ration and inerrancy is rooted in traditional con-cepts and preconcepts that, superimposed on theBible, provide a basis for misconstruing the mod-erate approach to Scripture as an abandonment ofinspiration and inerrancy and resulted in the chargeof teaching false doctrine.”—Ibid.In a footnote at the bottom of that conclud-

ing article, Cottrell quoted an example of the kindof fanatical conservative attitude which causedthe Concordia crisis, a view we should turn fromwith loathing, if we are to keep our own denomi-nation safe for liberals to run rampant in:

“In a paper presented to a Synod theologicalconvocation in the spring of 1975, Dr. Ralph A.Bohlmann, now president of Concordia Seminary[after Tietjen and his fellow liberals vacated theplace], said that ‘considerations of truth must takeprecedence over considerations of love, shouldthese be in conflict.”—Ibid.That footnote referred the reader back to an an-

tecedent statement by Cottrell, where the footnoteoriginated:

“Brotherly love was made contingent on submis-sion to the conservative doctrinal position.”—Ibid.

11The Concordia Crisis— PART TWO —

WHEN THE CRISIS STRUCKIN OUR OWN DENOMINATION

A little over two years after RaymondCottrell’s report, essentially the same crisisburst upon our own denomination. Just as inthe Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, ours hadbeen gradually developing for years. But thereality of the confrontation was not readilyapparent until Desmond Ford delivered a lec-ture on October 27, 1979.

At the time, the present writer was busily pre-paring Sabbath tracts for eventual publication, whenhe would be able to afford a used press and foldingmachine, and did not learn about the lecture untilthe following February. Immediately he set to workreplying to the errors implicit in the new theology(FF–1-30 to begin with).

Our earlier tracts detail an extensive history ofwhat took place during those years (and are nowfound in the New Theology Tractbook, DoctrinesTractbook, Doctrinal History Tractbook, andSchools Tractbook, to name some of them).

But, briefly, here is an overview of some ofthe action in the first few years of the crisis. (Donot imagine that the crisis is over. Because, un-believably so, the crisis was swept under the rug,it continues on steadily today.)

The very liberal Spectrum magazine, which rev-els in attacks on the Spirit of Prophecy and conser-vatives while presenting favorable reports on ho-mosexuality, adornment, women’s liberation, andsimilar topics, had organized local chapters of theAdventist Forum, where liberal subjects could bepresented in order to win still more to their view ofthings.

Such a forum was held on Sabbath afternoon atPacific Union College on October 27, 1979. After adecade of inducting the South Pacific’s future pas-tors in the new theology, at Avondale College, Fordcame to Pacific Union College in the mid-1970s tocarry on a similar work on the West Coast. He wouldwalk around with a copy of Desire of Ages in hishand, praise Ellen White as a great writer, and speakencouragingly to the students. He was an Absalom,stealing the hearts of the youth while also winningthe faculty and administration over to his side.

But the college was up in the hills and, so farthe liberal inroads being made there were not widelyknown.

By the fall of 1979, Ford thought the time wasready to come out more openly. He felt he had wonenough constituents to his side, that he dared to do

this. Besides, he was only preaching to Adventistsin attendance from Howell Mountain and the NapaValley below.

But a few miles down the hill, in sleepyElmshaven at the foot of the St. Helena Sanitariumwas A.L. White, Ellen White’s grandson. He had re-cently retired and was busily working on the six-volume E.G. White Biography.

When he was given a tape of Ford’s lecture, hecontacted Takoma Park immediately and demandedaction—and he was determined to get it. DesmondFord must be discharged!

Arthur White was not the type of man to ignore.He was beloved by church members all over theworld, and he did not usually become aroused. Onething led to another, and leadership had to do some-thing to take the boiling pot off the fire.

Hearing the tape, the present writer prepared alengthy rebuttal to Ford’s presentation (see thepresent writer’s How Firm Our Foundation—Part1-8 [FF–8-15] for detail information on Ford’s doc-trinal presentation and why it was incorrect).

With the Cottrell report still fairly fresh intheir minds, our leaders had something to worryabout. If they did not successfully defuse thissituation, a major split could occur in our churchas it had in the Missouri Synod denomination.

In order to help the situation be resolved in fa-vor of the liberal element in the church, at aboutthat time Raymond Cottrell stepped forward withthe bright idea of sending out a poll of our collegeand university Bible teachers throughout the worldfield, to see where they stood on a number of be-liefs. He selected items which would yield the mostworrisome results.

Cottrell knew the tabulations would frightenleadership even more, and they would be far lesslikely to cast out the liberals; there were too manyof them in our colleges and universities!

When the Cottrell Poll was tabulated, the resultswere not pleasant to behold (see The Cottrell Poll[WM–22]). It was decided that a meeting would beheld the following summer, immediately after theGeneral Conference Session. By so doing, the del-egates could be told that the problem would besolved a few weeks later. With so many delegatesfrom overseas, they would be too conservative.

But what to do with Desmond Ford during theinterim between October 1979 and July 1980? Hehad been placed on full-salary leave, and it was rec-ommended that he be given an apartment in TakomaPark so he could prepare his defense at the forth-coming meeting. That sounded like a good idea. W.Duncan Eva, President Neal C. Wilson’s chief advi-sor, highly recommended it. Yet this was like letting

12 WaymarksAbsalom walk around Jerusalem for an extendedperiod visiting the people at the gate and winningtheir hearts.

Ford had friends to help him work on his de-fense paper, and he stuffed the back part of it full ofskeptical papers written earlier by others (his so-called “thousand-page thesis” only had about 600double-spaced pages, plus extra material writtenby others). This gave him plenty of free time to ac-cept speaking appointments all over the East Coast,which he did. The infection was spreading still far-ther.

Meanwhile, closet liberals were busily atwork, figuring out how to new-model the officialdoctrinal statement, so their own jobs would besafe. It was suggested to unwary General Confer-ence leaders (I do not believe top echelon of Gen-eral Conference leadership was strongly infectedwith the contagion until about 1983-1985) thatit would be a good thing to revise the officialDoctrinal Statement of the church. This wouldgive the delegates something to think about dur-ing the entire Session—and keep them from prob-ing into other matters.

Wilson liked the idea; and, since he was not atheological brain as Elder Branson (GC presidentfrom 1950 to 1954) had been or spiritually discern-ing like Elder Pierson (1966-1979), he naivelyagreed with the proposal—that the most competentpeople in the denomination for the revision taskwere the religion teachers at Andrews University.Talk about the fox and the hen house;—they hadput the fox in the hen house!

Gleefully men at Andrews, assisted by sev-eral men in other schools—all trained in outsideuniversities—set to work at this pleasant task.The objective was to produce a flowery but foggeddoctrinal statement. It would sound nice, say alot, while actually saying little. The final word-ing must provide a large tent which both conser-vatives and liberals could be comfortable within.

All the while, Desmond Ford was busily extend-ing his contacts, winning new friends, and helpingout in preparations for the forthcoming Session andthe special investigative council which would follow.You could say it was a family operation by the nameof “Ford, Andrews, & Co.” No, Des did not write thedoctrinal revision; but you can know he was on thephone helping the good doctors at Andrews withtheir project. The letter they signed immediatelyafter Glacier View witnessed to the fact.

When the Dallas Session convened on April 17,1980, the delegates were confronted by pages ofwordy nothings, which they were to briefly commenton and then approve. Many complaints were voiced(and dutifully written down in the G.C. Bulletins)about how the basic teachings of the church hadbeen stripped out. But, when they complained, thesuspect item was “sent back to committee for study,”touched up a little, and eventually sent back with-out much change. Day after day this went on—thispoint here, that point there, this one sent off, some-thing earlier discussed (“What did we want donewith that?”) had arrived back to be rushed throughby the chair.

Dazzled by the parades, diverted by sight-seeing, exhausted by the evening extravaganzapresentations, fatigued when each new morning’sbusiness session began, constantly interruptedby some new report from the nominating com-mittee—or the introduction of some special visi-tor from the government or another denomina-tion—the Session finally wound to a close. Thedocument prepared by Andrews & Associates hadbeen voted in, essentially intact.

Within less than a month, Glacier View began.“Glacier View” was actually the name of the Colo-rado (now Rocky Mountain) Conference summercamp. Picturesquely located near Ward, Colorado,it was an ideal place for secluded meetings.

We often speak of “Glacier View,” but there wereactually two Glacier Views. The first was a week-long session which discussed doctrinal issues. Theobjective was to see if the Cottrell Poll was correctin its tally, that a large number of our Bible teach-ers no longer believed several sample basic beliefs.Another objective was to try and hold everyone to amiddle-of-the-road “consensus,” one which mightnot offend the church members, but which the uni-versity-trained teachers could live with.

Beware of that word “consensus”! It does notmean agreement or unity. It means partway accep-tance of something we are stuck with; it means com-promise by all. The best that leadership could hopefor was a kind of consensus which would be leastlikely to cause rebellion among all sides, and churchmembers as well.

Every religion teacher and editor in the denomi-nation was present, plus many administrators. Yearslater, Morris Venden bragged that only he and oneother man there believed in perfection of character.



Knowing a number of excellent men who werepresent, I doubt that the picture was quite that ex-treme. (Venden, by the way, taught a concept of im-puted “perfection of character” which does not re-quire obedience to any commandment.)

Following a stormy first week, everyone re-mained for a second session—the second “Gla-cier View.” Desmond Ford was brought in, andthis session focused on him. At one point in thatweek, Wilson approached him privately andasked if he, Ford, could subscribe to the newlyenacted Statement of Belief. Des happily repliedthat he could sign it with complete confidenceand fully support it. Wilson’s stunned astonish-ment reveals how naive he had been throughoutthe preparation of that Statement. The new the-ology could be nicely tucked inside its para-graphs. The sweet nothings had done their jobwell. The important teachings had been omittedand only broad generalities remained.

When the Friday meeting ended, it was up toWilson to take action (they did not dare let those inattendance at Glacier View do the deciding). Butwhat should he do?

Sunday morning he would hand down his de-cision. By prearrangement, on the sacred hoursof that Sabbath morning, a telegram, signed bynearly every faculty and administrative memberof Pacific Union College, was sent to Wilson. Uponopening it on the holy hours, Wilson was shockedto learn that the entire college gave Ford theirfull backing! They told him he must not fireDesmond Ford.

At approximately the same time, a petitionsigned by a large number of faculty members ofAndrews University and its Seminary—including,of course, the people who wrote the revised State-ment of Belief—arrived, informing Wilson of theirfull support of Desmond Ford.

To make matters more wobbly, Wilson’s closestadviser, W. Duncan Eva, a Britisher (and one ofFord’s closest friends at the time in the General Con-ference), strongly urged Wilson not to discharge

Ford—but send him to England, let him teach atStanborough School in Watford and preach all overEurope. That would “get him out of the way,” Evaassured Wilson.

Although thoroughly shaken by these events, itwas only due to a concern to do the right (and prob-ably because he still felt the larger part of Advent-ism was opposed to Ford’s message)—that Wilsonmade the decision that he did. Ford must be fired.

When the news of this broke, there was anguishin our colleges. Throughout the world field, youngerministers who had been trained in those schoolsfeared for their jobs. They no longer believed in his-toric Adventism, and the news might get out. Wouldthey be next?

But the Adventist denomination was differ-ent than the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.How was it different?

Do you know of any denominations in the20th century which have cast out their liberals,when they were about to take over the church?Only one: the LCMS, at the time of their Concor-dia crisis. Do you know of any other which hassuccessfully resisted the liberal invasion? Onlyone: The Southern Baptists.

Why is that? Because both are essentiallycongregationally based denominations. Themembers were in the saddle; and, before theirchurches became flooded with liberal preachers,they decided to do some housecleaning.

But the Seventh-day Adventist denomination isdifferent. With the sole exception of conference-levelbiennial constituency meetings, our church is con-trolled from the top down. The laymen have essen-tially no say about decision-making (on the aver-age, only 7-10 percent of the delegates to GC Ses-sions are laymen).

Now you can see why Raymond Cottrell’s1977 report on the LCMS crisis was so crucial.It was written primarily to church administra-tors. Be careful, he warned, do not throw out theliberals—or you will split the church and losemany members.

Two years after that report, when the crisis brokein 1979—followed by Glacier View in 1980—it was




Part Four

14 Waymarkschurch leaders who would have to decide how tohandle the situation, not the laymen.

Would the leaders cast out the liberals or wouldthey follow the cautious timeserving counsel of half-disguised liberals?

It is true that, by order of N.C. Wilson, DesmondFord was discharged—although it required a day-long meeting of the Australasian (now South Pacific)Division Committee to do it. Everyone on that com-mittee knew he was their best friend and they be-lieved everything he believed. (Ford had only beenat PUC on leave from Australia; his employing or-ganization was still down under.)

But little else was ever done. Only one or twoof the most flagrant liberals at our colleges andour universities followed Ford out. The new the-ology continued to be taught in our schools, onlymore discreetly. It is true that the school admin-istration had the authority to discharge teach-ers for false doctrine; but, since they did not wantto stir up trouble and generally shared the samebeliefs, they were not inclined to do so.

As for local new theology pastors, few weredischarged unless they came forward and quitor became too openly rancorous, because theydid not wish to pretend that they were conserva-tive when they were not.

In early 1981, the present writer was sent a copyof a letter, written by N.C. Wilson to an inquiringpastor. The young man had written him, askingwhether he should quit since he no longer believedin our historic teachings. In reply, Neal assured himthat he still had a place in our work and that, aslong as he kept his doubts to himself, he would notbe discharged. It was a remarkable letter, and onewhich Wilson considered important enough to per-mit local conference presidents to privately circu-late to disheartened pastors who feared for theirjobs.

But that letter, along with one other event,summarily revealed what the outcome would be:Unlike the Missouri Lutherans, who tried to ex-pel their liberals, we never did! A big fuss wasmade over Desmond Ford, and then our leadersbacked down. They were Chamberlains whosought peace in their time. But they paid for itby dooming later Adventism to apostasy. Becauseof their neutrality in a great crisis, we today, over15 years later, continue to have no peace.

“If God abhors one sin above another, of whichHis people are guilty, it is doing nothing in case ofan emergency. Indifference and neutrality in a reli-gious crisis is regarded of God as a grievous crimeand equal to the very worst type of hostility againstGod.”—3 Testimonies, 281 [Read the entire chap-

ter; it is astonishing.].There are those who consider it wrong for the

present writer to take sides in the present crisis.They say, “We are neutral and will not say yea ornay about the growing apostasy. That is the Chris-tian thing to do.” All such will find, too late, thatthey have made a terrible mistake.

The other event was one which I consider to beone of the momentous ever made in our denomina-tion. It effectually sold us down the river to the lib-erals.

Please now, think: Nearly every Protestantdenomination has been taken over in the 19th-or 20th century by liberals. What was the meansby which they were taken over? Pause and thinka moment, before you rush on to the next para-graph.

It was the schools! It was the schools! Theliberals took over the faculty and administrationof the colleges and universities—and, from therethey sent out pastors to turn the local churchesupside down and remold them in the image ofman (specifically Barth, Brunner, Tillich, and allthe rest). “Give us the schools,” the liberals say,“and soon we’ll have you all!”

The death knell of Adventism was rung in Octo-ber 1983, at the Annual Council. You can read allabout it in our tract “Theological Freedom [WM–110] (now in our Schools Tractbook).

At that time, an action was taken—by major-ity vote of our leaders throughout the worldfield—that the teachers in our worldwide collegesand universities could be liberals and not befired! As long as the administrators in their re-spective schools were not upset, they could teachanything they wanted!

Impossible but true! Rather than root out thedeadly liberalism, our leaders made peace withit. They said, we will give you “academic free-dom,” such as the worldly colleges and universi-ties have. Just work quietly and do not stir uptrouble.

And that was it. Yes, it was true that the profes-sors could still be fired for teaching heresy, but aslong as they proceeded cautiously that would nothappen. And, for practical purposes, it is not hap-pening. Nearly the entire Andrews University fac-ulty, to name but one institution of “higher learn-ing,” has been liberal for well over 15 years. Yetevery ministerial student in North America is sup-posed to obtain a master’s degree there.

In the next section, we are going to closely ex-amine what really happened at Concordia (which isa picture markedly different than the one Cottrellpresented). Please notice throughout it, that the

15The Concordia Crisismen running that Seminary were primarily fight-ing for time. They knew that, if given enoughtime, they would take over the denomination andconvert (or drive out) the members.

But, by means of the October 1983 AnnualCouncil action, the liberals in our schools wereassured that they would have all the time theywanted to liberalize the teachings, members, andinstitutions of the Seventh-day Adventist Church!All they had to do was work carefully, slowly, andprovoke no crises ahead of time.

Friends, you cannot let liberals remain in thetraining centers, if you really believe in the cause.You cannot let them continue to train your youth,unless you do not really care to avoid the inevitabledestruction of the church.

— PART THREE —

HISTORY OF THEATTEMPTED LIBERAL TAKEOVER IN LCMS

“Despite repeated efforts we have not dealt hon-estly with our pastors and people. We have refusedto state our changing theological position in open,honest, forthright, simple and clear words. Overand over again we said that nothing was changingwhen all the while we were aware of changes tak-ing place.

“Either we should have informed our pastorsand people that changes were taking place and, ifpossible, convinced them from Scripture that thesechanges were in full harmony with ‘Thus saith theLord!’ or we should have stopped playing gamesas we gave assurance that no changes were takingplace. With increasing measure the Synodical trum-pet has been giving an uncertain sound . .

“Quite generally our pastors and almost entirelyour laity became more and more confused. Confu-sion led to uncertainty. Uncertainty led to polar-ization. Polarization destroyed creditability. Lossof creditability destroyed the possibility for mean-ingful discussion. The loss of meaningful discus-sion set the stage for a head-on collision.”—RolandWiederaenders, LCMS first vice-president, letter,dated June 21, 1973.In 1952, a year after the present writer began

college, Herman Otten began attending ConcordiaSeminary, in St. Louis. When he discovered that non-Biblical teachings were being taught, he expressedhis concern to the school administration. But hewas told that classroom teaching was private andhe did not have a right to reveal it to LCMS offi-cials.

In 1957 Otten graduated with a Bachelor of Di-vinity degree and, six months later, began pastoralwork at Trinity Lutheran Church in New Haven,Missouri (about 40 miles west of St. Louis, as the

crow flies). From that time forward, for years tocome, there was a running battle between Otten andTrinity Church, on one side, and the Seminary andLCMS administration on the other.

Just as the liberal crisis in our own denomi-nation caused the present writer in early 1980to begin preparing a flood of reports, so the cri-sis in LCMS caused Otten to begin publishing in1961. Every means possible was used to silencehim and either separate him from that denomi-nation or from Trinity Church or destroy his lo-cal church along with him.

The denomination just did not want unau-thorized publications telling what was going on.However, there were leaders in LCMS who qui-etly helped Otten, because they too wanted tosee the apostasy curtailed.

Eventually, probably largely through Otten’songoing reports, a majority of the entire LCMS wasaroused to the point that, at a 1969 Synod conven-tion, it demanded that the apostasy at the Semi-nary be stopped.

The three largest Lutheran bodies in the UnitedStates are the American Lutheran Church, theLutheran Church of America, and the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod (LCMS). Of the three,LCMS, the second largest, had remained the mostconservative in its beliefs. Its headquarters are lo-cated in St. Louis, Missouri. The members tend tobe of a German background and are anxious to befaithful to the teachings of Martin Luther, theAugsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles, the twoCatechisms of Luther, and the Formula of Concord.

Another name for LCMS is “Missouri Synod,”and members frequently refer to it as “the Synod.”“Synod” stands for the fact that the churches in thedenomination were held together by annual synodconventions, which are much like our quadrennialGeneral Conference Sessions. In the present report,the word “synod” or “Synod,” alone, will refer tothe denomination and its leadership while “synodconvention” (their own phrase) stands for the an-nual meeting.

It should be noted here that, at the present time,LCMS has several colleges which are called“Concordia,” but it has only one Concordia Semi-nary (although it also has a second, smaller, Semi-nary at Springfield, Illinois). Throughout this en-tire report, “Concordia” and “Seminary” re-fer only to the Concordia Seminary, located at801 De Mun Avenue, St. Louis, Missouri.

Do not imagine that the liberals were only lo-cated at the Seminary; there were pockets of themin several large-city churches throughout the na-

16 Waymarkstion. But the crisis centered at Concordia; all real-ized that the decisions made there would decidethe stance to be taken toward liberals throughoutthe church.

