The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is getting criticized for expelling a pastor and professor for publicly rejecting what the church believes. But Aaron D. Wolf of Chronicles Magazine praises the LCMS for being willing to take this kind of action.
From Aaron D. Wolf, The LCMS Calls a Post a Post | Chronicles Magazine:
If the role of religion in America today is to teach the faithful to bend over and kiss the ring of postmodernity and beg for forgiveness for actually believing something, the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod just failed spectacularly, flubbed its lines, and fell off the stage. I, for one, am elated.
Tuesday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch revealed the grand faux pas with this somewhat ironic lede: “The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod recently carried out what various members consider the equivalent of a modern-day heresy trial.”
My enthusiasm is, of course, mixed with sadness. The Rev. Dr. Matthew Becker (the hero/victim of the breathlessly Hawthornean Post-Dispatch piece) has agitated against the church’s plainly worded doctrinal statements, to which he was bound, for many years, and should have been removed from the LCMS’s clergy roster a long time ago. Though he teaches at Valparaiso University, which is not affiliated with the LCMS, he has managed to maintain his status on the clergy roster, despite several previously unsuccessful attempts to remove him. Tuesday’s news is therefore a victory for orthodoxy. Nonetheless it is tragic to witness a man persisting in promoting false and harmful doctrine, and tragic to see him face the consequences. And yes, the rich etymology of tragic traces back to the Greek tragos, which means “goat,” and yes, the sheep needed to be separated from this one.
Becker’s heresies stem from two fundamental intellectual commitments, which are related. One is a higher-critical view of Scripture, and the other is a rejection of natural law. These views result in a denial of the authoritative and unified witness of both the Church and creation. Christianity then becomes subject to the whims of the day, and the Church must consistently stick Her finger in the wind to determine whether Her teachings are acceptable in the light of popular morality and popular science.
So it predictably follows that Becker has been a promoter of women’s ordination, the ordination of homosexuals, and same-sex marriage. He also denies that the Bible is accurate when it plainly says things that make liberals uncomfortable.
[Keep reading. . .]
HT: Steadfast Lutherans
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