My Theses on Church Government and Christian Liberty in Affairs of the Local Congregation

[Casus_Conscientiae]

Theses on 1932 Doctrine of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod on Church Government!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen.

1. God will have His church in every local congregation to be governed and ruled as He wills: through firstly, the exact and studious heeding of the doctrines which He has divinely revealed on Church Government, and secondly, rejection of all polities contrary to these divinely revealed truths.

2. The objection that the foregoing thesis is false because God has not mandated a precise and specific form of church government cannot be accepted; for all affirmative Scriptural authority is of two kinds, generic and specific. Generic authority is inclusive. It includes any aid or method of execution that falls within the scope of the command. For example, when the Lord told the apostles to "go into all the world", He willed that they be left at liberty to choose HOW to go--either by horseback, ship, walking, etc. But specific authority is more stringent than this: it not only commands that a certain thing shall be done, but is so precise and specific about the specific details and even what human reason might call the attendant circumstances of the very thing that is commanded, that it entirely excludes and denies the entire liberty of doing the very thing in some OTHER manner (excluding every aid or method in the scope of that which is specified). For example, when G-d commanded that Noah should build an ARK of GOPHER WOOD, He willed that it be construed as being precise and specific: He willed Noah to understood, firstly that since He specified an ARK, He excluded the option of building a CAR, a PLANE, a CRUISE SHIP, a FRIGATE, a GALLEON, a STEAMSHIP, etc.; secondly, because He specified that the Ark was to made of WOOD, He excluded and DENIED the entire liberty of building the ark of IRON, STEEL, BRICK, PAPER, SILVER, GOLD, COPPER, ZINC, etc.; and thirdly, because He specified that the WOOD of which the Ark was to be built should be GOPHER wood, He excluded the option of using any other TYPE of wood.

3. Christians must be warned that 'Under the Mosaical law, God commanded that they should offer to him the daily burnt-offering; and, in this case, the colour of the beast (provided it was otherwise rightly qualified) was a mere circumstance: such as God laid no stress upon, and that man had proved himself a superstitious busy-body, that should curiously adhere to any one colour. But, for the heifer whose ashes were to make the water of separation, there the colour was no [mere] circumstance, but made by God's command a substantial part of the service. To be red, was as much as to be a heifer: for when circumstances have once passed the royal assent, and are stamped with the divine seal, they become substantials in instituted worship....We ought not to judge that God has little regard to any of his commands, because the matter of them, abstracted from his authority, is little: for we must not conceive that Christ sets little by baptism, because the element is plain, fair water; or little by that other sacrament, because the materials thereof are common bread and wine. ... For though the things in themselves be small, yet his authority is great. ... Though the things be small, yet God can bless them to great purposes, (2 Kings v. 11.). ... Nor are we to judge that God lays little stress upon his institutes, because he does not immediately avenge the contempt and neglect of them upon the violators. (Eccles. viii. 11; Matt. v. 29; i Cor. xi, 30.). ...As we must not think that God appreciates whatever men set a high value upon, so neither are we to judge that he disesteems any thing because it is grown out of fashion, and thereby exposed to contempt by the atheistical wits of mercenary writers. Christ's institutions seem necessary to be broken, it will be first necessary to decry them as poor, low, inconsiderable circumstances; and then to fill the people's heads with a noise and din, that Christ lays little stress on them, and in order hereto call them the circumstantials, the accidentals, the minutes, the punctilioes, and, if need be, the petty Johns of religion, that conscience may not kick at the contemning of them' (Vincent Alsop, Melius Inquirendum, etc., page 291 - see here: https://books.google.com/books?id=dAZPj ... AF6BAgREAM.

4. I will admit that the New Testament does not SPECIFY precisely and peremptorily any SPECIFIC polity (in the Calvinist sense) which by God wills the Church to be governed. However, that doesn't change the fact that all the verses of the Bible and Lutheran Confessions C. F. W. Walther and the Rev. Cascione quoted word for word have GENERIC authority; and that while these verses may allow for a whole range of differing specific polities to pick and choose from, as being adiaphora, the thing that is NOT adiaphora is when the Church chooses to be governed by any polity that is CONTRARY to the true and accurate MEANING of the pure Reine-Lehre DOCTRINE that is taught in those particular verses of Scripture.

5. Thus, God wills generically that the Church should ONLY be governed by polities which are not contrary to the true and pure doctrine taught in those sedes-doctrinae setting forth the doctrine God has divinely revealed about church government.

6. It is contrary to both the divine and natural moral laws for the female sex to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction over men (1 Corinthians 14:34/35, 1 Timothy 2:11/13).