In 1932, LCMS adopted a Brief Statement ofits doctrinal position. Fifteen years later, in 1947,at the centennial of the denomination, the BriefStatement was approved as the official proceed-ings of the convention.

Article 1 of that Brief Statement is about theveracity of the Bible, and includes these words:

“We teach also that the verbal inspiration of theScriptures is not a so-called ‘theological deduction,’but that it is taught by direct statements of theScriptures . . Since the Holy Scriptures are the Wordof God, it goes without saying that they contain noerrors or contradictions, but that they are in alltheir parts and words the infallible truth, also inthose parts which treat of historical, geographical,and other secular matters.”This is a great truth that conservatives in our

own ranks believe, and it formed the basis of LCMSdoctrines as well.

At this point, it is well to reply to the argu-ment of liberals among us that the Bible is “err-ing.” Liberals everywhere, including within ourown denomination, say that the God’s Word can-not be trusted; it has errors. They say this inorder that their own words and opinions may beplaced in the forefront to “interpret and correctit” for us. Beware of those who talk that way.Although it is true that flaws may have occurredin translation (1SM 16), the Word of God itselfis unerring (4T 312, 441; 5T 389; AA 506; CT449-450, etc.).

Similar accusations are made against theSpirit of Prophecy, for the same reason. Men wantthe attention of the people turned away fromGod’s Word and drawn to themselves as the spiri-tual authority.

But, with the passing of the years, liberals gradu-ally infiltrated LCMS colleges and its Seminary. Wehave noted how a young student, Herman Otten,discovered that fact as early as the 1950s.

Why did they penetrate the schools of such aconservative church? Simple enough; the schoolshired men who had obtained their doctorates inoutside universities.

Why was it so perilous to hire such men? Be-cause such men teach deadly heresies and,planted in LCMS schools, they immediately set

to work to convert the youth of the church totheir views! The young pastors they would sendout into the field would, in turn, transform thelocal congregations into worldly meetinghouses.

“History tells us that in the Fundamentalist-Mod-ernist controversy in the ’20s the Fundamentalistslost because the Modernists gained control of theecclesiastical machinery as well as the theologicalseminaries. It was a decisive combination.”—Harold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, p. 85.

“If history has any lesson to teach, it is that de-fection from inerrancy [of Scripture] generally takesplace in the educational institutions and thenspreads from there. In the case of the MissouriLutherans it appears to have resulted from post-graduate studies pursued by men trained in Mis-souri schools who then secured doctorates in secu-lar or liberal institutions. They are enamored ofthe historical-critical method, and numbers of themleft their old moorings with respect to biblical in-fallibility. More frequently than not, men with thiskind of training did not go into the parish minis-try, but headed for institutions where the possibil-ity existed to disseminate this newfound learningamong younger minds that could easily be influ-enced away from historic Missouri viewpoints. Inaddition, this kind of mind enjoyed teaching thesenew and attractive but irregular doctrines throughthe literature of the denomination. So they becameeditors and writers for church school materials.”—Op. cit., 83.At the Detroit Synod convention of 1965, the

delegates once again declared their “unwaver-ing loyalty to the Scriptures as the inspired andinerrant Word of God.” But men were at work toundo their best intentions. They had been at workfor years.

“The St. Louis Seminary did not become liberalovernight. It was planning a manipulation that pro-duced the result. In a graduate class at the school,the professor told his students about the histori-cal background of the effort to change the MissouriSynod [the entire denomination]. This professorwas one who later left Concordia when the exodusoccurred . . In a July 1968 class he told the stu-dents:

“ ‘The ‘progressive’ movement got started in asmoke-filled pastor’s office in New York City in1930, when two LCMS pastors decided, after Synodhad turned down the Chicago Thesis and had au-thorized the drafting of the Brief Statement, thatthey would start a movement to ‘change Synod.’ ”—Harold Lindsell, The Bible in Balance, p. 255.

Behnken was elected president of the Synod in



1935, and held that office until 1962. During thattime liberals were protected and slowly grew instrength in the denomination. It is believed thattrusting naivete on the part of Behnken may havebeen largely to blame.

Alfred O. Fuerbringer was elected president ofthe seminary in 1953 and remained in control until1969. Fuerbringer intensified the inroads of liber-alism at the Seminary. Certain teachers were hired,others were not.

Between 1964 and 1969, major changes oc-curred at Concordia Seminary. The faculty becameradically different.

Five years after his retirement from the presi-dency, Behnken realized his great mistake in trust-ing the liberals. In 1967, he wrote a letter to themembers of the LCMS Council of Presidents, ask-ing them to check on what was going on at the Semi-nary.

“Some present-day theologians hold that God’saccount of creation is not to be taken literally, fac-tually or historically, but must be understood as alegend, a parable, a symbol, a myth, etc. . . Someother accounts in Scripture, even Books of Scrip-ture, have been subjected to similar treatment.

“Modern discoveries, advanced learning in thenatural sciences, the ‘refinement’ of the term ‘evo-lution’ to ‘theistic evolution,’ etc. are given as rea-sons for this new approach to the accounts in God’sholy Word.

“Then there are those who hold that where thetraditional and the new interpretations of Scrip-ture are in conflict with each other we must grantthe new interpretations equal rights, regard themas optional, mere alternatives, and hence permis-sible.”—John W. Behnken, Letter dated March 6,1967, to Council of Presidents.The letter was passed on to the administration

of Concordia, but no reply was ever given. This wasto become a standard pattern.

Why should we concern ourselves about a cri-sis in another denomination? Because the prob-lems, the subterfuges, the techniques, and thedeceptions to be found there—exist in our own.

The Concordia crisis is a window through

which we can better view our own situation—and what might have been if our leaders had beenfaithful to cast the liberals out of our collegesand universities.

“Today even Lutheran churches are in full flightfrom dogma, that is, from the very idea of God-given truth and doctrine. The time was when thosewishing to escape from the dogma of the AugsburgConfession restricted it to ‘fundamental’ (e.g., theGeneral Synod) or to some central Gospel-core,which would then be ‘enough’ for true unity. Thisjubilee year of the Formula of Concord (1577) cannote a decided advance on this technique. A newbook from the LCA’s Gettysburg Seminary takesup the Augsburg Confession’s distinction betweenthe Gospel (in which there must be unity) and cer-emonies (in which there is freedom), and then clas-sifies dogma or doctrine under ‘ceremonies,’ whichare ‘the responsibility of free human creativity!’ ”—Kurt E. Marquart, Anatomy of an Explosion: ATheological Analysis of the Missouri Synod Con-flict, p. 79.Throughout the Protestant churches today,

there is an antipathy to doctrine and definitebeliefs and standards. If it is admitted that theyare important, or even exist, then men are re-quired to surrender to, and obey, them.

At the 1973 Bangkok meeting of the World Coun-cil of Churches, M.M. Thomas, the Central Com-mittee Chairman, made this statement:

“We are living in a time when we are deeply con-scious of pluralism in the world—pluralism of hu-man situations and needs . . As a historian of reli-gion, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, has recently said onthe grounds also of the loss of authority of the es-tablished churches today, ‘the old ideal of a unifiedor systematic Christian truth has gone . . leaving asystem of open variety, of optional alternatives.’ ”—M.M. Thomas, 1973 Bankok World Council ofChurches meeting, Christianity Today, March 30,1973.The hue and cry is that all we need is love for

God and one another—and that doctrine (whichis actually obedience to God’s Word) matters not.

“In philosophy a small error in the beginningleads to a very large error at the end. So in theol-ogy a small error overturns the whole doctrine.Therefore doctrine and life must be rigorously




Part Five

18 Waymarksdistinquished from each other. Doctrine is not oursbut God’s, Whose called servants we merely are.Therefore we may not yield or change even one tittleof it . . Accursed be that love which is preserved tothe detriment of the doctrine of faith, before whichall must yield love—apostle, angel from heaven, etc.. . If they believed that it is God’s Word, they wouldnot play with it like this, but hold it in the highesthonour, and accord it faith without any disputa-tion or doubting . . For doctrine is our sole light,which enlightens and leads us and shows us theway to heaven. If it becomes wobbly in one part, itmust necessarily become wobbly altogether. Whenthat happens, love cannot help us.”—Martin Luther,Longer Galatians Commentary, pp. 644-649.According to E. Clifford Nelson, the very liberal

American Lutheran Church tried, from 1959 to1968, to get the conservative Lutheran Church-Mis-souri Synod to unite with it (E.C. Nelson, Luther-anism in North America: 1914-1970, p. 535).

Oliver R. Harms, president of LCMS afterBehnken retired, tried hard to bring about thisunion. Working closely with him was AlfredFuerbringer, head of Concordia Seminary and an-other strong liberal.

“The St. Louis Seminary had done what it couldto support Harms, even sending him a formal let-ter of ’loyalty’ and ‘thanks’ for his ‘leadership inthe trying situations besetting the Church and es-pecially in the progress toward fellowship with theAmerican Lutheran Church.’ But seeing the hand-writing on the wall, the Seminary administrationmoved swiftly, already in 1968, to insure itselfagainst possible reversals at Denver.”—Watershedat the Rivergate, p. 87.The men at the Seminary had reason to be

worried. News about what they were teaching wastrickling out. Although they kept trumpeting thatthey were teaching the “full gospel” and “the Con-fessions,” and “believe fully in the Bible,” etc.,those instructors were actually teaching some-thing far different.

For example, in a 1967 essay, Dr. Everett Kalinstated:

“For we are seeing with increasing clarity todaythat the accounts about Jesus’ words and activi-ties as they are contained in the four gospels in theNew Testament are in themselves the products oflong development . . In the process of their oraluse in the community prior to the composition ofthe gospels, these materials were modified, rein-terpreted, and rephrased many times. In otherwords, a saying of Jesus as it is given in one of thegospels in the New Testament is the product of thechurch’s tradition up to that time.”—E. Kalin, es-say delivered November 13, 1967, at Webster Col-lege.The following year, another Seminary teacher

changed “inspiration” and “inerrancy” to somethingelse:

“The ‘scholastics’ [by which he meant the Mis-souri Synod conservatives] have taken the phrase‘verbal inspiration’ and ‘inerrancy’ as their shibbo-leths. [In contrast we liberals,] The ‘confessional’or ‘evangelical’ group points out that these wordsshould not be regarded as necessary.”—RobertSmith, Lutheran Forum, October, 1968.A little earlier, another Seminary teacher let the

cat out of the bag that J,E,D,P theories about Mo-saic books were being taught there (Ralph Klein,Concordia Theological Monthly, May 1968).

Course descriptions in the Seminary catalogsalso revealed the gradual changeover. Here is howone course of instruction changed within six years:

“EN-545. The First Epistle of Peter.—Thiscourse consists of a study of 1 Peter on the basis ofthe original text, with a special view to its doctrinalcontent; specifically, the church, baptism, the de-scent into hell, and Eschatology.”—ConcordiaSeminary General Catalog, 1964.

“EN-304. 1 Peter. Detailed literary-philologicalstudy of 1 Peter, with emphasis on the probablesources and its contribution to the Christiancommunity’s self-understanding.”—ConcordiaSeminary General Catalog, 1970.The doctrines was gone and “sources” and “self-

understanding” by the “community” had taken theirplace.

In 1966, Dr. Behnken wrote Fuerbringer,president of the Seminary, asking that 28 ques-tions be answered about the historicity of per-sons and events in the Old Testament to whichhe wanted answers. As usual, no reply was sentto him.

Behnken wrote again, pleading for even a shortstatement of what they believed.

Fuerbringer replied with a nebulous commentabout the difficulties of the matter.

Behnken wrote again and Fuerbringer replied:“By and large, neither the sacred Scriptures nor theLutheran symbolical books speak directly enoughto some of the issues that your letter raises to en-able our faculty to make the kind of statement thatyou desire without a great deal of careful reflection.”They did not dare tell whether they believed thatGenesis 1-2 were true, whether Daniel had everexisted, whether Jesus said what is in the Gos-pels, and on and on!

The next year, Behnken made his correspon-dence public, sending copies of the letter to highofficials throughout the denomination.

Fuerbringer had done an excellent job cover-ing for the liberals at the Seminary, but he wassupposed to retire at the forthcoming Synod’s

19The Concordia CrisisDenver convention,—and there was great dan-ger the delegates might replace him with a con-servative!

“Dr. Repp one day announced to the faculty thatwe had better get a new president before the termof President Fuerbringer comes to an end. He sug-gested that the election of a new president ought totake place before the Denver Convention lest weget a man out of step with what was going on. Ithink you will understand how extraordinary sucha suggestion is in the light of the fact that new semi-nary presidents are not, as a rule, elected beforethe term of the previous one ends. I think it dem-onstrates a determination to prevent any possiblechange in what was going on at the seminary.”—Dr. M. Scharlemann, quoted in Tom Baker, Wa-tershed at the Rivergate, 62.On May 19, 1969, less than two months be-

fore the Synod’s Denver convention, an eventtook place which would profoundly affect boththe Seminary and the entire denomination. Dr.Alfred O. Fuerbringer, president of ConcordiaSeminary since 1953, suddenly retired beforehe was supposed to. It was well-known that theliberal LCMS president’s (Oliver Harms) term ofoffice would expire at the forthcoming meeting.Because of Herman Otten’s independent pressreports, the membership had been aroused andit was very likely that conservatives would beelected to both the denominational and Semi-nary presidencies.

Upon Fuerbringer’s announcement, immedi-ately Harms and three other electors voted inDr. John Tietjen as Concordia’s sixth president.This handpicked nomination occurred, even thoughTietjen had received only a few congregational nomi-nations, compared with over sixty for Dr. Schar-lemann and over a hundred for Dr. R. Bohlmann(the man who later replaced Tietjen).

John H. Tietjen was to become the greatchampion of liberalism in the Missouri Synod.He had taken his graduate work at Union Theo-logical Seminary in New York City, a well-knownbastion of extreme liberalism. At the time of hiselection to the presidency of Concordia Semi-nary, he was executive secretary of the Depart-ment of Public Relations of the Lutheran Coun-cil in the USA (LCUSA). This was an ecumenicalorganization which linked the Lutheran denomi-nations with the National Council of Churchesand, through it, to the World Council of Churches.

Apparently the religion editor of the Minneapo-lis Star and a member of the liberal AmericanLutheran Church knew something; for, soon afterTietjen was elected, the editor wrote this in a publi-cation:

“Besides the synod presidency, another keysynod office was filled in 1969—the presidency ofConcordia Seminary, St. Louis, where Dr. A. O.Fuerbringer retired. Named to succeed him was Dr.John H. Tietjen, former director of public relationsfor the Lutheran Council in the USA, who was ex-pected to exercise strong leadership in the direc-tion of the great ecumenical involvement for theMissouri Synod, including LWF [Lutheran WorldFederation] membership.”—Willmar Thorkelson,Lutherans in the USA, p. 26.How he knew that, when most people in LCMS

did not, is intriguing. This was written on the dust jacket of his ear-

lier 1966 book, Which Way to Lutheran Unity?“In 1959 he received his Th.D. from Union Theo-

logical Seminary, and began his editorship of theAmerican Lutheran—first as a managing editorfrom 1962 to 1966 . . In September 1966 he be-came executive secretary, Division of Public Rela-tions of the Lutheran Council in the United Statesof America (LCUSA).”The American Lutheran was an extremely strong

pro-ecumenical organization. As for LCMS, it wasdecidedly against ecumenism. Electing Tietjen wasan effrontery to the whole church.

Getting liberals into office at the forthcom-ing Denver convocation was considered the toppriority of the modernists in the denomination.An in-house Concordia Seminary paper in mid-1968included this comment:

“Fuerbringer described the importance of goodnominations for elections at the Denver conven-tion.”—Faculty Journal, May 28, 1968.But that is not how it worked out. The 1969

synodical convention in Denver marked a turn-ing point in the denomination. Herman Otten haddone his work well. For over a decade he hadbeen sending out papers, warning about the lib-eralism. A majority of the membership careddeeply about their denomination—deeply enoughto want to save it (unlike a majority of members inour denomination, who, when they read the warn-ings, prefer to go back to sleep and their televisionsets).

At that convention, Harms urged the mem-bers to approve a resolution to unite LCMS moreclosely with the liberal American LutheranChurch. He told them that the faculty of Concor-dia Seminary heartily recommended it.

Instead, the synod passed resolutionsstrengthening their position on adhering to Scrip-ture and dislodging leaders who would not doso.

Then they voted in Dr. Jacob A.O. Preus aspresident of the denomination, and directed him

20 Waymarksin no uncertain words to eliminate the liberalsat Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.

Tietjen attempted to pacify the synod, by issu-ing statements that there were no doctrinal differ-ences between the teachings at Concordia and thosein the official beliefs of the church. But those state-ments were not true.

“Neither the faculty nor I know of any basic theo-logical differences within the faculty involving in-terpretation of Scripture or the meaning of confes-sional subscription.”—John Tietjen, Lutheran Wit-ness Reporter, November 24, 1969.

Do not expect truth from confirmed liberals!They are not children of God. They are workingto destroy confidence in the Word of God, notbuild it up. —And, in our own ranks and even inthe independent ministries, traveling preachers,and newsletters will also be found such liberals!They come to you with messages that the Spiritof Prophecy writings are incorrect, were writtenby someone else, are not to be trusted, etc. Be-ware of such men; ask them to leave your homesand local congregation. If listened to, they willbring grief to both you and your loved ones.

If you have already accepted some of theirideas, plead with God to cleanse them from yourmind—and restore to you perfect trust in all theWord of God, both the Bible and the Spirit ofProphecy—all of it!

Throughout these years, there were a few teach-ers at the Concordia Seminary who were faithful tothe Bible and the historic beliefs of LCMS. Thesewere referred to as the “conservative minority.”

A few months after the Denver convention, agroup of liberal church workers in the St. Louis areaissued a document, entitled “A Call to Opennessand Trust.” Three faculty members at the Seminarywere signers. This was one of the few times in whicha statement was issued by the liberal camp in whichthey admitted that they had different views than theconservatives. Apparently, they did it in the hopethat it would arouse liberals throughout the denomi-nation to come to their aid.

“The Gospel that is Christ is not a doctrine whichequates Gospel with Bible—is the basis for unityof the family of God. We specifically hold that dif-ferences concerning: (1) the manner of the creationof the universe by God, (2) the authorship and lit-erary form of any books of the Bible, (3) the defini-tion of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper,(4) the moral obligation of Christians in individual

or corporate action, (5) the question of factual er-ror in the Bible, and (6) the role and authority ofclergy in the church are not to be the basis for in-clusion or exclusion of people among the true dis-ciples of Jesus Christ or membership in the Mis-souri Synod.”—“A Call to Openness and Trust,”January 1970.Notice that the above statement said that the

“Gospel” is something separate from the Bible. Theliberal position was that the Bible was judged bytheir “Gospel,” whatever that was. Whenever theywere cornered, the liberals in LCMS declared theywere standing by the “Gospel.” This was done inorder to confuse issues and avoid admitting thatthey no longer believed in the Bible.

The liberals in our own denomination will notaccept and obey the plain teachings of the Bible ei-ther.

Why are liberals across denominational bar-riers so much alike in their positions and de-fenses? Probably because they maintain exten-sive contacts with one another. Keep in mind thatthey schooled together at outside universities.Throughout the Concordia crisis, the liberals therewere counseling with fellow liberals in the universi-ties and other denominations.

As part of the ongoing smoke screen that, nowthat he was Seminary president, Tietjen would regu-larly throw up, he amplified on “A Call to Opennessand Trust” with an article in the church paper,Brother to Brother. It consisted of a bold attack.Tietjen declared that the conservatives were try-ing to change the doctrines and methods of gov-ernance in the church while the Seminary wasfaithful to both. He concluded with these remark-able words:

“Make no mistake about this, brothers, what isat stake is not only inerrancy by the Gospel of JesusChrist itself, the authority of Holy Scripture, the‘quia’ subscription to the Lutheran Confessions,and perhaps the very continued existence ofLutheranism as a confessional movement in aChristian world.”—John Tietjen, Brother toBrother, February 11, 1970.Reading the above, one might think he was a

true conservative, but the truth was far different.Analyzing it, the Commission on Theology and

Church Relations (CTCR) published a statement inreply, which included this:

“The document downgrades the importance oftrue Christian doctrine not only by its failure todistinguish between true and false doctrine, but es-



pecially by treating articles of faith as open ques-tions.”—CTCR, Analysis of “Call to Openness andTrust,” April 1970.

Until 1969, at the Denver convention theCTCR had been a liberal pawn. But a change ofpersonnel in the highest posts of leadership hadreturned it to the conservative camp. We needthat in our denomination as well.

