Word: concordiae
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...year ago, the 2.9 million member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has been on the brink of a civil war between the supporters of its aggressively orthodox president, Dr. Jacob A.O. Preus, 52, and those of Dr. John Tietjen, 44, the moderate president of the denomination's large, influential Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. The 1971 church convention, acting on its theme "Sent to Reconcile," attempted a kind of Missouri Compromise, supporting Preus in his theological investigation of the St. Louis seminary but leaving the moderates in control of the seminary's governing board...
...deal personally and first of all" with President Tietjen, as to both his own doctrinal stance and "his failure to exercise the supervision of the doctrine of the faculty." Preus further asked the board to ensure that beginning with the 1972-73 school year, which opened last week at Concordia, "no faculty member shall in any way, shape or form, in class lectures, in private consultations with students, in articles written for public consumption, or at pastoral conferences, use any method of interpretation which...questions the historicity or factuality of events described in Scripture...
Arlis Ehlen, a professor of Old Testament studies at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, follows this mildly liberal interpretive trend. Many members of his denomination, the 2.9 million-member Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, do not. Because of the conflict and because the Missouri Synod controls Concordia, Ehlen, 40, finds himself at the center of Protestantism's biggest heresy fuss in a decade. "My own temperament is to stay away from such disputes," he says with some surprise. "My views are quite typical of those held by all the biblical teachers here...
Error-Free. The case came to a head last December when Ehlen went up before the seminary's board for a lifetime tenure appointment. The meeting was also attended by Church President Jacob Preus. Preus, former head of the Missouri Synod's other seminary, Concordia of Springfield, Ill., is a theological conservative who holds that the Bible is error-free and that such stories as the Exodus must be taken at face value...
Meanwhile the American Association of Theological Schools has sent a team to the Concordia campus to determine whether the seminary's accreditation should be withdrawn. The A.A.T.S. does not enforce academic freedom as such, but it insists that theological discipline be handled by a seminary's board and not by church officials. Regardless of whether Preus takes any further action, the Ehlen case is sure to be an issue when the denomination holds its convention in 1973, a meeting at which Preus will be bidding for a second four-year term as president...