7. Therefore on the hypothesis that the Rev. Walther's doctrine on church government is the true and accurate Scriptural teaching on the doctrine of Church and Ministry, well then, it follows that the mere act of voting in the Voter Assembly of a local congregation in ecclesiastical affairs is ipso facto an exercise of authority and government; but then, no wonder that C F W Walther declared women and children to be ineligible to membership of such a voter assembly.

8. Also, either it is therefore the divinely revealed duty of those ineligible to be members of the voter assembly, to yield obedience to every particular decision of the voter assembly on adiaphora matters provided that the said decision does not go contrary to the Bible and Lutheran Confessions, or else C. F. W. Walther's doctrine that the voter assembly has supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their local congregation in all adiaphora affairs of the local congregation would have to be rejected. TERTIUM NON DATUR.

9. Therefore, once it is accepted that C. F. W. Walther's doctrine that the voter assembly has supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their local congregation in all adiaphora affairs of the local congregation is the doctrine of the Bible and Lutheran Confessions on church government, well then follows that, first: as long as the decision of the voter assembly on a given matter of adiaphora in the local congregation doesn't go contrary to the Bible and Lutheran Confessions, well then the decision doesn't stand in need of anything else outside itself to make it the duty of the nonvoting membership to yield obedience to that decision; second: more specifically, that decision doesn't stand in need of the advice, counsel, witness, testimony, or petitions of the nonvoting membership - whether signified by letter, or by word of mouth viva voce in person, or by means of a supposed voting member having made an agreement with the nonvoting membership to serve as their spokesman while the nonvoting membership continues to absent themselves from the voter assembly - in order to ensure the lawfulness and legitimacy of that decision; but third, if that decision happens to go contrary to the Bible and/or Lutheran Confessions, well then no amount of advice, counsel, witness, testimony, or petitions of the nonvoting membership in favor of the decision can ever make the decision even the least bit legitimate.

10. Therefore once it is accepted that C. F. W. Walther's doctrine that the voter assembly has supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction over their local congregation in all adiaphora affairs of the local congregation is the doctrine of the Bible and Lutheran Confessions on church government, well then, it also follows -- First, that all liberty of the congregation in congregational - not merely private matters - but congregational matters of adiaphora - not merely of deliberating and voting to settle such matters - but even the mere passive freedom of either neglecting, or omitting or not acquiescing to anything or everything that which God has not prescribed in his Word concerning such matters - is the exclusive prerogative of the adult male voters; and Second, that all of the nonvoters are bound in conscience (at least for the sake of order) to strictly and punctiliously obey the voter assembly in all points of congregational public adiaphora which be not contrary to the Bible and Lutheran Confessions: not because the decision the voter assembly just happened to make happens to be something that God has prescribed in His word, but merely because the decision was made by the legitimate authority of the voter assembly and does not contradict the Bible and Lutheran Confessions.

11. But then it also follows from the same hypothesis, follow that it will be our Christian DUTY to ACCEPT that there are certain matters of adiaphora in which not all members of the supposedly "equal" priesthood of all believers equally possess even the lawful mere passive liberty of being free to or from all which God has neither commanded nor forbidden in His word in matters of the local congregation: but on the contrary, certain members of the local congregation, because they are the only ones eligible to be voting members, are the ONLY ones who lawfully enjoy even this mere passive liberty of being free to or from all adiaphora affairs of the local congregation: all other members of the local congregation are ipso facto not just ineligible to vote in the voter assembly, but also ineligible even to enjoy the mere passive Christian liberty of being free to or from all adiaphora affairs of the local congregation!

12. Voter exclusivity in jurisdiction entails voter monopoly even on passive Christian liberty in congregational adiaphora, stripping non-voters of equal freedom to acquiesce or dissent from lawful assembly decisions. Walther's Voter Assembly embodies the congregation's full keys-power (doctrine-free adiaphora included), so non-voters - on account of being barred by 1 Tim. 2:12, are ipso facto ineligible not just for active vote but even for passive liberty to "neglect/omit" public orders (1 Cor. 14:40 demands submission "for order").

13. For voters alone deliberate/decide adiaphora (worship forms, etc.). Voters alone may "be free to or from" outcomes; it is therefore the Christian DUTY of all non-voters to conform. "Equal" priesthood yields to male-ordered authority; non-voters are ineligible for adiaphoral autonomy in church matters. Non-voters enjoy private liberty but are either de jure divino ineligible for public/churchly liberty or else C F W Walther's Missourian doctrine on church government will have to be rejected.

I now pose the following challenge to Mr. Cromwell: to prove using the Bible itself that any one of my 13 theses is false or erroneous.