Years later, a document was found in the Semi-nary files which dated back to this same time.

On February 18, 1970, Tietjen attended ameeting of the Departments of Systematic andExegetical Theology at the Seminary, at whichtime a three-page document was produced. Itlisted contrasting views of twelve points on “thedoctrine of Scripture,” clearly showing that theSeminary was teaching a wide variety of errors.

Here were the twelve points: inspiration,uniqueness, authority, source and norm, unity,Christ and Bible, inerrancy and infallibility, lit-erary form and truth, on doing Biblical theology,New Testament and Old Testament prophecy, NewTestament and Old Testament interpretation, andJesus and adapting Christ’s words.

It was for such reasons that, reviewing the pastin 1976, the Synod’s Board for Higher Educationdeclared that there had been

“a conscious effort over the year to change thedoctrine of the LCMS by using the Synod’s ownSchools to bring about change.”—SBHE, Missouriin Perspective, December 8, 1976.Yes, contrary to what Raymond Cottrell would

later say, there had been a liberal drive to changethe doctrines of the LCMS denomination—andthe groundwork for it had been in progress foryears.

Read what Tietjen’s own ALC journal, the veryliberal American Lutheran, had published in 1964:

“In recent years Concordia Seminary must begiven credit for its share in the change that hasbeen going on in the Lutheran Church-MissouriSynod. There are some who do not like to hear it,but the Missouri Synod has changed and is chang-ing—in many ways—theologically too. The St. Louis

seminary has helped produce the change. Aboutthe middle of the forties the Seminary itself experi-enced a change. With the passing of an older gen-eration of professors younger men arrived on thescene, men who had studied in institutions out-side of the Missouri Synod, men who had escapedfrom the cultural isolation . . Quietly and unobtru-sively the seminary faculty prepared the ministryof the future. Slowly the synod began to change . .

“Hounded by heresy hunters, its faculty mem-bers have had to cross every orthodox t and dotevery doctrinal i in all of their public utterances . .

“The time had come for Concordia Seminary toreclaim its role as teacher of the Missouri Synod.In ever so many areas the synod needs effectivetheological leadership. The faculty members of theSeminary ought to speak out boldly on the ques-tions of Biblical interpretation, ecumenical involve-ment, confrontation with the problems of a scien-tific age, the relation of the Christian faith to socialissues, and reforms needed in the Lutheran Churchtoday. There are signs that members of the facultyare prepared to speak out. The responsible syn-odical officials ought to stand ready to support theSeminary in its exercise of leadership. And thechurch had better listen. The church is always inneed of prophets. It may not always like what theysay, but woe to the church when it fails to payheed.”—American Lutheran, December 1964.In a letter dated April 20, 1970, J.A.O. Preus,

president of LCMS, announced to the ConcordiaSeminary Board of Control that he was appointinga Fact Finding Committee to investigate the beliefsof the faculty at the Seminary.

In a news release, through the Lutheran Wit-ness Reporter, Tietjen made the remarkablestatement that this was the first time he had beentold of such “basic theological differences” withinthe faculty and that “neither the faculty nor ‘I’know of any basic theological differences withinthe faculty involving interpretation of Scriptureor the meaning of confessional subscription.”

Faculty interviews were to begin on December11, 1970, and continue through March 6, 1971.Each professor was to be interviewed for about twohours. A tape was made and copies were distrib-uted to the school and certain church officials.




Part Six

22 WaymarksTietjen was present at each interview.

Writing in the January 1971 Seminary newslet-ter and reprinted in the pro-liberal Lutheran Wit-ness Reporter of January 17, Tietjen’s article wasentitled, “Faculty Interviews Continue ‘Under Pro-test.’ ” Declaring that “such a procedure is division-making and sets faculty member against facultymember,” Tietjen ignored the fact that each facultymember was only asked about his beliefs, not thoseof anyone else’s. Such words as “unscriptural,” “un-ethical,” “divisive,” “disruptive,” and “detrimental”were used. Tietjen made it all out to be a terriblewitch-hunt against the innocent.

Seriously now, if your beliefs were fully inharmony with fundamental beliefs—as Tietjensaid the faculty’s were—would you mind beinginterviewed, so your doctrinal purity could besettled once and for all?

At this juncture, the five minority professors atthe Seminary (all of whom were solidly conserva-tive) spoke up. In a February letter, they declaredthat the majority at the Seminary were maligningthe denominational president and that, yes indeed,errors were being taught at that institution. Theyknew exactly what was going on there.

“The faculty majority has wronged the Presidentof Synod. It has done this by distorting the factsand by its slurs against him and his manner ofconducting the investigation . . We believe thatLuther’s Large Catechism is correct when it advisesthat public sin must be publicly rebuked.”—Fac-ulty minority, letter dated February 3, 1971.(Those five minority faculty members were Dr.

Ralph Bohlmann, Dr. Richard Klann, Dr. RobertPreus, Dr. Martin Scharlemann, and Dr. LorenzWunderlich. [When, in this report, we speak of“Preus,” we refer to President J.A.O. Preus, not toRobert Preus, the Seminary minority faculty mem-ber.)

At the Milwaukee convention, held in July1971, delegates from liberal local LCMS churchesstirred up debate over the legal right of Preus toappoint that Fact Finding Committee, but theprotests were voted down.

On March 3, 1972, Preus issued A Statementof Scriptural and Confessional Principles, to helpidentify correct beliefs. Although not actually used,it still aroused a storm of verbal and written pro-test by Seminary personnel.

Keep in mind that all this time, the students atthe Seminary were receiving an ongoing barrage ofliberal propaganda in their classes and chapel pe-riods.

On April 4, the faculty majority issued a Re-sponse, in which they blasted the Statement as an

unchristian, binding, dogma, and theologically in-adequate, etc.

Just because Preus had been elected in 1969“to clean up the Seminary,” did not mean thatall the liberals had been eliminated from posi-tions of leadership.

On June 22,1972, the Board of Control whichthe Seminary was directly answerable to, issueda Progress Report, in which it stated that it foundthe faculty to be entirely correct doctrinally!

This was strange, since that report includedboth the majority and the minority; they areequally “without false doctrine,”—yet the twogroups taught radically different beliefs, stan-dards, and practices.

However, two members of the Board, Dr. E.C.Weber and Mr. Walter Dissen, vigorously contestedthe validity of the Board’s evaluation of the Semi-nary faculty.

“These are more than mere theological details.They involve doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures.Indeed, they involve the Gospel itself as well asconfessional subscription. Consider this in light ofthe well-publicized position of the faculty that itdoes not feel bound by doctrinal statements ofSynod and it is understandable why the Synod’sconstituency is disturbed.

“In view of all of this we cannot report in goodconscience that there is not false doctrine . . If wedo not openly report this to the church we alsobecome a party to approval of these aberrations.”—Seminary Board of Control, Minority Report, June22, 1972.In response, Tietjen published his own re-

port, Fact Finding or Fault Finding, in whichhe vigorously attacked the report of the Fact Find-ing Committee, declared it based its work onunLutheran, anti-Christian, theories which“threaten our Synod with grave danger.” Hethreatened that, if the attacks on Seminary per-sonnel did not stop, the school would lose itsaccreditation with the accrediting agency (whichhappened to be the American Association ofTheological Schools, a strongly pro-liberal orga-nization). —How did he know that might hap-pen?

If you did not know it already, liberals and athe-ists control all the educational accrediting agenciesin America.

As an aside here, the reader should know thatthe liberals work closely together, not only withothers in the denomination, but with liberalsoutside. They are in harmony only when oppos-ing conservative, Bible-believing, people. When-ever the liberals in a college are threatened, theaccreditation agency sends an investigative team

23The Concordia Crisisto the campus, possibly place the school on pro-bation, and warn them to change their ways—orelse. This has happened in our own denomina-tion.

Tietjen was already making contacts, as earlyas 1972, to make sure it would happen erelong toConcordia Seminary.

In order to increase the pressure on the churchto stop trying to clean the liberals out of Concordia,an article was planted in the New York Times:

“Faced with the loss of accreditation, theConcordia Seminary faculty and administrationacknowledged this week that the school’s future asa viable academic institution depended on theLutheran Church-Missouri Synod rejecting its con-servative leader, the Rev. Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus, orin revising church laws to check his power . . Manyfaculty members say privately that the ideal solu-tion for the seminary is defeat of Dr. Preus.”—Dis-patch from St. Louis, New York Times, June 11,1972.It is an intriguing fact that, while the report

of the Fact Finding Committee stated there weredoctrinal differences at Concordia, the Board ofControl ruled that there were absolutely none,—and then Tietjen, in his Fact Finding or FaultFinding, declared there were serious doctrinaldifferences! That was a slip of the pen, but hesaid it.

“There are, indeed, genuine doctrinal issues thatmust be confronted and resolved . . We have gravemisgivings about the doctrinal position of our ad-versaries, and we have some things to say to themabout their doctrinal soundness.”—John Tietjen,Fact Finding or Fault Finding, September 8, 1972.

On January 15, 1973, the Board of Controlissued a second report, commending all facultymembers “on the basis of the Fact Finding Com-mittee report.” Although the Board had inter-viewed only 29 of 44 teachers, it voted to “com-mend” them all as having no “false doctrine.”

A Board of Control minority report vigorouslyprotested the correctness of the majority report.

Three years later, the president of the MissouriDistrict and a minority member of that Board ofControl, said this:

“The Board of Control before New Orleans [con-vention, at which time board membership waschanged] was prejudiced in behalf of the Seminary[pro-Tietjen]. The majority on the Board of Controlat that time simply voted in favor of those profes-sors because they were anti-Preus.

“I can still remember where one individual [pro-fessor] had been interviewed. After he stepped outof the room, one member of the Board of Controlsaid, ‘I wouldn’t want that man to teach my confir-mation class.’ And yet when the time came to vote

whether he should be commended, this man votedto commend that professor. So you have a major-ity bloc prior to the New Orleans convention whichvoted together.

“As a result no professor was found guilty of anyfalse doctrine. It was my opinion at the time thatthere were some professors who were in need ofcorrecting. However, because the Board of Controlby majority vote said that all should be com-mended, the matter of false doctrine was drop-ped.”—Dr. Herman C. Scherer, speaking at ZionLutheran Church, Ferbuson, Missouri, October 19,1979.The Board of Control had permitted Tietjen

to write the report of the findings during thedoctrinal faculty interviews!

Angered by the ongoing snow job, Preus wrote:“No tape recordings were made or stenographic

records . . The Board appointed Dr. Tietjen to writethe resumes in collaboration with the interviewedprofessors (!) . . The church also deserves to knowthat the Report of the Board of Control did not makeany reference to any criterion as to what would con-stitute fidelity to the Holy Scriptures . .

“It is the conviction of your president that weare not merely talking about minor theological dif-ferences, but that we are talking about matters thatinvolve false doctrine. To erode the authority ofGod’s Word is false doctrine.”—J.A.O. Preus, let-ter published in Brother to Brother, April 27, 1973.We wish we had a J.A.O. Preus in our church

to clean up our schools!In addition, two minority board members re-

vealed in a letter to Preus that four of the boardmembers had earlier been awarded honorary de-grees by Tietjen’s Seminary. How is that for win-ning the board to your side?

For his part, Tietjen was keeping busy at theSeminary, offering advanced classes, taught by lib-erals, to lower-class students—so they would electnot to take courses offered by the conservative mi-nority.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has aremarkably nice way of operating, Once each yeardelegates from each local church meet togetherin a Synod convention; the location varies fromyear to year. Each local congregation submitssuggested resolutions, which are then workedover by a number of floor committees (missions,higher education, evangelism, etc.). The resolu-tions are then presented to the entire conven-tion, which then discusses and votes on themindividually. —What an effective, democratic, wayto do things!

In preparation for the July New Orleans synodconvention, Dr. Preus appointed a special com-

24 Waymarksmittee (the “Committee Three”) to obtain asmuch information as possible, so the conventioncould have all the facts and make wise decisions.

This committee examined all the controversialdocuments and interviewed various persons. Bythis time, the American Association of Theologi-cal Schools had already placed Concordia Semi-nary on probation, exactly what Tietjen threat-ened might happen. An AATS Visiting Team hadsuddenly arrived and gone into “consultation”with Dr. Tietjen.

A side note should be made here. In order toworsen the accreditation probation rating, Tietjenhad refused to appeal it, which as president ofthe institution he was supposed to do. When, inJuly 1972, he was asked by Preus for a reason forhis inaction, Tietjen airily replied that the proba-tion status had been justly imposed.

“The Seminary has not appealed because it be-lieves the criticism of infringement on the rightsand responsibilities of the Board of Control is avalid one. There is little reason to appeal when thefacts support the reason cited for probation.”—John Tietjen, letter dated October 3, 1972, to Spe-cial Task Force.Tietjen was willing to destroy the school, if it

would serve his purposes.After examining the situation carefully, the Task

Force made this report:“The recommendations of the Special AATS Vis-

iting Committee and the actions of the Commis-sion on Accrediting in placing Concordia Seminaryon probation were based on a lack of informationand on misinformation for which President JohnTietjen must assume major if not exclusive respon-sibility; the Board of control of Concordia Semi-nary has failed in its responsibility to properly pro-tect the accreditation of Concordia Seminary, St.Louis.”—Special Task Force Report to Committeeof Three.The Board of Control also had the right to

appeal the probation; but, according to a reportby two minority members, it also refused to carryout its proper duties.

These matters were brought to the attention ofthe delegates to the New Orleans convention whenit met in July.

Wide-ranging interviews were conducted by theCommittee of Three, in preparation for the conven-tion. Transcripts of the interviews were made avail-able to church leaders and convention delegates.

Here is but one brief example of what was on

those interview transcripts. It will afford you anexample of the kind of runaround Tietjen couldprovide:

“Concerning the interpretation of historicalevents in the Scriptures, the Committee asked:

“Do you believe that the [teachers’] way of sub-scribing to the Confessions is that they allow them-selves to interpret them according to their ownunderstanding of the Scriptures?

Dr. Tietjen: It has been our position as a churchthat our confessional subscription is to the doctri-nal content of the Confessions, not to their histori-cal judgment, their world views, their particularexegetical interpretations, or their scientific under-standing or any thing like that.

Committee: I would suppose that most peoplein the Missouri Synod would find a grave source ofinconsistency in that kind of use of Genesis, chap-ter 3, in view of what is in the Formula and SmalcaldArticles, in identifying Adam and Eve distinctly inthe fall as an historical event. Would you considerthis a historical judgment?

Dr. Tietjen: The members of our faculty affirmthe factuality of the fall and the creation, and thatis indeed the doctrine that is being taught inLutheran confessions.

Committee: But that doesn’t quite answer thequestion of the factuality and historicity of Adamand Eve and of that fall event, does it?

Dr. Tietjen: That is a question of interpretationthat we have to ask, isn’t it?

Committee: The question which is not the an-swer . .

Dr. Tietjen: The question that has to be askedis, What is that literature that is affirming the factof the fall? Is it intended to be a literal, historicalnarrative or is it another kind of narrative?”—Sample interview, from Final Report of the Com-mittee of Three.Later in this report, we will discover that the

liberals at Concordia Seminary, by their ownstatements, did not believe Adam and Eve everexisted nor had a fall. One teacher said that Godselected two of the half-apes nearby as Adam andEve.

Instead of speaking directly to the point, lib-erals—whether they are attacking Bible doctrinesor the Spirit of Prophecy,—will lead you aroundin circles.

Historians will find that it was the 1969 and1973 Synod conventions which resulted in re-turning the denomination to conservative con-trol. That was because laymen controlled the



conventions, and there were still enough of themto demand a return to Biblical doctrines.

The fiftieth regular convention of the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod met in New Orleans,Louisiana, on July 6-13, 1973. The doctrinal is-sues and problems at the Seminary understand-ably dominated the meetings.

In his report to the first session, Preus, synodpresident, made these remarks:

“I want you to understand the gravity of the situ-ation, affecting as it does not only all that you do inthis convention but virtually all that we will do as achurch body in years to come . .

“I have said it elsewhere, and I say it to you now,that Synod stands at a doctrinal crossroads at thispoint in its history. For it cannot continue to pro-fess one position on Holy Scripture while tolerat-ing attacks on that position from those who haveanother position.”—J.A.O. Preus, Report to theNew Orleans Convention.

After reelecting Preus as president by a verylarge margin, the convention undertook the workof deciding whether to approve the document, AStatement of Scriptural and Confessional Prin-ciples, earlier prepared by Preus. In doing so, theywere aware that thousands of laymen and workersappreciated it, and that the Seminary faculty andtheir supporters thought it intolerable.

Opponents of the resolution focused their at-tack on its constitutionality or on possible mis-use. Yet all it consisted of was a simple state-ment of historic LCMS beliefs.

The convention voted 652-455 to approve theStatement in its entirety as “Scriptural and in ac-cord with the Lutheran Confessions . . and whichexpresses the Synod’s position on current doctri-nal issues” (Resolution 3-01, 1973 Convention Pro-ceedings).

Do you remember how well the liberals orches-trated a chorus of protests to Elder Neal C. Wilsonat the time he had to decide whether or not to dis-charge Desmond Ford? Well, the liberals were busilyorchestrating throughout this Concordia crisis.

As soon as Resolution 3-01 was enacted, hun-

dreds of liberal delegates streamed to the po-dium to have the secretary record their negativevotes while they and others sang the first stanzaof “The Church’s One Foundation is JesusChrist Her Lord.” This was the first of severalwell-planned and highly emotional demonstra-tions they carried out in protest against conven-tion resolutions.

Next, the assembly turned its attention to Reso-lution 3-09. In it, the Committee of Three presenteda detailed account of their findings during the in-terviews. Here is part of the resolution:

“The theological, doctrinal stance of the facultymajority of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, havebeen shown to be in violation of Art. II of the Synod’sConstitution, specifically on . . three points . .:

“a. subversion of the authority of Scripture (for-mal principle);

“b. ‘Gospelism’ or ‘Gospel reductionism’ wherebythe authority of Scripture is reduced to its ‘Gospel’content;

“c. denial of the third use of the Law; i.e., thefunction of the Law as guide for the Christian inhis life.”—Part of Resolution 3-09.Note that the liberals were even too anti-

nomian (anti-law) for the Lutherans! Liberals al-ways want freedom to sin; they do not want to berestricted by any moral codes.

In the paragraph of Resolution 3-09, quotedbelow, some of the errors used by liberals to down-grade Scripture were cited:

“Resolved, That the Synod repudiate that atti-tude toward Holy Scripture, particularly as regardsits authority and clarity, which reduces to theologi-cal opinion or exegetical questions, matters whichare in fact clearly taught in Scripture (e.g., facticityof miracle accounts and their details; historicity ofAdam and Eve as real persons; the fall of Adamand Eve into sin as a real event, to which mankindmust be traced; the historicity of every detail in thelife of Jesus as recorded by the evangelists; predic-tive prophecies in the Old Testament which are infact Messianic; the doctrine of angels; the Jonahaccounts, etc.).”—Part of Resolution 3-09.The very seriousness of this situation was such

that it was thought best, at this juncture, to let threemembers of the Seminary faculty and Dr. Tietjen




Part Seven

26 Waymarksspeak.

But when the liberal faculty members ad-dressed the convention, they confused some ofthose in the assembly somewhat—because theysaid none of the accused faculty majority devi-ated one tiny inch from the historic beliefs ofthe church. The three majority faculty memberssaid the accusations were not accurate. For ex-ample, Dr. Krentz told the convention that nomember of the faculty denied the historicity ofAdam and Eve.

After weighing the evidence of the committee vs.the statements just given by the three faculty mem-bers and Tietjen, the convention passed Resolution3-09 by 574 to 451.

Lucifer had earlier also used false reports inheaven to confuse and win supporters. One ma-jority faculty member, at a pastoral conference ayear before, had clearly admitted that the ma-jority of the faculty did not believe Adam andEve ever existed.

“I can’t answer the question, ‘Do you believe inthe historicity of Adam and Eve?’ Historicity andfacticity are not even in my dictionary.

“One thing caught most of us on is, were Adamand Eve historic persons? I don’t know. I don’t thinkso. It is not important. They caught most of us insome way on most of the points in Preus’ State-ment.

“I believe that many of my Christian brothershave problems with the birth of Christ.

“Don’t ask me, ‘Do you believe in a 6 day cre-ation?’ . . I have problems with the virgin birth,real presence, bodily resurrection . . I can’t bearthe burden of Scriptural infallibility.”—WalterBartling, statements made at Louisiana PastoralConference, April 17-20, 1972.Other examples will be cited later in this present

report.

On July 11, a resolution was enacted, callingfor the Board of Control to deal with Dr. Tietjen,and if needed to fire him. At the same time, theconvention changed the membership of theBoard of Control.

At this point, Tietjen spoke and said that theyhad wronged him, but that he forgave them for hav-ing wronged him. Such talk helped him maintainthe sympathies of the Seminary students who weregiving these proceedings their careful attention.

Throughout the convention, there had beenwell-planned public relations protest demonstra-tions, black arm bands, ad hoc communion ser-vices on the street outside the convention hall,and other theatricals to which the press werecalled to attend.

But more bizarre events were soon to follow,—events which were not mentioned in the Cottrellreport. And all of it was faithfully reported inthe public press on every continent.

The antics may have appeared as being carriedon by little children, but the present author believesthere was an underlying purpose:

Tietjen knew his days were numbered andso, in consultation with others, not only at theSeminary but outside the denomination, heworked toward two objectives: (1) delay mattersso still more students could be caught up in theopen rebellion and (2) set an example that wouldfrighten other watching denominations from try-ing to eject their own liberals.

The present writer prepared an in-depth reportseveral years ago on the 1925 Scopes (“Monkey”)Trial at Dayton, Tennessee. The purpose of all thetheatricals was to so humiliate the State of Tennes-see that neither it—nor any other state—would everagain try to bar atheists from teaching evolution instate schools. The method was resoundingly suc-cessful.

If you will carefully study the Dayton Trial, youwill discover that it was orchestrated by liberals atthe University of Chicago and the ACLU, workingout of New York City. Newspapers and magazines ofthe entire world were brought into it. The first ma-jor event broadcast over radio was the Scopes Trial.

The flamboyant circus, staged by ConcordiaSeminary in the 1970s, was a warning flag to allChristendom: Do not try to expel us from yourcolleges and seminaries, or we will rip yourchurch to shreds!

Since then, only the Southern Baptists havedared to carry on the battle—and generally only inregard to administrative posts, not schools.

Frightened at the thought of having a Concor-dia on their hands, our own leaders capitulatedsoon after taking on Desmond Ford at GlacierView, and granted “academic freedom” to all ourcollege and university teachers.

The convention decisions regarding Tietjenand his Seminary had climaxed on July 11, andit adjourned on the 13th.

That same day, Religious News Service quotedJohn Tietjen as saying, “I have no doubt it will notbe long before I am no longer president of the Semi-nary . . The convention judged itself in judging us”(RNS release, July 13, 1973).

Tietjen knew he was through; but, as noted ear-lier, he still had certain objectives to fulfill: (1) catchas many of the students in his net and take themout with him and (2) fulfill his agreements with lib-

27The Concordia Crisiserals elsewhere by producing a cacophony of noise,confusion, protest,—and all of it in full view of newsreporters and cameramen.

What agreements? Arrangements had beenmade years earlier that Tietjen and his associ-ates would be supported financially when theywere cast out. If necessary, they would be givengood jobs in liberal seminaries in other denomi-nations.

But the great need was to maintain the cir-cus atmosphere as long as possible. And this theyfaithfully did.

Someone may say, “Well, they did all this inorder to hold on to their jobs.” If you wanted tohold on to your job, you would not stage demon-strations outside the meetinghouse where thefuture of your employment was being decided!You would not feed terrible denunciations aboutyour employers to the national press. You wouldnot turn the leading Seminary of a denomina-tion into a carnival atmosphere.

No, all this was done to provide a warning tothe other denominations: “Do not fire your lib-erals, or we will do this to you too.”

As soon as the majority faculty returned toConcordia, they set to work to carry out a fullagenda of preplanned activities. The public pro-tests and demonstrations began.

One was the July 24 document, “Declaration ofProtest and Confession,” which was read to theassembled faculty, students, and their families inthe chapel.

This document spoke of “breach of contract injudging and condemning us” (no one had beenfired); convention “violation of procedures”; “dis-tortion of teaching”; “convention’s use of coercivepower”; and, as you would expect, “the convention’sviolation of the principle of sola scriptura [Scrip-ture alone, as the basis of doctrine] in elevating tra-dition above Scripture.”

To make this event more dramatic and betterpublicized, the media had been alerted the day be-fore; and, following the brief chapel service, every-one marched out of the building and onto the lawnbetween several buildings. As the cameras rolled,they marched to the imposing Luther statue.Then they waited quietly until the camera crewshad taken new positions to get both MartinLuther and Dr. Caemmerer in view, beforeCaemmerer read from the document.

It is of keen interest that their documentcalled for the formation of a denomination-wideprotest movement. They called on all the liber-als in the church to rise up and join them!

Aside from other intervening theatrics, the nextmajor event was the formation, a few weeks later,of Evangelical Lutherans in Mission (ELIM), aseparate, nonprofit religious organization. Whilestill employed by LCMS, the majority faculty hadnow started a separate church organization!

One of the six founding board members ofELIM, including John Tietjen, was Martin Marty.Who is he? Those who read the pages of PacificUnion College’s Campus Chronicle will recognizehim as a leading Protestant theologian who washonored as such on the campus of that school acouple years ago. He spoke to the students on cam-pus and was vigorously applauded for his forthrightcomments.

But who is Martin Marty? Let me tell you.

Martin Marty was a professor of the history ofmodern Christianity at the University of Chicago andon the staff of the liberal Christian Century. By1961 he was publicly urging “the prophets” (acode word for liberal college and seminary reli-gion teachers) to work “from within” their de-nominations “for constructive subversion, en-circlement, and infiltration, until anti-ecumeni-cal forces bow to the evangelical weight of re-union” (Christian Century, January 11, 1961).

The same approach some years later promptedChristianity Today to refer to Marty’s endorse-ment of “ecclesiastical Machiavellianism” and tocomment:

“Ministers who have taken denominational or-dination vows are increasingly faced with the ques-tion of personal honesty and integrity as they par-ticipate in a movement that explicitly condemnsdenominations and aims at their merger into theecumenical church. Applying the borrowed phrase‘sociological Machiavellianism,’ Dr. Marty counselsa procedure that would actually promote ‘the ulti-mate death and transfiguration of these forms’while patiently ‘living in denominations and beingfaithful to their disciplines.’ ”—Christianity Today,January 29, 1965.For years, Marty had been urging the liberals

to fan out and join different denominations, sothey could work more easily to take them all over.Marty, a strident liberal, had openly united withTietjen in forming this new church organization.

The ranking theologian of the orthodox Lutheranchurches in Europe, William M. Oesch, in a com-prehensive theological analysis, linked Marty with“Missouri’s young intellectuals [who] are foundingJacobin Clubs behind the scenes” (W.M. Oesch,Memorandum Inter Nos., Part III (1960?), quotedin Crossroads, p. 28).

For those who have not studied history, theJacobins in pre-Revolution France founded clubs,

28 Waymarksin which they actively planned the overthrow of thegovernment and the takeover of the nation. Withina few years, the storming of the Bastille occurred,millions were slain, and a reign of terror ensued.

The liberal objective, exemplified by Marty,was for the liberals to strengthen their hold oneach denomination, including LCMS, even more,and either get rid of the conservatives in the pewsor, lacking that, change the form of governmentso the liberals would have ultimate control ofthe denomination.

The flaw was the structure of the Synod con-ventions. They were almost totally in the handsof the local pastors and the laymen. Yes, lead-ership could feed them erroneous propaganda;but, as long as they were in the majority, the lay-men had the power to cast out the scoundrelswhenever they wanted to.

“For something like 25 years prior to 1969, theLutheran Church-Missouri Synod was controlledby a coalition of liberals and moderates . . Theseyears of liberal ascendancy ended suddenly anddecisively at the Synodical Convention in Denverin the summer of 1969 . . Having come to power,the conservative party did what the liberals haddone a generation before. They consolidated theirpower and began to divide the spoils.”—JohnStrietelmeier, The Cresset, April 1971.Strietelmeier, a teacher at another Lutheran

school, Valparaiso University, wrote that two yearsafter the conservatives voted in Preus as their presi-dent and told him to cleanse the campus at Concor-dia.

In the above-mentioned article, Strietelmeiersaid that while he shared with his “fellow liberals afeeling of resentment” over the attack on “what ourparty might justifiably consider its best gift to thechurch—the Seminary in its present form,” he did“not share with fellow liberals . . the feeling thatthere is anything evil or underhanded in the moveagainst the Seminary. I expect the conservatives toact as conservatives; indeed, I would feel that theyhad deceived the church if they did not” (ibid.).

Notice that Strietelmeier freely admitted thatConcordia Seminary was stacked with “liberals.”He did not deny the fact, as others did. Also notehis remarkable admission: “what our party mightjustifiably consider its best gift to the church—theSeminary in its present form.” That remark wasprinted in a liberal journal and intended only forliberals to read.

Why was the Seminary so special to the lib-erals? Because it is through the schools—espe-cially pastor schools—that the worldlings takeover the church! In every age it is the same. Haveyou not studied the history of the Jesuits, foundedin 1534 by Ignatius Loyola? Their greatest successin winning back much of Europe in the Counter-Reformation was not merely their intimidation ofmonarchs (through threats of perdition during theconfessional) or their assassination of recalcitrantones;—it was the fact that they founded schoolsthroughout Europe for all ages, and the flower ofEurope was sent to them for education.

For the liberals, the Bible is a point of depar-ture. They read a verse and then expound theirbewildering theories and attractive worldly ideas.At the heart of it all is the love of sin. Their basicmessage is that it is all right to sin after all. Ev-eryone who desires that is a ready candidate.

Martin Marty was a book award judge forAbingdon when Sense and Nonsense, by Sten H.Stenson, was selected for the Abingdon award.

That book “defended” the validity of Christian-ity equally with other world religions, because ofthe “pun-like character of miracle stories and reli-gious legends” they all had. There is no such thingas religious “truth,” only puns or “witticisms” which“are irrelevant to truth and falsity in the usual propo-sitional sense.” Stenson wrote that the Apostle Johnproduced his biography out of his imagination “whilemaking free use of the tradition that creates a fig-ure of Jesus entirely from faith!” That reflects theatheism of Bultmann.

Writing about the book, Marty gave it his high-est praise. “It is a fresh presentation of the Chris-tian faith and of faith itself. I would be proud tohand it to bright people up and down my block andto my colleagues in worlds of media or academy!”

Marty was John Tietjen’s close associate incarrying out the Concordia rebellion.

Cottrell maintained that the mistake of LCMSwas in ejecting anyone from Concordia Seminary.I tell you the mistake of LCMS was in waiting solong to kick them out—and then not doing thejob even more thoroughly!

Following the July 24 demonstration, RalphBohlmann, then executive secretary for the Com-mission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR)issued a mild statement of reproof. That was gener-ally what leadership had been issuing for years.



“The faculty of the St. Louis Seminary contin-ues to demonstrate its lack of sincere commitmentto a course of action that will honestly confrontand deal with the issues that divide our troubledchurch.

“ . . [They should] listen to what the Synod hassaid to the Seminary and seek a forum that mightaid in achieving reconciliation.”Church leaders were still offering reconcilia-

tion,—all the while that Tietjen and his associ-ates were winning over more students and de-stroying their souls.

Time passed, and then the Board of Control is-sued a one-paragraph statement.

“Resolved. That the Board report to the facultyand staff [of the Seminary] its dissatisfaction onthe part of certain members of the faculty and staffin their ‘A Declaration of Protest and Confession.’ ”At about the same time, the faithful faculty mi-

nority issued an “Appeal” to the Board of Control tosolve the problem at the Seminary. They knew, on adaily basis, what was going on there. This paragraphwas included:

“We consider this ‘Declaration of Protest’ [by thefaculty majority] to be an act of rebellion and defi-ance against the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synodand its theology. The faculty protest not only seri-ously distorts the actions of the New Orleans con-vention, but challenges the very authority of a syn-odical convention to pass resolutions regarding theSeminary and the theology of our church body.”Then, in a taped interview for a St. Louis radio

station, Martin Scharlemann, one of the five minor-ity faculty, said this:

“Secondly, we thought it was about time to startcorrecting a massive distortion that has been go-ing on for the past few years. The faculty majorityhas been trying to make people believe that noth-ing seriously doctrinal was going on here at theSeminary. There have been repeated and consis-tent attempts to persuade people that the New Or-leans action regarding the faculty majority madethem the innocent victims of some great injus-tice.”—M. Scharlemann, KFUO interview.

A full-scale rebellion was in progress, and stillthe leadership was slow to act—although the

1969 convention had empowered them to do soand the 1973 convention gave them the neededbalance of power to complete the task.

It is for such reasons that Christians gener-ally lose in many of the battles of life. Imaginingthat it is “unchristian” to do so, they fear to re-prove wrong or, when it is in their power, sepa-rate wrongdoers from the ones they are trying topollute.

At its monthly meeting, the Board for HigherEducation issued a statement, in which it “censorsthe action of the St. Louis Seminary president . .and faculty and staff . . and calls on the Board ofControl . . to take forthwith appropriate action . .”

On August 17, after lengthy discussion and re-peated attempts by the liberal board minority topostpone discussion or adjourn the meeting, theBoard of Control voted to suspend Dr. Tietjen.

Immediately, as if by carefully planned tim-ing, Richard Duesenberg contacted the Board ofControl. He said he was the attorney represent-ing Dr. Tietjen and threatened a lawsuit, to befiled in civil court on Monday morning, August 20,if the suspension was carried out at that time.

So the Board of Control met again and decidedto wait until it had received legal opinion.

The next event was a major gathering of liber-als, called the Conference on EvangelicalLutheranism, which met in Des Plaines, Illinois,near Chicago, on August 28. It was attended byliberals of various stripes from both LCMS andother denominations. Tietjen and most of the ma-jority faculty were in attendance. During the sev-eral sessions (some of which were chaired byTietjen) the participants drafted a number ofresolutions, aimed primarily at “errant actions” ofthe majority at the New Orleans convention, heldonly a month earlier.

The gathering also laid plans for a separate re-ligious organization, which they called a “confess-ing movement.” The LCMS leadership was chargedwith a variety of terrible evils, including “legal-ism.” By that they meant “sticking to the letter”of the Bible instead of interpreting it to fit allkinds of theories.




Part Eight

30 WaymarksHowever, none of the doctrinal issues raised

at the New Orleans Synod convention were dealtwith. Liberals always try to hide their ungodlypractices and anti-Biblical beliefs.

This separate “movement,” when it was laterformed, would be called the Association of Evan-gelical Lutheran Churches and officially annexELIM, which Tietjen and Martin Marty had incor-porated shortly before. Tentative bylaws and fund-raising machinery for this still-larger organizationwere voted into place, and a communications net-work was begun.

Everything was working according to a well-oiled plan. While all the denominations watchedwith horror, the liberals were dangling LCMS onthe line as the evil monster. The press, whichitself is generally quite liberal, was gleeful. Theaffair was dutifully reported in newspapers, ra-dio, television, and news magazines. If LCMS wasgoing to harass the liberals, they would start anew denomination, in preparation for splittingLCMS!

In the September 16 issue of Lutheran Witness,Preus published a statement of sorrow at the con-vening of that Des Plaines meeting and offered tomeet with any who should wish to have reconcilia-tion.

All the while, Herman Otten was still pub-lishing news sheets, in an ongoing effort to arousethe laity to resist liberal elements in the denomi-nation. He had been doing this since January1961, and his efforts were probably significantin slowing, and then reversing, the liberal take-over. Otten did not mince words, but declaredliberalism to be the terrible evil that it was. Thosewho believed in his work shared those paperswith church members throughout the denomi-nation.

In later years, he noted that, throughout the1969 to 1974 crisis, no official LCMS journal wouldtake a stand either way, but waited on the sidelinesuntil the 1974 “exodus” before siding in their edito-rials with the conservatives.

Meanwhile at Concordia Seminary, the stu-dents were being brought into line. Studentsholding to the minority position later revealedthat, by the beginning of that school year, manystudents still did not understand the issues. IfTietjen and his cohorts had been fired before thatschool year began, how many souls might havebeen saved!

In a letter dated September 24, 1973, the Stu-dent Administrative Council wrote the Board ofControl, that it was improper and unjust to sus-

pend Dr. Tietjen.We would expect such a statement from stu-

dent leaders, for Tietjen’s men were careful toexclude all conservative students from holdingany offices.

Before sending the letter, it was carried aroundto all the students, many of whom had only been oncampus less than three weeks; and, with rousingpep talks, they obtained over 300 signatures.

On September 17, the Board of Control met anddecided to postpone the suspension action againstTietjen until a ruling could be obtained from theSynod’s Commission on Constitutional Matters(CCM). ]

On September 25, the CCM ruled that it up-held the validity of the Board of Control’s ac-tion, but that the church should go “the secondmile” and give Tietjen time to formulate a replyto the suspension decision.

And all the time more students were beingwon over.

On September 29, the Board of Control metagain and voted to grant Tietjen time to preparea reply to the specific charges brought againsthim.

The Board was also troubled by the fact itsmost private discussions were being leaked tothe public press. So the Board voted to beginpreparing its own news releases.

ELIM (Evangelical Lutherans in Mission), Mar-tin Marty and John Tietjen’s new religious organi-zation, was formally granted a state charter in Oc-tober. That same month, the first issue of their newpublication, Missouri in Perspective, was mailedout.

Tietjen now had his own rival religious orga-nization, with its own journal. He also controlledthe Seminary, its student body association, andstudent body journal. From its beginning, ELIMwas a clergy-dominated group, with an extensiveadministrative structure. If the liberals could nottake over the church, they would set up a rival one,preparatory to receiving the drop-out liberal con-gregations—which they already knew would be com-ing their way in the height of the coming split.

Things were looking good for the worldlingswhile the Christians occupied themselves withbeing worried whether they were giving Tietjenenough time to reply to charges, charges whichhe had refused to reply to since 1969.

In late September, a letter prepared by ELIMwas given wide circulation throughout the denomi-nation, and included this:

“We are in grave danger of sacrificing our evan-

31The Concordia Crisisgelical heritage because of mistrust and because ofa desire on the part of some for complete confor-mity in interpreting every detail of the Holy Scrip-tures. This misguided desire is rooted in the fearthat without conformity we cannot have unity. Itled the majority to pass resolutions at New Orleansbinding consciences in a way contrary to our con-stitution and contrary to the nature of the Gospel.

“Furthermore, the Synod took actions which vir-tually assure the suspension and expulsion—wrongly—of many of our gifted teachers of theol-ogy, and which call into question the orthodoxy ofa large percentage of our pastors, teachers, andlay-members . . [This is a] vivid illustration of thecrisis of legalism we face . .

“We cannot simply, because we detest contro-versy, sit back and do nothing, in the hope that itwill all go away. Those who have been reluctant tospeak out before will have to make their voice heardnow.”—Board of Directors of ELIM, letter datedSeptember 25, 1973.

That same month, church leaders were sur-prised to learn that Tietjen had been busy atwork, incorporating still another organization:Fund for Lutheran Theological Education, Inc.(FLUTE). Three faculty members (Betram, Damm,and Krentz) were listed with Tietjen as the incorpo-rators.

They were getting ready.On September 26, the synodical Board of Di-

rectors directed the Board of Control “to makeinquiry and report” back to it on what this latestorganization was all about.

All the while the faculty at the Seminary wasworking to fashion still more students into theliberal mold. This included the entire freshmanclass, the majority of whom were probably goodLutherans before being thrown to the faculty li-ons that school year.

As for the inquiry, the Board of Control laterreported back that it was unable to learn anything.(Several years later, it was concluded that FLUTEwas incorporated to add to the tension and threat;it apparently never was used to channel money tothe faculty after its departure from Concordia. In-stead, ELIM, which was very capable of doing so,was used for that purpose. The incorporation ofFLUTE had been a device to both stall for time andput more fear into the hearts of conservatives at theeventual outcome—if they continued to press forthe ouster of the liberals.)

By this time, both faculty and student bodyleaders were working feverishly to influence un-decided students, keep minority students andfaculty in the background, and extend their in-fluence to local congregations.

The new ELIM paper, Missouri in Perspective,was useful for this purpose, as well as the studentnewspaper, Spectrum.

But that was not good enough. Beginning in mid-September, preparations for a nationwide “Out-reach” were made.

Then, during the week of October 21-29, fif-teen professors, comprising a third of the fac-ulty, left their classrooms (during the schoolyear!) and took part in 35 meetings all overAmerica. Local LCMS liberals gathered friends andsympathizers together for the gatherings, designedto drum up more support, both financial and oth-erwise, for the beleaguered Seminary. Not one word,one hint, of this activity was given to the Board ofControl until the meetings were in progress.

At Houston, William Danker said this at the rally:“If President Tietjen is dismissed, it will send

shock waves around the Christian world . . Heprayed with us before we left, saying, ‘Lord, give usnot so much safety as boldness.’ ”—D. W. Danker,quoted in the Houston Post, October 27, 1973.Danker also maintained that the faculty did be-

lieve in Adam and Eve. You will recall that Dr. Krentzmade a similar statement to the delegates at theNew Orleans convention, confusing some. He saidthat no member of the faculty denied the historicityof Adam and Eve.

During faculty interviews it had been docu-mented that faculty members did, indeed, dis-believe in Adam and Eve:

“The Adam language is typological language, andhow necessary the historicity of Adam is to the va-lidity of that typology I don’t know.”—Report of theSynodical President, p. 93.

“That is right [out of the mass of ape-like crea-tures running around], God picked two and calledthem Adam and Eve; he chose a segment of thatearlier creation and made it into the human race,right?”—Report of the Synodical President, p. 94.

“Others in our Synod maintain that Genesis 2-3is not an eye-witness report or a historical accountsimilar to modern historical annals. They contendthat the evidence within the text itself indicates thatit is an ancient theological document which usesthe narrative form. This text is more like a sermonthan a news report. Anthropomorphisms, symbols,and theological reflection are integral to the char-acter of these chapters. Thus any effort to pressthe details of this narrative according to the yard-stick of modern historians is not consistent withthe intent of the passage. The writer of Genesis 2-3is proclaiming the truth about every man (Adam,‘the man’) and every woman (Eve, ‘Mother of allthat live’).”—Faithful to Our Calling, Faithful to OurLord, Part 1, p. 16.The spreading of these falsehoods all over,

across the nation, only added to the confusion. Sa-

32 Waymarkstan probably recalled those exciting days back inheaven, when he was busily deluding angels withlies while professing to love and serve God.

After the Outreach rally in Cleveland, Ohio, thelocal newspaper carried this report:

“The three profs gave the distinct impression thatthey believed in Adam and Eve and all the miraclesof Jesus. If that is true, what is all the disagree-ment about? The professors indicated they believeall these Bible stories verbatim. They sounded tome as orthodox as their accusers. But still I couldn’tbe sure. Were they telling everything?

“If the professors really are teaching that theBible is not literally true on such pivotal issues asthe creation of man and miracles, it’s about timewe know that.”—George Plagenz, Cleveland Press,October 27, 1973.The statements, quoted above under “Report of

the Synodical President,” came from interviewswith the faculty. In an earlier statement, Tietjen him-self had said this:

“The business about historicity is a similar prob-lem. As you’ll see from that little sermon I wrote, Iaffirm the historical character of the action of Godin His work of redemption. But the Bible doesn’tuse the term historicity. It’s a very 20th century tech-nical term. I don’t think the Bible speaks clearlythat Genesis 1-3, and that Jonah, and that Job arehistorical writings. I’m not thereby questioning thehistorical dimension in any of these writings. ButI’m saying that I don’t know that it’s so clear thatthese writings are history.”—Evidence released in1974, by John Tietjen.

In an October 11 letter to the Board of Con-trol, Pastors Buelow and Harnapp reported backto the Board of Control that their meetings withDr. Tietjen had been fruitless. But, they said, theywould try to meet again with him later that month.

Time continued to pass, and Tietjen was thank-ful for it. He needed it to keep gathering morepeople—in the Seminary and out in the localchurches—to his side.

This reminds us of Desmond Ford after Oc-tober 27, 1979. Suspended for that attack lec-ture on our basic beliefs, he was then given abun-dant, fully paid, opportunity for the next eightmonths to travel around the East Coast speak-ing in churches and winning friends, financialsupporters, and converts to his views.

In order to make certain that additional delay-ing meetings would be held, Tietjen gave the twopastors several questions to study over and reply

to at a forthcoming meeting. This they agreed to do.That was a clever thing to do.

“At the conclusion of our discussion Dr. Tietjenasked each of us whether we were satisfied withhis responses to our charges. Each of us statedthat we were not satisfied. Dr. Teitjen gave each ofus a set of questions which he would like us toconsider in further discussions.”—Pastors Buelowand Harnapp, Report to the Board of Control,October 11, 1973.The Board voted to accept this delay.

On October 22, Missouri in Perspective pub-lished an editorial that helped lengthen that delaystill more. They accused the Board of having alreadydecided to kick Tietjen out, and would soon do it.This caused the Board to be still more cautiousabout actually doing it.

A second meeting was held with Tietjen on Oc-tober 26—which occurred in the middle of the na-tionwide “Outreach.”

Throughout the fall, there was a continualflow of news releases to the press from the Semi-nary and its supporters. An October 27 Cleve-land Press article cited Tietjen as “the chief pro-tagonist” in the LCMS crisis, which the Pressdeclared to be the top news story of the year.

The liberals made sure that it would be.The next night, Tietjen appeared at a rally in

downtown Cleveland and said the leadership ofthe Synod were guilty of “distortion and slan-der.” He also said, “It simply is not true that theConcordia faculty is teaching false doctrine. Someof the distortion of the Seminary’s position has tobe deliberate on the part of our opponents.” He alsodefended his speeches at rallies across the nationwith the significant comment, “Public pressure is asignificant factor in the life of an organization.”(Cleveland Press, October 29, 1973).

On November 13, Buelow and Harnapp gaveup trying to accomplish anything with Tietjen,and reported to the Board that fact. Included withtheir letter were 20 pages of supporting evidence.

Meanwhile, at the Seminary, the tension washeightening, if possible, even more. The StudentAdministrative Council (SAC), various class lead-ers, and others—worked feverishly to prepare theentire student body for what was coming.

A new student organization was started,called “Students Concerned for Reconciliationunder the Gospel” (SCRUG), and it became by



far the most vocal and aggressive of the studentorganizations. Its president also served as anadvisory member of the new church organiza-tion, ELIM, relaying back and forth between itand SCRUG, which kept its own funding as wellas its own lawyer (probably provided free ofcharge).

The students were being organized into anarmy, ready for battle at a moment’s notice. Yetstill more students needed to be brought in—and it would later be discovered that many were.Tietjen was also on the board of directors of bothSCRUG and ELIM.

It is significant that members of SCRUG in-cluded not only on-campus students, but minis-terial interns (called “vicars”) scattered aroundthe nation. Think not that liberals were confinedto the Seminary; they had been graduating themfor years and sending them out into the field.Liberal pastors in the field were busy at work,converting as many of their flocks, so they couldtake part in the forthcoming “exodus.”

The long-range planning behind all this wasfantastic, and all the while church leaders werewondering, from month to month, what theyshould do next.

By early November, SCRUG had submitted toSAC (the Student Administrative Council) a setof, what it called, “contingency plans.” Includedhere were complete arrangements for the forthcom-ing demonstrations (there was a committee beingreadied just to handle that), the eventual morato-rium, and more.

To help prepare the undecided students, Tietjenat a November 28 student body meeting, told themthat the Board of Control was planning trouble forthe school and the students; and, unless they united,they would not fair well.

This helped encourage the wavering, that theyhad better unite with Tietjen or they would to-tally lose out in the final crisis.

Recall the words of Satan, in heaven, to the an-gels: “It is too late to return to God. He won’t forgive

you. You had better stick with me” (PP, 40-41).There were students willing to help this attitude

along. The Seminary student newspaper, Spectrum,carried this open letter:

“In a veil of silence with an appearance of legal-ity, the Board has acted with a demonic persistencein executing these unfair, uncharitable, unLutheran,grossly unchristian acts.

“In reality, the Board has perpetrated theseinjustices against all the faculty, against all theseminary community, and against allChristendom.”—Student Kim Campbell, letterto the student body, Spectrum, November 30,1973.

In order to convince the students that disasterwas ahead if they did not unite with Tietjen and keepthe tensions running high, this statement also ap-peared in that same issue under the title, “Inde-cency and Disorder”:

“The Board has begun the destruction of Concor-dia Seminary and the destruction of our denomi-nation . . There was a day when decency and orderwere the watchwords of Missouri. Today, thesewords have been replaced by their antonyms, andthe students of Concordia Seminary must act ac-cordingly.”

Still trying to obtain a reconciliation with theentrenched liberals at Concordia, E.J. Otto, chair-man of the Board of Controls, asked PastorsBuelow and Harnapp and Dr. Tietjen to meet to-gether in still another attempt at reconciliation.

Somehow, those faithful Lutherans still didnot realize that there can be no reconciliationwith liberals. Are they then hopeless? No, whatthe liberals need is conversion. Offer them Christas their only Saviour; do not try to have a halfwaymeeting of the minds. Their worldview is totally dif-ferent, and their Bible is different too. Theirthinkings are their own bible.

Otto told them to come prepared to meet as longas needed. The hope was for fraternal friendship,but Tietjen brought an attorney (Richard Duesen-berg) with him. That electrified the atmosphere, produ-cing a brief meeting.

On December 4, student body president,Gerald Miller, issued a call for all the undecided




Part Nine

34 Waymarksto fall into line behind Tietjen their leader.

“Those of you who are in full support of the fac-ulty majority would do well to address yourselvesnot only to the question: ‘How much can we do tosupport them?’ but also to the questions: ‘Whattypes of actions would best show our support?’ and‘When might such supporting actions best be car-ried out?’ Those of you who are not exactly sure ofwhere you stand with respect to the faculty major-ity or to the issues which are at stake would dowell to admit that on Wednesday. It’s not a day fordaydreaming.”—Gerald Miller, Spectrum, Decem-ber 4, 1973.A special faculty-student meeting was held the

next day, and the students were presented with apaper, “With One Voice: An Appeal by the Studentsof Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.” Thiswas the first of a number of protest documentswhich were presented to the students to adopt,before being mailed to the Board of Controls.The obvious purpose was to galvanize the stu-dents and pull in the stragglers.

“As members of the body of Christ and studentsat Concordia Seminary, we stand with the facultymajority of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.”—fromthe paper, With One Voice, et. al., December 5,1973.But there was more to this paper than at first

met the eye. It concluded with the statement that,if the Board of Control did not reconsider itsruling about Tietjen, it “will have to proceedagainst all the members of the student body.”

It is a pitiful thing to reject God’s Word, butit is even worse to pull innocent young peopleinto your rejection.

Classes for the rest of the day were canceled sostudents could listen to theological position papersby the faculty majority.

Minority students later disclosed that, by theend of the day, still more students, which hadbeen on the fence, had united with Tietjen’s men.Yet church leaders continued to dither and wringtheir hands.

A meeting of the Board of Control had beenplanned for December 17, and Tietjen and hisassociates fully expected that he would be sus-pended that day. So they made final preparationsfor the beginning of their “contingency plans,”to begin immediately afterward.

But then something unexpected occurred. Dr.Arthur C. Piepkorn, a member of the faculty major-ity, suddenly died on December 13. Therefore, theBoard meeting was postponed.

Because, as part of the “contingency plans,” veryclose alliances had already been worked out withleaders of various liberal denominations, and also

the Jesuit college in St. Louis, a “Requiem Eucha-rist” was held in Dr. Piepkorn’s honor in the chapelof Concordia Seminary, with members of variousliberal and Catholic leaders in attendance. They allparticipated in the communion service (somethingorthodox LCMS pastors would not do; LCMS is anti-ecumenical and anti-Catholic).

A student “outreach” across America had beensecretly planned for Christmas vacation. TheECSC minutes for December 11 were later foundin office files, revealing that SCRUG had alreadyplanned for that event—since it was fully expectedthe Board action of December 17 would result inthe suspension of Tietjen.

The faculty-student leaders moved the“plans” up to the next Board meeting, which wasdue in January.

One little-mentioned group was in charge ofmaking all the contacts and pulling everything to-gether. Larry Neeb, one of the faculty majority, laterdescribed how the Faculty Advisory Committee(FAC) carried on its work during the ongoing crisis:

“Often unheralded during this period and in themonths following President Tietjen’s suspensionwas the crucial leadership of a Faculty AdvisoryCommittee, elected by the faculty at the inceptionof the investigation (1970) . .

“Functioning as a ‘corporate presidency’ thegroup utilized dialogue, group process, and sharedresponsibility achieving consensus among studentsand faculty on virtually every issue, preparing bothgroups for the events that would take place follow-ing the suspension of Tietjen in January.”—LarryNeeb, “The Historical and Theological Dimensionof a Confessing Movement with the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod,” unpublished doctoralthesis, p. 162.On December 20, a joint FAC and ECSC meet-

ing was held, during which Tietjen announcedhe was certain that the January Board of Con-trol meeting would be the one which would pushConcordia into activating its “contingencyplans.” He also stated that he believed the Boardwould, at that time, initiate severe reprisalsagainst the faculty and students. But, he as-sured them, if they remained with him, theirleader, everything would ultimately work out allright.

The faculty and student leaders all knew whathe meant about “things working out all right.” Lib-erals outside of LCMS had set up a fund throughELIM to take good care of their fellow liberalsafter they had left Concordia.

Some other points were also reviewed: Dr.Bertram mentioned that the faculty were planninga walkout following the suspension. Dr. Mayer noted

35The Concordia Crisisthat the students who left during Christmas vaca-tion should stay close in touch with the school, sincenone could know what might happen.

Leading up to the January Board meeting, moreBoard delays occurred. On December 27, Boardchairman E.J. Otto, in calling for a special Boardmeeting for January 7, 1994, wrote this:

“To discuss possible action on Dr. Tietjen’s fail-ure to comply with the Board’s directive of Novem-ber 19, 1973, to explain in writing by December10, 1973, how he reconciles his position as semi-nary president with five concerns of the Board.”

Tietjen had not written out his positions as re-quested (what should be difficult about doing that?);instead he had written the Board in December, thathe would give an oral presentation at the next meet-ing. But this was not what they requested.

At the January 7, 1994, meeting, the Board con-sidered disciplinary action, but then voted to askhim to orally answer five points. Following that, theyvoted to request him to present his positions inwriting for the next Board meeting, to be held onJanuary 20.

Tietjen felt certain that January 20 would beD-Day, and he returned to his confederates andtold them to set the final preparations of the “con-tingency plans” in motion.

On January 19, SCRUG, working with the fac-ulty, said it was time to present a special paper tothe student leaders the next day.

On the morning of January 20, the studentleaders met and ratified “A Student Resolution.”That document called for a moratorium on classes.This idea had been originated many months be-fore.

Then they waited word that their leader, Tiet-jen, had been suspended—before bringing it be-fore the student body.

The special decision was finally made!At the January 20, 1974, meeting of the

Board of Control, Dr. John Tietjen was “tempo-rarily suspended from his position under the pro-visions of Bylaw 6.79, which provides for such ac-tion when the unresolved charges are of a seriousnature.”

“Be it further resolved that the Board of Con-trol shall, and it does hereby, suspend, Dr. JohnH. Tietjen from all of his duties as president, andas a member of the faculty, of Concordia Seminary,effective immediately.”This was only a temporary suspension, and

Tietjen’s full salary and other benefits, includinghousing, continued in effect. According to Bylaw6.79, this was not dismissal, nor did it mean the

accused had been found guilty.

The next morning things began to get wild.As the students gathered at the chapel early thatday (Monday, January 21, 1974), some studentswere angry in the extreme; but, apparently, manystudents were confused as to what they shoulddo.

This was expected, and student leaders set towork to care for that. With the press there, andcameras rolling (yes, they had been called in),the 8 a.m. meeting began with a bang. The firstitem on the agenda was “A Student Resolution,”calling for a moratorium on classes. After copieswere handed out, student body president, GeraldMiller, read it and then asked that Dr. Tietjen stepforward.

Tietjen then said that some kind of devious“deal” had been offered him, and he had righ-teously turned it down—and this was the reasonhe was suspended. The “deal” was “immoral,” “andplays with people’s lives.”

“The members of our Synod must become awareof the moral bankruptcy of the actions of thepresent leadership of our Synod, and of theSeminary’s Board of Control. Such evil, if allowedto continue, will bring the judgment of God’s wrathon us all.”Tietjen’s lengthy speech greatly affected the

students. Each one knew he had to make a deci-sion which could affect his entire future, andTietjen’s pep rally was intended to push everyoneto follow him.

Once again, Miller stood up and read thewording of the moratorium resolution theywanted the students to accept:

“To declare a moratorium on all classes untilsuch time as the Seminary Board of Control offi-cially and publicly declares which members of thefaculty, if any, are to be considered as false teach-ers, and what Scriptural and Confessional prin-ciples, if any, have been violated.”Then the floor was thrown open for discussion,

but it seemed that few had much to say. By thistime most were probably emotionally exhausted,trying to decide something which could radicallyaffect their future employment and lifework.

A standing vote was then taken; 274 studentsagreed to accept the resolution, 92 opposed it,and 15 abstained from voting.

At 11 a.m., Miller took a copy to the office ofthe Board of Control while the students wereherded outside to the imposing statue of MartinLuther so, together, they could cry out, “Here Istand; I can do no other!”—indicating that theywere more like Luther for having united with Tietjen

36 Waymarksin essentially rejecting God’s Word.

Luther had been a champion of Bible literalism,something quite foreign to Tietjen and his associ-ates.

Another copy of the resolution was taken tothe headquarters of LCMS, which was located indowntown St. Louis.

At 2 p.m., the Board of Control immediatelymet and asked the faculty and students to re-turn to classes.

It is known that the faculty majority met for therest of the day, but their discussions are not known.

Late that evening, the faculty majority metagain and voted to go on strike—and refused toteach any classes. In effect, they were suspend-ing themselves. They declared that, in suspendingTietjen, the Board was “silencing the Word of God”;and that, by suspending Tietjen, the Board “has sus-pended all of us from our duties as teachers andexecutive staff members.” They also voted to issuea formal statement to the Synod and Preus the fol-lowing day.

Every aspect of the day’s proceedings was cov-ered by reporters and cameramen.

Hugh Fitz, a first-year student, later recalledwhat he thought of that day:

“I abstained from the voting partly because I wasagainst the moratorium and saw it as being merelya cover-up. The student leaders claimed that theywanted to know what profs were guilty of falseteaching before they returned to classes. But thathad absolutely nothing to do with the actions ofthat day.

“When the Board informed us that it could notdo that immediately, the students rejected this ex-planation. It was strange that the moratorium reso-lution was passed without alteration. It was intro-duced by the student government at the beginningof the session rather than being a resolution fromthe floor of the student body meeting.”It is an interesting fact that, according to min-

utes later found in an office, the ECSC student lead-ers, when presented with a possible moratorium ofclasses at a meeting on December 12, had voted tohave no part in it—even if Tietjen was suspended.Later, they were successfully urged to change theirminds.

On the morning following the initiation of themoratorium and strike (January 22), the headlineon the St. Louis Globe-Democrat read, “StrikingStudents Shut Concordia, Back Tietjen.” The af-

ternoon newspaper (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) head-lined, “Majority at Concordia Suspend Them-selves.”

Neither the Board nor the Synod headquar-ters knew that the faculty had gone on strike untilthey read it in the Post-Dispatch that afternoon.

At this juncture, we might once again ask our-selves, Why did they do that? Actually, the liber-als would have been far wiser to remain at theSeminary and keep feeding their liberalism tothe students. They could have continued doingso for years, until they were gradually picked offby Preus and the Board. In fact, leadership wasso slow to eject Tietjen,—it might never have firedmany of the other faculty members, especiallyafter all that happened in January 1994.

The reason for provoking such a crisis of suchproportions, that the entire Seminary was effec-tively closed down—was probably to send a shockwave through all the leadership offices of Prot-estantism, as the evolutionists had done to thestates in 1925 at the Scopes Trial.

The liberals were willing to walk out and leavethe Seminary behind, if it would teach all theother denominations to not do what LCMS haddone.

On Tuesday morning, January 22, the Boardappointed Dr. Martin Scharlemann (one of thefive faculty minority) as acting president of theSeminary. Immediately the faculty majority drafteda paper, demanding that he resign and declaringthat they would not accept him as acting president.Then the faculty launched a media attack againsthim as a person and a Christian.

Dr. Sharlemann announced that classes wouldbe suspended until the end of the week, but thatthey would resume on Monday, January 28; andthat a faculty meeting would be held the next morn-ing in order to answer their inquiries and objec-tions.

During the week of January 22-25, about 60percent of the students met each day in thechapel to discuss the next part of the “contin-gency plan”: the student “Outreach” which hadbeen planned for Christmas vacation.

“Fact sheets” had been distributed to the stu-dents, and nearly 250 students fanned out acrossAmerica to drum up support for Tietjen and thefaculty majority. On Friday, the cameras rolled



again as the students drove in cars past them fromone Seminary parking lot to another as they “left ontheir Outreach.” Then they parked and went in toeat lunch in the cafeteria.

On Monday morning, only 40 students showedup for classes, and the available faculty minor-ity taught them.

In a letter dated January 28, 1974, Dr. Preuswrote this:

“You are educated and learned men and mas-ters of the use of words in many languages. Butthe Word which the church is longing to hear fromyou it does not hear.

“The church does not want to be told that youforgive it because it does not know what it is doing,or to have students commissioned like the twelveapostles, to go out into the congregations with theGospel according to Concordia Seminary.

“The church has waited for years to hear wordslike: ‘We repent, we ask the forgiveness of thechurch, we have been wrong, we are sorry, we havebeen arrogant and self-righteous, we have tried tochange the theology of the church without tellingthe church what we are doing.’ ”In that letter, Preus also said these words: “The

church stands ready to forgive you, to honor andlove you, to hear and learn from you.”

Unfortunately, that position is not the best. Therebels at Concordia were died-in-the-wool liber-als. They did not believe the Bible! They refusedto take it as it reads. Their own minds, and thetheories learned in outside universities, were ac-cepted as the highest authority. They had becometheir own god.

They were as unfit to teach LCMS studentsas a graduate of a Jesuit university would be toteach our own students. Yet Preus was kindly of-fering to let them resume their teaching of the fu-ture ministers of the LCMS Church!

This idea of “Christian love and tolerance” iscarried too far in our day. There can be no compro-mise with error. It is a deadly evil which we musthave nothing to do with.

Bigots may denounce this as unkind, narrow,

prejudiced, and intolerant; but it is life-saving. Thefaculty majority at Concordia were not qualified toteach kindergarten or cradle roll. Their words, theirattitudes, the very atmosphere about them wasdeadly. It mattered not if they signed a statement ofbeliefs, which they did not. They had too often shownthat they could not be trusted.

Appended to Preus’ letter was a statement en-titled, “Appendix Six,” which consisted of commentsby the student minority who said, “For years we havebeen harassed and bullied by those who call them-selves evangelical.” They listed 19 items chargingthe faculty majority with unethical actions.

In reply, the student leaders sent this messageto Preus:

“By allowing this letter to go to sixty thousandin our synod, President Preus has sinned againstthe Church and the Lord of the Church. He hasencouraged rumor to be introduced from the pul-pits where the forgiveness of sins should bepreached.”—Student leaders to Preus, February13, 1974.According to the liberals, facts presented by the

conservatives were called “rumors” while supposi-tions presented by themselves were termed “facts.”Error by the liberals was given the name “justice”and “Biblical freedom”; truth by the conservativeswas declared to be “intolerance” and “immorality,”calling for the soon judgments of God.

In another letter, sent out close to the same time,the faculty majority made this interesting statement:

“President Preus and Martin Scharlemann havecollaborated in mass distribution of anonymousslanders against unnamed professors. Matthew 18was no part of the process which they adopted.”—Faculty majority, letter, dated February 1, 1974.An appeal to “Matthew 18” is always used by

those who want their sins hidden. But the Biblesays that open sin is to be openly rebuked in thechurch.

“Them that sin rebuke before all, that others alsomay fear.”—1 Timothy 5:20.

“That which had been reproved publicly waspublic wrongs which threatened the prosperity ofthe church and the cause. Here . . is a text appli-cable to the case: 1 Timothy 5:20.”—2 Testimo-




Part Ten

38 Waymarksnies, 15:2 [read the entire passage on pp. 15:1-16:0].Whenever the cause of God and His people

are threatened by evil, public rebuke of sin mustbe made.

On February 8, student leader Miller wroteScharlemann and the Board of Control, that thestudent moratorium/strike would continue indefi-nitely.

“For that reason, we will restructure teacher-stu-dent relationships in a manner consistent with ourmoratorium. Only when the Board answers ourresolution will the moratorium be ended and willthe decision be made whether to re-enter the class-rooms of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.”Final arrangements for a “seminary-in-exile”

were made at this time. There is evidence that theplans for such an extreme action had been laid inearly 1973 and probably earlier.

Administrators at both Eden Seminary and St.Louis Seminary later disclosed that arrangementshad been worked out far in advance of the actual“exodus.”

On February 6, the student leaders broke thenews to the students: They were all going to leavethe Seminary at one time—and totally vacate it!The students were not asked to make a final deci-sion at that time, but were herded into smallergroups so they could express their hopes and fearsand be assuaged by liberal leaders.

At the Scopes Trial, atheists, in various univer-sities who were working with lawyers, made an in-ternational spectacle of the Tennessee State law thatevolution could not be taught in its public schools.Working closely together, liberal theologians, in vari-ous denominations and universities, determined todo the same to Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod:hold it up to ridicule before the world, so no otherdenomination would ever dare try to dislodge theirunbelieving teachers.

The liberals, the atheists, the Communists,and the Jesuits all know the same basic truth:Control the schools and you inherit the future.This is a fact which Christians are slow to learn.

The LCMS officials were consistently quite will-ing to invite the liberal teachers and students back,as long as they asked for forgiveness. But they didnot realize that the situation had gone beyond for-giveness. Those men were corrupted by atheisticprinciples: Man is his own god, the arbiter of hisown fate, the decider of doctrine, the inventor oftruth.

On the evening of February 6, the returningstudents from the nationwide “Outreach” re-turned to a hero’s welcome held at Christ Church

Cathedral, a liberal Episcopal congregation inSt. Louis.

For years, LCMS kept itself separate from otherdenominations, in order to maintain its doctrinalpurity. But the liberals cared not for such strictures.Did they not all believe alike anyway?

At that meeting, Dr. Bertram, spokesman forthe Faculty Advisory Committee, announced toall the students that a five-point program hadbeen set in place which would enable them all tocomplete their training elsewhere and receiveaccreditation for their coursework.

The liberals take care of their own; it mattersnot whether they be Episcopalians, Presbyterians,or Catholics. They are all in it together, working toliberalize the churches and bring them together tothe great mother church at Rome. (See the author’searlier studies on the ecumenical movement, par-ticularly The Ecumenical Objective [WM–109], nowin Ecumenism/Hungary Tractbook.)

Bertram also pledged that the graduating stu-dents would be certified as prospective pastorson May 1, and vicars (ministerial interns, we wouldcall them) on March 22;—this in spite of all the timelost during the student strike!

And, for the first time, Bertram announced tothe general public that the faculty majority was“considering establishing a ‘Concordia Semi-nary in Exile’ to make possible the continued edu-cation of students who support the moderate fac-tion of the faculty and administration.”

Already, he said, “the synod’s Atlantic district,which includes New York City and upper New YorkState, had pledged $50,000 to the project, but thatmuch more financial support would be needed.”

From February onward, supporters of theSeminary rebels have declared that those perse-cuted brethren “were thrown out,” but that didnot happen. They chose to leave and, frankly, itwas a great blessing for the denomination! Thelump cast itself out (1 Corinthians 5).

The liberal press was gleeful. Headlines far awayin Portland, Oregon, read, “Majority Feel LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod Will Split Up.” (PortlandOregonian, February 2, 1973). Up in Chicago it washeadlined “A Church Divided—and Dying?” Belowthat was a subtitle, “Conservative-moderate clashthreatens to destroy Lutherans-Missouri Synod.”Notice that Chicago press called them the liberals“moderates.” Throughout the ongoing battle, the lib-erals in LCMS consistently referred to themselvesas “conservatives” or “moderates”—never as therank liberals they actually were.

On February 8, the Council of Presidents metin an earnest endeavor to bring the liberals back!

39The Concordia CrisisTwo days later, on February 10, the synodicalBoard of Directors met “to find a suitable waythat would enable students to return to classes.”A forum was appointed to be held on February 15-16, with the intent of bringing the liberals back un-der the denominational umbrella. But it did notsucceed.

To do so would be like bringing rattlesnakes intoa family camping tent at night! Why should LCMSwant those troublemaking, error-filled, men back?

Fortunately, the faculty majority snubbed allefforts at reconciliation. They would have donevery well for themselves to have returned, but apublic, worldwide, example must be made ofLCMS! Besides, they had the Jesuits to help them!On the 11th, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, en-titled “Dissenters Plan for Seminary,” disclosedthis:

“All preliminary arrangements—including tenta-tive permission for Lutherans to worship in a Je-suit chapel—have been completed for ‘seminary-in-exile’ for boycotting students and professors ofConcordia Seminary.”—James Adams, religioneditor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 11, 1974.The faculty and students at Concordia were will-

ing to leave Lutheranism and belief in the Bible forworship services with the Jesuits.

What was the pretext used, by the faculty ma-jority, to reject the generous overtures for peace of-fered by the Synod? It was the demand that, hence-forth, the Seminary must be a law unto itself! Theonly condition they would accept for their re-maining must be that absolutely no outside con-trols or religious authority could henceforth pre-vail at that school.

They wanted “academic freedom,” the verything we gave our own men, in October 1984, atour Annual Council (Theological Freedom [WM–110] now in our Schools Tractbook). On that date,the Annual Council specified that henceforth eachteacher in our colleges and universities could teachwhatever he wanted, as long as the administrationapproved of it. In our institutions of “higher educa-tion,” which are liberal, there has not been a singlefiring of one of our college or university teacherssince that date (with the exception of certain eventsat Southern College [now University], brought onby demands of one of the wealthiest family donorsto the denomination).

On February 12, the faculty majority issued astatement to Synod leaders, that, unless their de-mand was accepted by February 19, permitting themto teach whatever they wanted,—they would begininstructing the students again. The faculty mustbecome its own board of control, or else.

The regular Board meeting had been scheduledfor the evening of the 17th and all day on the 18th.In order to attend it, Board members had to travelfrom afar to meet that appointment. Tietjen ar-ranged that the Board would have only one day todecide.

When the Board met, it immediately began dis-cussing whether it would submit to the ultimatum.In addition, they must figure out how to providenew pastors to the denomination. The Seminarymust continue functioning, and vicarage (ministe-rial intern) assignments must be made in Marchand candidate assignments in May. Classes mustbe resumed at once.

The faculty had refused to honor their contrac-tual agreements since January 21, yet they had con-tinued to be paid their salaries. The careers of thestudents were at jeopardy. The churches neededmore pastors to replace retiring ones. This was,indeed, a crisis for the conservatives, and theliberals enjoyed it thoroughly.

What should the Board have done? Thepresent writer suggests that they should haveasked retiring pastors to continue on for an ex-tra year and brought in responsible laymen tohelp man the churches for a time. —Far betterto let conservative laymen preach in the pulpitsthan have ungodly, liberal, professional clergydo it!

The church in all ages does not need accredi-tation, certification, or diplomas. It needs godlymen who will submit to the Word of God andshare it with others.

On the 18th, the Board of Control made itsdecision:

“We had the faculty majority letter of February12 before us on Sunday night, the 17th, when theBoard met. We viewed it for what it was, namely,an ultimatum. The letter said that if we did notrescind four previous Board actions, then on Tues-day, the 19th, they would be teaching, but theywould be teaching at another location and not un-der our auspices. Whatever else one might think ofthe letter, at least it had the merit of being clearand unambiguous English.

“The Board’s reaction was, ‘all right, we havetwo choices. One, we accede to these demands. Wemeet these requirements. In which case the facultyreally will have taken over the function of the Boardof Control. They would be setting the policies.’ TheBoard could have gone that route.

“The other route would say, ‘No, we will not undothose actions. We are the Board of Control, you arethe faculty. We each have our sphere. You stay inyours, we will stay in ours.’ That was the positionwe took as responsible servants of the church. We

40 Waymarkscould not in good conscience bow to their ultima-tum. Therefore, we in effect said to the faculty, ‘Youwill be in the classrooms on Tuesday the 19th. Youalready have not worked for a month. If you arenot in the classrooms on Tuesday, you will haveterminated your connection with the Seminary.”—Board Chairman E.J. Otto, statement made to theSynod’s radio station, KFUO.On the 18th, the Board decided that any fac-

ulty member who refused to resume his respon-sibilities on February 19 would be considered ashaving breached his contract, and would be ter-minated from employment by the Seminary.

By noon of February 18, no faculty membershad responded. They had no intention of doingso, for they were busy preparing for their move—and taking the students with them.

The Tuesday, February 19, edition of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch bore the headline, “ConcordiaStudents Vote to Join ‘Seminary-in-Exile.’ ” Thenews traveled throughout the nation, with the presscalling it “the climax to the top religious news storyof the past few years.”

On the morning of February 19, the StudentAssociation convened a crucial meeting. Learn-ing that this gathering was going to take place sothe students could vote to join the “exodus,” Dr.Herbert Mueller, secretary of the Synod and amember of the Synod’s Commission Constitu-tional Matters, offered to come and explain tothe students that any, and all, of them could stillbe accepted back; none of them had been re-jected or discharged from Concordia.

But the faculty/student majority refused tolet him speak. If Tietjen was such a good man,as Cottrell stated, why did he want to jeopardizethe future of hundreds of men and their fami-lies?

Although refusing to let Mueller speak, they werequite willing to plan for a protest march the nextday, in full view of the cameras, to their new homeat a Jesuit university.

“The [student] leaders were so certain of theoutcome that last night they planned an elaboratesymbolic ‘funeral’ for Concordia and a protestmarch from the campus to St. Louis University,where the seminary-in-exile will begin tomorrow[February 19].”—Post-Dispatch, February 19, 1974.At 8 a.m., the meeting began in the Semi-

nary gymnasium. There was only one item onthe agenda: the decision whether or not the stu-

dents should walk out of the school “into exile.”Part of the brief resolution read this way:

“We believe this response of the Board of Con-trol to be both unchristian and immoral. For thisreason, we find it impossible in good conscience tocontinue our education under the present semi-nary Board of Control.”Introducing the resolution was a lengthy

speech by Dr. Bertram, in which he flatly declaredthat, if they did not join in the walkout, the stu-dents would share in the condemnation of Godto be meted out to the Board of Control for “silenc-ing the Word of God” and “unchristian and immoral”actions. The only alternative, Bertram shouted, wasto “march into exile!”

The emotional excitement ran high as the votewas taken, and the great majority of studentsvoted to forsake their campus studies for an un-known future.

David Strohschein, a first-year student who waspresent that morning, later wrote this to the Synodoffice:

“I attended the meeting which decided to go intoexile. I knew it was another setup, for Dr. HerbertMueller [Secretary of The Lutheran Church-Mis-souri Synod] had wanted to meet with students,but was told it was not necessary, only the pro-exile view was to be presented at this farcical meet-ing.”For nearly the entire school year up to that

point, and for years earlier, the students had beensubjected to only liberal teachings and liberalpropaganda. It is little wonder that many of theimpressionable young people were swayed.

It would have been far better to kick out theliberals in 1969, when the synod convention ini-tially requested it. The lives of many people wouldhave been protected from the ravages of men trainedin theological gobbledygook at outside universities.

Once again, the full press had been invited to bepresent—and you can know they were. This wasthe hottest religious news item of the season.

As the students prepared to leave the meet-ing hall, they were told that each one should takesmall wooden cross; write his name on it; and,when they arrived at the Seminary quadrangle,stick it into the lawn.

This was good salesmanship: Get the studentsto perform an action that symbolized their commit-ment to sever the old connections and not return,and launch out into the unknown with the liberal



faculty.It was also excellent news fare, for such a sen-

sational story would be printed and broadcast ev-erywhere.

For the occasion, the faculty was dressed inits Ph.D. academic robes. As the assemblyemerged from the gymnasium, the great doctorsof theology who were destroying the young peopleled the way, just behind a crucifer and religiousbanners. The students followed, each carryinghis little white-painted, two crossed, slats (eachwas about 12 x 18 inches).

“As we entered the quad, hundreds of crosseswere placed in the turf. We gathered at the Lutherstatue for the rites of exodus. Jones [Prof. HollandJones] read from Jeremiah, Caemmerer [Dr. Rich-ard Caemmerer] from Lamentations. After prayersand the Common Doxology, the bells rang out adirge—in the same dirge we heard at Piepkorn’sdeath and funeral. But just as my wife said, ‘Whydon’t they ring something happy,’ the bells wentinto a 49-bell peal of joy. It was another moment ofhigh drama, and again . . I wept. The studentsboarded up Walther Arch and wrote ‘Exiled’ acrossthe entrance. One thing I remember about all theseactions—the bells. They were a part of our protestJuly 24th [after the synodical convention]. Theyrang out at Piepkorn’s death. They rang out Febru-ary 19th. They have not rung since.”—Dr. Carl Volz,one of the faculty majority, in Christian Century,April 17, 1974.It was a cold, damp, day for such a great occa-

sion. Out onto the quad stepped the students,pushing their crosses, tilted at various angles,in helter-skelter fashion into the ground. It alllooked quite nonsensical. But remember, a similarpattern of foolishness was played out during theScopes Trial.

“Despite bad weather today, students held a sym-bolic ‘funeral’ for Concordia. Forty-eight crossesbearing the names of dismissed Concordia person-nel were to be placed on the campus, at 801 DeMun Avenue, Clayton. Student leaders were granteda paraded permit yesterday to march in proces-sion from the campus.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch,February 19, 1974 [afternoon edition].

Students took pre-painted plywood boardsand pressed them into place against the largedouble-arched stone doors, called the WaltherArch. The boards were painted black, with inten-tionally sloppy lettering garishly painted in whiteacross them: “EXI” on one, and “LED” on the other.

After boarding up the arch, students carry-ing the banners and crucifer walked over to thelarge Luther statue and stood in front of it, sothe cameramen could photograph them.

“From the Gymnasium on the west side of thecampus, the students and professors then marchedto a park east of the campus. Along the way, theyleft signposts—small, wooden crucifixes bearing thenames of the students and professors planted inthe seminary’s quadrangle to give it the look of agraveyard.

“The statue of Martin Luther which dominatedthe circular driveway in front of the quadrangle wasdraped with black crepe.

“Two large plywood sheets, painted black withthe word ‘EXILED’ scrawled across them in white,blocked the arched entrance to the quadrangle.

“As the crowd assembled briefly in front of thestatue, Dr. Richard Caemmerer, former faculty sec-retary, read aloud from the Bible about Moses ‘notbeing afraid of the king’ and leading his people intoexile.

“The crowd sang ‘Mighty Fortress’ before filingin a procession to the De Mun Park, east of thecampus. Dr. Walter Brueggemann, academic deanand professor of scripture at Eden Seminary,greeted the students and professors there.

“Eden, a United Church of Christ institution, andthe Roman Catholic St. Louis University will pro-vide classroom space for the ‘Seminary in Exile,’which begins classes Wednesday morning.”—St.Louis Globe-Democrat, February 20, 1974.Hugh Fitz, a first-year student, dryly commented

later, in a letter on file at the Synod:“I wondered about the sanity of those who acted

as they did, the crosses in the quad (obviously nota spontaneous move), the boarding up of theWalther Arch (with appropriate television and otherreporters around), and the phoney march into ex-ile for the sake of publicity. It was utterly ridicu-lous, and hard to believe.”

After planting the crosses and boarding up




Part Eleven

42 Waymarksthe arch, the students marched along behind therobed, learned, doctors with the banners goingbefore. As the cameras rolled, they “were march-ing into exile.” Across the street they went and intoDe Mun Park, which bordered the Seminary cam-pus.

At that point, the cameramen were asked to stopshooting film, and were told that the theatrical per-formance was finished.

As the press and camera crews drove off, mostof the faculty and students walked back into theschool, into the dining hall, and ate lunch.

Ted Mayes, a second-year seminary student, wassurprised to see them coming back.

“I actually thought they had gone. Several of usbegan to pick up the crosses that had been plantedin the quad and place them over by the dining hall.Then we noted that a good number of the studentshad returned to eat lunch in the dining hall of theSeminary whose funeral they had just participatedin. Several students came over to the place wherethe crosses had been put and tried to find theirown individual ones.

“In fact, for the remainder of the school yearmany of the students continued to use the dininghall facilities, the library facilities, and the field-house for athletic purposes. Except for classes, youcould hardly tell that they had gone.”

The whole event created an immense sensationin the press all across the country, and was reportedoverseas as well. Luthern Church-Missouri Synodwas made to be a laughing stock.

When Walter Cronkite discussed the whole af-fair on the evening news, he spent most of the timeon the fact that the faculty and students were leav-ing a Lutheran seminary—in order to go to a Catho-lic seminary, to continue their studies. He thoughtthat remarkable.

“Seminex” was the name given to the newliberal seminary. With the help of non-Lutheransand Jesuits, they carried on their liberal stud-ies. For this purpose, they received financial aidfrom a number of liberal organizations.

Remarkably, the Synod administration took avery motherly attitude toward the defiant ones whohad gone “into exile.”

Housing for the former faculty was officially ter-minated as of February 28, yet the faculty were per-mitted to remain on until the end of March. Somecontinued in the housing, rent-free, for months un-til they could find suitable housing elsewhere.

Students were permitted to occupy Seminaryhousing until April 30, and many stayed on till thesummer.

Ninety percent of the faculty and 85 percent

of the students were gone, but the Seminary con-tinued to function. The few remaining studentsand faculty members resumed their classes. Butit was difficult; for many of the Seminary files,student records, and other papers had been sto-len. Nice people, these liberals.

Before the walkout, the student body num-bered just over 300. Now about 40 were left. Animmense amount of tuition had been lost, andthe Seminary’s accreditation with the AmericanAssociation of Theological Schools was in doubt.

Immediately, the administration set to workto encourage as many of the liberal students aspossible to return. All the while, former faculty andstudents continued to hurl written attacks at theSynod and Seminary.

In addition, efforts were made to bring backformer faculty members onto the staff. But theliberals replied with a number of stalling tactics,primarily questions about the mediation “guide-lines” to be used.

At the April 21-22, 1974, meeting of the Boardof Control, the fact was discussed that it had to ini-tiate the process of identifying qualified and experi-enced men for possible calls. It was voted to not fillits faculty vacancies in March, but instead continueto try to get some of those liberal rebels back toteaching at the Seminary.

One would think that, by this time, the de-nomination had learned to avoid liberals, but ap-parently it had not.

A little after the beginning of May, the LCMSBoard of Higher Education (BHE) sent a letter tothe Board of Control, requesting that it give top pri-ority to regaining some of those recreant liberalswho had walked out in February!

“In filling faculty positions, we ask you to giveserious consideration to the former faculty mem-bers of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, for facultyappointments in accordance with the Bylaw provi-sions 6.53.

“The Board for Higher Education believes thatthere are among those former faculty membersthose who can be of valuable service to the LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod.”Yes, it was true that doctrinal discussions

would be involved in rehiring any of the liber-als; but, surely, after all those men did, why wouldanyone expect them to so easily change theirways—simply by giving verbal or written assentto Lutheran doctrines!

In mid-April, Dr. Scharlemann turned in his res-ignation as president of the Seminary. He was onthe verge of nervous collapse after all the pressure

43The Concordia Crisisand verbal attacks he had received from the liber-als. Dr. Ralph Bohlmann was appointed to take hisplace.

The 9th or 10th attempt at reconciliation withthe former faculty occurred in a meeting held onMay 29. But Synod leaders were surprised when,on June 5, a letter from the “Seminex faculty,” at-tacking the motives of reconciliation attempts, wassent throughout the denomination. Yes, friendlypeople those liberals are. The attitude was “See howhard they’re trying to get us back? It just shows howwe were in the right and they were in the wrong.”

Ultimately, not one former faculty memberever returned. Although church leaders mournedover this fact, they were actually blessed by it.

Seminex did not officially incorporate untilJune 1974. The legal name selected was “Concor-dia Seminary in Exile.”

The next step was to split off as many localdistricts and congregations as possible fromLCMS.

Throughout the spring and summer, Tietjenspent considerable time traveling to various partsof the country (Milwaukee, Omaha, Chicago,Cleveland, etc.), trying to rally pastors and lay-men to his side. At Detroit, he said this:

“Lay people don’t want the kind of church wehave with the spirit of oppression, repression, andinjustice.”—John Tietjen, quoted in Detroit News,March 30, 1974.Tietjen had not changed. He scathingly de-

nounced LCMS in a talk at an ELIM assembly inChicago, late in the summer:

“The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod we haveknown is dead. The institution that has given uslife is no more. Its structures are hopelessly cor-rupt. Its leadership is morally bankrupt. Its rank-and-file members have chosen to ignore and over-look evil.”—Tietjen, quoted in Time, September9, 1974.

Amazingly, since Tietjen had only been placedunder “temporary suspension” on January 20, hecontinued to receive a full salary from LCMS andall the benefits and subsidies. From January oninto the fall of that year, church leaders contin-ued to wheedle with Tietjen, asking him to cometo reconciliation meetings.

Finally, at the October 11-12, 1974, meetingof the Board of Control, after considerable thoughtand discussion, it was decided to terminate JohnTietjen’s employment with LCMS as of October 12,but to grant him an additional “gratuity” in anamount equivalent to salary till November 15, 1974and housing until December 31, 1974.

The next day (October 13), Tietjen released a

rather lengthy statement to the press, in which heexpressed his intense anger at being fired the daybefore! One would think they were supposed to keepsalarying him for the next ten years!

“I was notified yesterday that at a meeting onOctober 12, 1974, the Board of Control of Concor-dia Seminary, St. Louis, removed and dismissedme as president and as a member of the faculty,effective the date of the meeting! . . The structuresof the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod have be-come hopelessly corrupt . . and the leadership ofthe present synodical administration is morallybankrupt.”

By the end of April 1975, Seminex had beenin operation over a year, yet those in charge stilldid not know what their professed theologicalposition should be. They knew what they them-selves believed, but they were constantly changingtheir stance in the presence of others.

There is a reason for this: Liberals do notreally know what they believe! It is as varied andchangeable as tomorrow’s weather report. Chris-tians have the Inspired Writings; liberals only havetheir conflicting opinions.

The liberal journal, Forum Letter, commentedon some of the confusion when Seminex officialsattended an April LCMS theological convocation:

“As one Seminex prof remarked, ‘I’m not surefrom day to day what our approach is. One daywe’re going to candidly state our differences andlet the devil take the hindmost. The next we’re try-ing to demonstrate that we believe the same ‘oldMissouri’ always believed about inerrancy and allthe rest.’ Seminex reps at the convo tended to takethe second tack, as they did at New Orleans in 1973.Of course Seminex has a continuing concern aboutplacing people in LCMS parishes . . But Seminexcredibility is strengthened by candour, not by pre-tending there are few if any significant differences.If, for example, the historical-critical methoddoesn’t make that much difference in what onebelieves about the Bible or how one does theology,why bother everybody by insisting on using it?”—Forum Letter, May 1975.

After the walkout, Seminex officials demandedthat the Synod accept their graduates into theministry! Even more astounding, at its March meet-ing, the Council of Presidents voted to accept allsecond-year Seminex graduates to vicarages (thatis, to become new pastors)!

This would be like taking all the tubercular casesand having them breathe in the faces of everyoneelse, to spread the contagion.

Fortunately, many of the local district presi-dents (equivalent to our conference presidents)refused to hire Seminex graduates. On May 22,

44 Waymarkssidestepping normal channels, the Seminex sentletters directly to all presidents and local churches,encouraging them to hire Seminex graduates.

By that time, a second major crisis in the Luth-eran Church-Missouri Synod was about to occur.Some conference presidents let it be known thatthey would defiantly hire Seminex graduates,whether or not the Synod approved of their ac-tions!

When Dr. Preus learned of this, in a letter datedJune 7, he urged the Council of Presidents not toplace, ordain, or install Seminex graduates, unlessthey had first made arrangements through the Semi-nary for proper certification.

The faculty of the Seminary and its president,Dr. Bohlmann, spent much time that summer, andthroughout the next school year, interviewing andprocessing 1974 Seminex graduates.

As a result, about 25 Seminex students wereaccepted. Few Seminex students ever appliedafter the summer of 1975.

But the defiant hiring by certain district presi-dents of uncertified Seminex graduates led di-rectly into this second crisis.

In May 1975, at a Council of Presidents meet-ing, most of them promised to abide by an antici-pated resolution to be voted at the forthcoming JulySynod convention in Anaheim, not to ordain uncer-tified Seminex graduates. But eight district presi-dents refused to sign the pledge. They said theywould vote against the forthcoming Anaheim reso-lution.

In July, the conservatives were once again inthe saddle. At the synod convention in Anaheim,California, they approved Resolution 5-02, pro-hibiting the ordination of uncertified candidatesand requiring district presidents who could notin conscience abide by the regulation to resign.The resolution also called on the Synod presi-dent to discharge any district president who or-dained uncertified Seminex graduates.

The eight reiterated their intention to ordainSeminex graduates. By February 1976, four dis-trict presidents had done so. But Preus, know-ing they were likely to take their liberal churchesout with them, was concerned lest it split thedenomination. So he hesitated to take action.

In a joint response to Preus, eight presidentssaid they refused to change their position.

“All eight of us stand by the statement we made

at the Anaheim convention when Resolution 5-02was adopted . . The resolution is contrary to theScriptures, the Lutheran Confessions, and the truespirit of our Synodical constitution, and we there-fore do not intend to comply with it.”The feared split was rapidly nearing.But it brought anguish to Preus and he hesi-

tated to oust those recalcitrant presidents. He stalledfor months; but finally, in April 1976, he fired thefour presidents who had hired noncertified pastors,and replaced them with new presidents.

But their local district boards refused this ac-tion, and said they would stand by the presidentswhom Preus had discharged.

Immediately, the other four rebel presidentsvoted to stand with the four who had been fired.

At their spring 1976 meetings, six of thosedistricts voted to pull away from LCMS. Theseactions were made by decisive majority votes; forexample, 206 to 146 in the Northwest District, 147to 58 in the Atlantic District, and 114 to 58 in theNew England District.

The split had occurred. In each breakawaydistrict, a number of district directors and localchurches pulled away from the liberals and re-joined LCMS.

Near the end of April 1976, The Associationof Evangelical Lutheran Churches (AELC) wasincorporated in Illinois, and ELIM was mergedinto it. It provided a general organization for thebreakaway districts.

How big was this split? Cottrell’s report im-plied that it was immense. But really was it?

During the fall of 1976, 42 of the 6,160 LCMScongregations in the United States and Canadavoted to leave the Synod. In addition, about 100other LCMS congregations voted to unite withAELC—without formally separating from LCMS(or were represented by splinter groups whichdid so).

That was 142 (later close to 160) out of 6,160LCMS congregations which split off from theparent denomination. In forthcoming years,LCMS grew all the stronger because it occurred!

On December 3-4,1975, representatives of fivenewly formed districts met in Chicago and formallyorganized themselves into the AELC; William Kohn,a Milwaukee pastor, was elected president. By Janu-ary 1977, there were 175 congregations in the newdenomination.



Of course, the breakaway districts and localchurches did so because a majority of their mem-bers were as liberal as Tietjen’s faculty. So, whatwas thought to be a great crisis was actually ablessing to the newly purified Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Well, what about Concordia Seminary? Howdid it fare? Did not the walkout nearly destroyit? Not at all; within two years, it had more stu-dent than before the crisis struck! Local churcheswere glad to have a Seminary where they couldsafely send their sons for ministerial training!

From an enrollment of about 300 just beforethe walkout in February 1973, the Seminary wasdown to 40 or so afterward. By the fall of 1974,193 were enrolled. In 1975 there were 284; and,in 1976, 365. By May 1975, the Seminary hadmore faculty members than before.

In its September 9, 1974, issue, Time maga-zine said that Concordia’s fall enrollment was “wellabove the most optimistic predictions after the splitlast winter. The Synod’s conservatives have recov-ered remarkably.”

Casting about for some kind of message to keepthe excitement from slumping, the newly formedAssociation of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, atits second convention in April 1978, issued a “callfor Lutheran Union.” But they could not agree onwhat they were to unite on.

Not only did the Missouri Synod grow and pros-per because of the departure of the liberals, allits several schools did also. It increased in mem-bership because people found they could trustits solid beliefs, which were less tainted by mod-ern liberal reasoning than most of the Protes-tant denominations.

For example, in January 1977, the ReligiousNews Service reported on Pastor J. Kincaid Smithwho, with part of his congregation, left the liberalLutheran Church in America denomination—andunited with the LCMS.

He spoke of the destructive and subtle heresy

in LCA, which ridicules a literal interpretation ofthe Bible. He said the 7th- and 8th-grade teacher’sguide for the LCA Sunday School stated that thepurpose of the course was to help children under-stand that it was no longer necessary to believe inthe miraculous elements of the Bible.

The RNS report said that Smith “found himselfempty after two years in the ministry. He went on tosay that he then found Christ as His Saviour,—but,to do so, required accepting the Bible as it reads.He said it was foolish for the Lutheran liberals tosay they were “moderately liberal,” when they re-jected the Bible as they did.

“ ‘To say that you are moderately liberal is likesaying you are moderately pregnant,’ he said . . ‘Ibelieve that those differences between conservativeLutheran and liberal Lutheran positions is infinitelygreater than the differences which have historicallydivided us from other mainline denominations,’Pastor Smith stated. ‘It is an impassable gulf.’ ”—RNS, January 27, 1977.

Postscript: In the years after the Concordia Sem-inary crisis and church split, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod regained all that it had lost in num-bers, plus far more. A new solidity was seen in itsranks. Unfortunately, however, there were still lib-eral pastors, members, and teachers at work. “Eter-nal vigilance is the price of freedom,” was the state-ment of one of the pioneers who gave America inde-pendence.

Unfortunately, there was warfare against Her-man Otten, the independent publisher who so greatlyhelped the members to eject the liberals. It was hewho had provided the warnings they needed. In theprocess, he was probably responsible for the sav-ing of many souls.

But LCMS church leaders continued to opposehim. J.A.O. Preus, who prior to his elevation to thepresidency had secretly helped Otten, turned againsthim afterward.

Somehow, organizations never like an indepen-dent press. Whether they be secular, governmental,or religious, organizations want a controlled press.

By the 1980s, the leadership of LCMS, whilecontinuing to vilify Otten, was quietly avoiding any




Part Twelve

46 Waymarksconflict with liberals, such as Paul Bretscher, DonAbdon, and some professors at Valparaiso Univer-sity who accept evolution and defend the teachingsat Seminex.

On August 13, 1994, J.A.O. Preus died. The fu-neral was held in the Concordia Seminary chapel,where, over a decade before, Tietjen convinced thestudents to unite with him in his diabolical plans.

— PART FOUR —

THE HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD

In his analysis of the Missouri Synod cri-sis, Raymond Cottrell stated that Tietjen andhis fellow liberals were actually conservativesand the historical-critical method of interpret-ing the Bible, which Tietjen used, was actuallythe method we all use.

Let us now find out exactly what this his-torical-critical method is—so we can guard our-selves and our loved ones from it!

Cottrell quoted this statement by Tietjen:“It would not be possible to operate a Depart-

ment of Exegetical Theology at a graduate schoolwithout the use of the historical-critical method”(quoted in Tom Baker, Watershed at the Rivergate,p. 9).But those liberals do not believe what you

and I believe,—even those who say they do.“In a nutshell, what the Missouri liberals are say-

ing is that it does not matter if the Bible containserror, since error does not invalidate the messageof law and gospel. God can also work through er-ror. Whether what happened was historical makesno difference. Theirs is a theology that ‘sees all theintention of Scripture in a Gospel understandingonly, thereby making unimportant the historicityof the narrative described.”—Harold Lindsell,Battle for the Bible, p. 80.

Walter A. Maier, was a well-known Lutheranspeaker and writer of 50 years ago. He was also asolid believer in taking the Bible as it reads. Hefought the earliest inroads of liberalism into theLCMS church; and, in a short article entitled TheHistorical-Critical Method of Bible Study, long be-fore the LCMS crisis, Maier wrote this:

“Most of the scholars who use the historical-criti-cal method base their analysis of the Biblical texton certain rationalistic, anti-scriptural presuppo-sitions, anti-supernaturalism, for example. Theyflatly reject the possibility of divine intervention andmiraculous action in human affairs. They also op-erate with various arbitrary, unwarranted assump-tions, such as the unreasonable bias that manyBiblical accounts, which purport to, do not reallypresent factual history.

“As a result, their interpretations often subvertthe obvious meaning of clear Scripture passages,and the theological views they express often do notconform to the Word of God.”—W.A. Maier, His-torical-Critical Method of Bible Study, quoted inAffirm, June 1971.Then Dr. Maier gave several examples:

“(1) When the New Testament evangelists com-posed their Gospels, they simply took over tradi-tional short stories about Jesus which had beencirculating in Palestinian Christian communitiesand worked these into running Gospel accounts.Practically all references to time and place . . are ofthe evangelists’ invention and do not supply au-thentic information about the life of Jesus. (2) Themiracles reported in the Gospels did not actuallyoccur . . (3) Many of the sayings attributed to Jesuswere never spoken by Him at all . . (4) The Gospelscontain many legends and myths, pure fabrications,which were given form ‘in the interest of the cultus’and for the purposes of edification. Mythologicaland legendary material, which is the product of‘pious fancy’ and ‘active Christian imagination,’ isthe narrative of Christ’s temptation in the wilder-ness, the transfiguration narrative, the narrativeof the Last Supper, the passion narrative, and theresurrection narrative.

“Liberal theologians regard it as one of the func-tions of form critical investigation to help the twen-tieth-century reader to de-mythologize the NewTestament Scriptures and thus get down to ‘whatreally happened’ at the time of Christ and earlyChristianity. Additional incredible and, indeed,blasphemous views arising from the modern, schol-arly use of historical-critical methodology could becited.”—Ibid.The historical-critical method is dangerous!

Those who use it want you to cut pages—andentire books—out of your Bibles.

Unfortunately, we have this in our own de-nomination, and even in the Independent Minis-tries. There are writers and traveling speakerswho are actually “Spirit of Prophecy liberals.”They will tell you that you need to cut pages—and entire books—out of your Spirit of Prophecylibrary!

Have nothing to do with such men!When someone comes to you and tells you to

cut pages out of God’s books, tell him to leave.“I believe that there are a good many scholars in

these days, as there were when Paul lived, ‘who,professing themselves to be wise, have becomefools’; but I don’t think they are those who hold tothe inspiration of the Bible. I have said that minis-ters of the Gospel who are cutting up the Bible inthis way, denying Moses today and Isaiah tomor-row, and Daniel the next day and Jonah the next,are doing great injury to the church; and I stand bywhat I have said. I don’t say that they are bad men.

47The Concordia CrisisThey may be good men, but that makes the resultsof their work all the worse. Do they think they willrecommend the Bible to the finite and fallen rea-son of men by taking the supernatural out of it?They are doing just the opposite. They are empty-ing the churches and driving the young men of thisgeneration into infidelity.”—D.L. Moody, quoted inWilliam R. Moody, Life of D.L. Moody, pp. 495-496.

“What we need today is men who believe in theBible from the crown of their heads to the soles oftheir feet: who believe in the whole of it, the thingsthey understand, and the things they do not un-derstand.”—D.L. Moody, quoted in Richard E. Day,Bush Aglow, p. 98.

Prior to World War I, the Lutheran churches inAmerica generally held to belief in the Bible. Theyabhorred that devastating questioning attitudewhich tore pages out of God’s Word. They presenteda “solid front against the claims of critical study ofthe Bible” (E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans inAmerica, p. 384). “On the whole, Lutheranism inAmerica looked upon scholars who used the his-torical-critical approach to the Bible as subversives”(Op. cit., p. 12).

But, by 1920, the United Lutheran Church ofAmerica (ULCA) issued the “Washington Declara-tion,” which “refused to speak of verbal inspirationand inerrancy of the Scriptures,” in opposition tothe “exclusivist confessionalism” of the midwesternsynods (Op. cit., p. 72).

“By 1927-1930, individual professors of theol-ogy were taking positions incompatible with anorthodoxist view of scriptural inerrancy. They usedthe method of historical criticism and carefullydistinquished between the Scriptures and the Wordof God without separating one from the other.”—Ibid.From 1936 to 1938, the Missouri Synod and

the United Lutheran Church of America held dis-cussions with the possibility of uniting; but the meet-ings broke off because the ULCA commissionersrefused “to accept the statement of the MissouriSynod, that the Scriptures are the infallible truth‘also those parts which treat of historical, geographi-cal, and other secular matters’ ” (Currents in The-ology and Mission, January 1939). They declared“inspiration” to be a man-made theory.

After World War II, a “neo-Lutheranism” tookover U.S. Lutheran seminaries. What brought iton? Conservative analysts believe it was accep-tance of Barthianism.

Karl Barth, of Switzerland, was the modern-ist theologian who seemingly favored inspirationand conservatism; yet he wove a strange double-talk into all that he said, so that he first con-

fused, and then swept, precious souls into theliberal camp. Other liberals also used double-talk,but such men as Harnack came out more openly indefiance of the Bible. So they were more easily rec-ognized.

Read this thoughtful presentation of the teach-ings of Karl Barth. His two-faced talk is like themen in our own ranks who come to us with sug-ary words of “confidence in the Spirit of Proph-ecy” while casting doubt on the accuracy, truth-fulness, and authorship of those precious books.

“Barth’s system seemed more biblical than itwas. The Swedish scholar Wingren observed dryly:‘Barth has the ability to a very large degree of beingable to employ the language of scripture in a sys-tem that is totally foreign to the Bible.’ Barthrealised that the historical-critical method couldproduce nothing but a few dead bones. But hethought that one could—indeed must—keep themethod, and then pack living flesh and sinews ontothe dead bones by means of ‘theological interpre-tation,’ hence the ‘New Hermeneutic.’

“Barth demanded ‘that we endeavor to see‘through and beyond history into the spirit of theBible,’ and then offered an interpretation that didnot inquire about Paul’s message to his originalreaders, but related the biblical text directly to thesituation in which modern man finds himself. Sincefor Barth, however, the actual biblical text was fullyhuman and therefore full of errors, his ‘interpreta-tion’ necessarily meant reading his own ideas intothe text.

“And Barth’s basic idea was the ‘dialectic’ or ten-sion, a restless back-and-forth between two poles,time and eternity. Nothing earthly, concrete, his-torical—hence no doctrine, statement, or book—could ever be absolute, since God remained ‘whollyother’ and His Word ultimately inexpressible. Ac-cording to Barth, therefore, the Bible ‘never stiff-ens into positive or negative finalities . . It alwaysfinds as much and as little in the Yes as in the No;for the truth lies not in the Yes and not in the Nobut in the knowledge of the beginning from whichthe Yes and the No arise . . Biblical dogmatics arefundamentally the suspension of all dogmatics.’This deeply anti-incarnational thinking was a radi-cal adaption of the philosophical notion basic toCalvinism, as J. W. Montgomery has pointed out ina most incisive essay on ‘Lutheran Hermeneuticsand Hermeneutics Today.’

“Barth’s high-octane flow of words caused be-fuddlement among lesser lights, and encouragedan unclear style which evaded precision and defi-nition with an over-heated pietistic rhetoric. The-ology had fallen into a confusion of tongues. Oldwords were used in new and vague senses. Evenliberals on occasion felt threatened by the all-en-veloping double-talk.”—Kurt E. Marquart, Ana-tomy of an Explosion, pp. 110-111.

48 WaymarksWhat Barth essentially did was to confuse the

mind with a juxtaposition of words, strange no-tions, false charges, an appeal to sources notavailable to the rest of us,—all the while mingledwith expressions of utter loyalty to the Bible.

That is exactly what Herman Hoehn, CharlesWheeling, and others are doing to the Spirit ofProphecy writings! They claim to believe in itwhile they instill doubts based on hearsay from90 to 120 years ago. “Did you know that EllenWhite cannot be trusted?” “How do we know that?”“She ate clams.” “How do we know that?” “Some-one back then said she did.” And on and on it goes,insidious planting of doubt based on lying reportswhich cannot now be verified. On one hand, we havesupposed witnesses who are dead; on the other, wehave definite statements in the Spirit of Prophecyto the contrary. But the doubt has been planted,and we dare not trust them.

Men will be judged by those books, for thewitness of truth found within them is too power-ful for our destiny to be otherwise. The Spirit ofProphecy was given to the Advent people to pro-tect them against deception and prepare themfor the time of trouble, the close of probation,and the Second Advent. Those who accept theerrors of Hoehn and Wheeling will someday deeplyregret it, too late.

By the late 1940s, the atheistic doubts were fullyin control in the United Lutheran Church of America.The seminary teachers had done their work well.The entire denomination had been converted to thenew view. Quite openly, Joseph Sittler could writein his 1948 ULCA book, The Doctrine of the Word,released under the auspices of the ULCA Board ofPublications:

“For if we equate the Word of God with the Scrip-ture, we are confusing things heavenly with thingshistorical. The Unconditioned is by such an identi-fication delimited by the conditioned . .

“The cosmology of the Bible was shattered bythe work of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Itschronology was brought under severe question bya critical science of history and the pursuit of criti-cal paleontology . .

“To assert the inerrancy of the text of Scriptureis to elevate to a normative position an arbitrarytheological construction.”—Joseph Sittler, TheDoctrine of the Word, pp. 11, 52, 68.One thing leads to another. By 1954, Sittler had

also rejected Christ as the Saviour (“A Christology

of Function,” Lutheran Quarterly, May 1954).Once faith in God’s Word is lost, there is nothingto keep a person from drifting out into the worldand down into perdition. There is no standardother than his own ideas.

In 1955, the German Lutheran theologian,Reinhold Niebuhr, wrote:

“Some [liberals] are accused, among otherthings, of not believing in the virgin birth of Jesusor in his ‘physical resurrection’ or ascension. Arethese beliefs really tests of the quality of faith? Doesany church which insists upon them really do jus-tice to the quality and character of faith as an en-counter between God and the soul? Does it under-stand the symbolic character of a great deal of re-ligious truth? . . All symbols of the eternal, par-ticularly those which assert the divine validity andrevelatory power of events in history, must be takenseriously but cannot be taken literally. The well-known German theologian Rudolf Bultmann hasmade this issue central in theological thought bothin Europe and America.”—The Lutheran, Decem-ber 1955.

Extremely subtle statements are made, alwaystrying to make the speaker look conservative andan earnest believer in God’s Word while guttingit by their other teachings.

“The Bible is the Word of God as the humanrecord through which the Holy Spirit bears witnessto God’s redemptive act in Christ.”—Statement by16 ULCA seminary professors [made in defenseof certain accused liberals who had spoken a littletoo strongly in outright denial of Christ], TheLutheran, February 1956.Such statements can be made by the liberals

because, for them, the “Bible” is not what is writtenin it!

“The ALC holds that the inerrancy referred tohere does not apply to the text but to the truthsrevealed for our faith, doctrine and life . . The in-fallibility of the Scriptures is the infallibility of JesusChrist and not the infallibility of the written text.”—F.A. Schiotz, president of American LutheranChurch, The Church’s Confessional Stand Rela-tive to the Scriptures, p. 148.

We have noted that, by the late 1940s, the UnitedLutheran Church in America had been convertedby their liberal-trained pastors to agnostic attitudestoward Scripture.

The America Lutheran Church followed in the1950s, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synodwas teetering toward the edge by the late 1960s.



Conversations between the old American Luth-eran Church, the United Evangelical Lutheran Church,and the large Norwegian-originated EvangelicalLutheran Church resulted in their combining in1960 into the American Lutheran Church. But thenewly added seminaries and their liberal teachersdoomed the ALC.

“By 1956, when the proposed constitution of thenew American Lutheran Church was voted on bythe Evangelical Lutheran Church, several if notmost of its professors of theology were teaching aview of Scripture at variance with the statement onthe Bible in the new constitution. That is, whilechurch administrators sought to uphold ‘oldLutheranism,’ many college and seminary profes-sors were teaching ‘neo-Lutheranism.’ ”—E.C.Nelson, Lutherans in America, 164.It matters not how conservative the laymen

in the churches may be, if their colleges and semi-naries are churning out liberals—the denomina-tion will erelong be taken over!

By 1968, only 23 percent of ALC clergy ac-cepted the full inspiration of the Bible while 76percent of the LCMS pastors still held to it (1968survey by Jeffrey Hadden, quoted in HermanOtten [ed.], A Christian Handbook on Vital Is-sues). If LCMS had not gotten rid of those lib-eral teachers, it would, by the late 1980s, be asdominated by unbelieving leaders and teachersas the other Lutheran churches!

If we do not get rid of our liberal teachersand leaders, our own denomination will be ef-fectively taken over as well. Some say, “Fear not,God will not let that happen!” He will let it hap-pen, if men are careless and unwilling to de-fend His Inspired Writings and the teachingsfound in them!

Yes, the Final Crisis will purify the church; but,because the liberals were not cast out when theyshould have been, whole congregations will be sweptaway as chaff on the summer threshing floor. Yes, aremnant will go through to the end. But, if men haddone their part, that remnant which enters the Fi-nal Crisis of the marking time could have been much

larger. The loss of souls is always a tragedy.

By the late 1960s, a majority of teachers inall the Lutheran colleges and seminaries wereliberal. Why? because their faculties had all re-ceived their doctorates at outside, worldly, uni-versities. Writing about the Lutheran denomina-tions in America, Nelson said:

“Many of these men who found their way intoteaching positions in major colleges and seminar-ies of the Lutheran churches, including ConcordiaSeminary (St. Louis), had been exposed to contem-porary biblical research (Dodd, Hoskyns, Wright,Albright, Bultmann, G. Bornkamm, von Rad, et al.,to contemporary theologians such as Nygren, Aulen,Barth, Brunner, Tillich, and the Niebuhrs) and tothe Luther researches of Swedes, Germans, En-glishmen, and Americans (notably Wilhelm Pauckand Roland Bainton). One result was that in thecourse of time students were exposed to a newbrand of Lutheranism that was remarkably simi-lar in all schools, whether in Chicago, Philadelphia,the Twin Cities, or St. Louis.”—E.C. Nelson,Lutherans in America, 164-165.Sometimes Karl Barth’s hidden agenda slipped

out, as when he wrote, “The Bible is full of errors;that is the Incarnation!” That mysterious statementis supposed to translate as “You have come upon awonderful new idea when you discover that the Bibleis not trustworthy.” But the initial confusion ofthese mysterious statements from the mouth ofBarth fascinated and gripped minds who, in try-ing to wrestle out their meanings,—were caughtin a web of deceit.

—That is exactly what such men as HermanHoehn, in British Columbia, and Charles Wheel-ing, down in Alabama, are doing with their unve-rifiable charges. They profess great confidencein the Spirit of Prophecy while they mail out at-tacks on those life-saving books.

In 1959, an article praising Barth appeared inLCMS’s official youth journal:

“But this man is different. This is Karl Barth,the Einstein of theology. More than any man sinceLuther he has guided and plotted the course ofChristian thought . .

“Barth has solid ground under his feet. He whole-




Part Thirteen

50 Waymarksheartedly accepts the inspiration of Scripture andin this respect he is a solid conservative . .

“Greater or lesser Barthians teach at almost ev-ery Protestant seminary in America, including ourown.”—Walther League Messenger, May 1959.Decades earlier, Dr. Walther had vigorously op-

posed liberal encrouchments in LCMS, and now themagazine named after him was touting it.

Here is an example of the kind of fantastic fool-ishness which liberal thought can produce. This isa liberal definition of “to know” and “truth.” It isdone by misstating the true meaning of their He-brew and Greek equivalents:

“Thus ‘to know,’ iadah or ginosko, does not con-cern the comprehension of fact but the experienc-ing of and absorption into the One known. ‘Truth,’emunah or aletheia, does not concern the veracityor factuality of a given idea, but it concerns thetrustworthiness of God in bringing His plan of sal-vation in Christ Jesus to come true in the lives ofindividuals.”—LCMS Curriculum Committee, an-nual report to the Board for Higher Education,November 1, 1958.

Underlying this theological masterpiece of Sa-tan, called the historical-critical method, is theconcept that man’s mind is the basic authority;it stands superior to all else, including any rev-elation the God of heaven may make to him.

Kurt Marquart has provided a number of excel-lent definitions to help us better understand it:

“The historical-critical method arose out of therationalistic Enlightment and differs from tradi-tional Biblical scholarship in that it insist on treat-ing the Bible not as an unquestioned authority, butas one ancient book among others.”—K.E. Mar-quart, Anatomy of an Explosion, pp. 119-120.That is exactly what the new theologians in our

colleges and a number of supposed conservativesin the Independent Ministries are doing to the Spiritof Prophecy!

Marquart continues:“All Biblical statements are therefore open to

challenge before the court of sovereign human rea-son. Historical criticism understands itself simplyas the general scientific method applied to pastevents, namely history. This means that the criticand his reason are judge and jury, while the Bible,like all other ancient documents, is on trial, whetheras defendant or as witness; for even as a witnessits credibility depends entirely on the findings ofthe critical court.”—Op. cit., p. 120.Darwin started the phony trend toward trans-

forming atheism into “scientific investigation.”Yet, if you will read the present writer’s bookson the subject, evolutionary theory is not in theleast scientific. So it is with the historical-criti-cal method.

The German Biblical destructionists used thesame tactic. They pretended to apply the “scien-tific method” to the study of God’s Word. Theyplaced their minds as the authority to sit in judg-ment on Scripture. —And this is exactly whatthe Spirit of Prophecy critics are doing today inour own ranks!

The historical-critical method is put forward asa pretended “science.”

“It is important to see that the uncompromisingsupremacy of ‘scientific’ human reason in the his-torical-critical method is not an excess or an abusewhich can somehow be tempered. On the contrary,it is of the essence of the method; indeed it is itsbasic point.

“Science has neither use nor room for privilegedauthorities or sacrosanct texts. It recognizes onlyobservations, experiments, logical inferences basedon them, and, reluctantly, whatever axioms or as-sumptions are necessary to sustain these opera-tions. That is why, in Krentz’ statement, ‘the methodtends to freedom from authority.’ Historical criti-cism cannot successfully ape scientific objectivityif it is caught flirting with writings in preference toothers.

“Here lies the historical-critical method’s ‘inner-most impulse of scientific questing and question-ing,’ which it cannot give up without thereby sur-rendering its scientific pretensions, in short, its veryreason for being.”—Op. cit., p. 120.

Liberals cannot accept the idea that the Bible isaccurate, even in its historical statements. As far asthey are concerned, every part of it is in error andmust be “interpreted.”

“If one’s view of history is such that he cannotacknowledge a divine plan of salvation unfoldingin historical events, then he cannot accept the wit-ness of the Bible. The point we are stressing is thatthe historical-critical method denies the role of tran-scendence in the history of Jesus as well as in theBible as a whole, not as a result of scientific studyof the evidences, but because of its philosophicalpresuppositions about the nature of history . . Thehistorical-critical method excludes by definitionthat which I believe.”—George E. Ladd, paper readat 25th anniversary of Interpretation: A Journalof Bible and Theology, January 1971.Liberals place man at the summit of the cos-

mos. He is king of all he surveys, including anybooks purportedly given us by our Maker. Theyplace their minds in judgment on everything in HolyWrit.

“Historical criticism, to be true to itself, mustkeep itself unfettered by any authority save that ofhuman reason. But this very feature has con-demned the method to ultimate sterility and bank-ruptcy. This approach to the Bible [is] based onunbridled human rationality alone.”—Marquart,

51The Concordia CrisisAnatomy of an Explosion, p. 121.Liberals in our own ranks sit in judgment on

the “historicity” of Great Controversy and ques-tion the validity of its later editions. All this isas Satan would have it. He wants to place thatspecial book in doubter’s corner.

Liberals require absolute freedom to thinkanything, believe anything, do anything—untram-meled by laws, codes, or outside authority. Anyattempt to limit or restrain their theorizing “mustinvolve some sort of plain old traditional Biblestudy” (ibid.).

Here is a nice analysis of how devilish thismethod of “Bible study” is:

“In sum, the historical-critical method cannot,without committing suicide, accept any restrictionsexcept those imposed by the rules of scientific in-quiry itself. Any method, therefore, which submitsin principle to the divine authority (inerrancy!) ofsacred texts is simply not the historical-criticalmethod.

“On the other hand, any method which in prin-ciple waives the inerrancy of Holy Scripture can-not claim to be operating with Lutheran presuppo-sitions. The loose, status-symbol usage of the term‘historical-critical method’ to mean simply ‘com-petent, scholarly procedure,’ should be combattedas a sematic humbug.”—Op. cit., p. 123.Liberals pretend to be “historians” trying to

find something truthful in the Inspired writings.“ ‘The historian,’ says Lotz, ‘must cross-exam-

ine, test, weigh, probe and analyze all writtenrecords of the past. If he fails to do this he de facto[in reality] surrenders his claim to the title of his-torian!’ In short, one cannot honestly practice his-torical criticism and be ‘under the Scriptures.”—David Lotz, quoted in the liberal Forum Letter,May 1975.Abandon the idea that there is any way for

conservatives to harmonize or fellowship withliberals or “moderates.” It cannot be done.

“The differences between the doctrines on Scrip-ture of the ‘moderates’ and the ‘conservatives’ areabsolutely irreconcilable.”—Dialog, Spring, 1974[a liberal Lutheran journal].In order to carry out their destructive work, the

liberals claim they must separate facts from faithand Scripture from the Gospel. They will loudly cry,sola Scriptura [Scripture alone], but they believenone of it. To accomplish their purpose, they claimthat the Bible is something different and quite sepa-rate from God’s Inspired Word.

Their method is to cut the heavenly recordsapart with the sharp knife of their own hatred-driven doubts and then let them lie there, quiv-ering, as they bleed to death.

“Historical criticism, as we have seen, seeks to

separate fact from fiction, wheat from chaff, by animpartial cross-examination of all historicalsources. But if the Bible is essentially different fromall other writings, if as the inspired Word of God itis divine truth unmixed with human error, then itis in principle beyond the reach and scope of his-torical criticism. If the critical method is to haveanything to work on, a wedge must first be drivenbetween that which is Word of God in the Bibleand that which is not. Once a more or less inde-pendent ‘human side’ has been isolated, then criti-cism can operate on it without let or hindrance,while ‘faith’ is left to tender its courtesies to an evervaguer ‘divine side.’ ”—Marquart, Op. cit., p. 124.They must also get rid of the miracles in the

Bible. Everything must be falsified, everything re-jected.

“If the miracle stories of the Bible are to have ameaning today, it must be sought for on a differentplane of reality . . It makes a difference to the wayone thinks of Jesus. Is he a mighty being of super-human power . . or is he an ordinary man who didnothing like this at all and never wanted to . .

“For miracles cannot be retained on the level ofhistorical fact . .

“Criticism means separation, division, and alsodistinction. Those elements which are probably his-torical are divided and distinguished from the‘unhistorical’ ones . .

“The [historical-critical] method releases us fromthe necessity of believing the incomprehensible andthe improbable . . for it makes proper understand-ing impossible.”—E. and M. Keller, Miracles in Dis-pute, pp. 176, 217, 224.

“Christ will never lead His followers to take uponthemselves vows that will unite them with men whohave no connection with God, who are not underthe controlling influence of His Holy Spirit. The onlycorrect standard of character is the holy law of God,and it is impossible for those who make that lawthe rule of life to unite in confidence and cordialbrotherhood with those who turn the truth of Godinto a lie, and regard the authority of God as athing of nought.

“Between the worldly man and the one who isfaithfully serving God, there is a great gulf fixed.Upon the most momentous subjects—God andtruth and eternity—their thoughts and sympathiesand feelings are not in harmony. One class is rip-ening as wheat for the garner of God, the other astares for the fires of destruction. How can there beunity of purpose of action between them? . .

“I lately read of a noble ship that was plowing itsway across the sea, when at midnight, with a ter-rific crash, it struck upon a rock; the passengerswere awakened only to see with horror their hope-less condition, and with the ship they sank to riseno more. The man at the helm had mistaken thebeacon light.”—2 Selected Messages, pp. 127, 128.

52 Waymarks


PILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS RESTPILGRIMS REST

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word,it is because there is no light in them.”—Isaiah 8:20.

“Jesus said . . It is written.”—Matthew 4:7.

“What saith the Scripture?”—Romans 4:3.

“What is written in the law? how readest thou?”—Luke 10:26.

“They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.”—Luke 16:29.

“Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and theyare they which testify of Me.”—John 5:39.

“Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and makethflesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall belike the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shallinhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhab-ited.”—Jeremiah 17:5-6.

“It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better totrust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.”—Psalm 118:8-9.

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is nohelp. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day histhoughts perish.”—Psalm 146:3-4.

“Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to beaccounted of?”—Isaiah 2:22.

“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, indeparting from the living God.”—Hebrews 3:12.

“[The Bereans] These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in thatthey received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scrip-tures daily, whether those things were so.”—Acts 17:11.

“The Holy Scriptures . . are able to make thee wise unto salvation which isin Christ Jesus.”—2 Timothy 3:15.

“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto My path.”—Psalm119:105.

“And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and menloved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”—John3:19.

CLING TO THE WORD OF GODAND BEWARE OF THE THEORIES

THAT MEN WOULD PRESENT TO YOU

Documents

Part One A Thirteen-part Documentary – The … Thirteen-part Documentary ... The first of Cottrell’s series of five articles ... This method is closely related to, if not