Word: preus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Ever since its biennial convention a 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...
Claiming that the church constitution gives him jurisdiction over the doctrinal purity of all church employees, Preus also bypassed the seminary board and ordered seminary President John Tietjen to prevent Ehlen from teaching any Bible courses. "It was known all over the church that a man had denied the facticity of certain miracles. I felt I had to do something," Preus explains. "We've had constant unrest." Tietjen tossed the order back to the board, which met last week without resolving the impasse...
said that he accepts 3he Bible as the word of God, but that he takes as factual only what the Bible intends to present as factual, a qualification that Preus labels a "hermeneutical cop-out." The board voted not to rehire Ehlen. But after the faculty and alumni protested, the board backed down and gave Ehlen another contract, without tenure...
...Preus was not satisfied. This month he sent all Missouri Synod pastors and teachers his own five-page set of theological principles. In a covering letter Preus postulated a sort of Domino Theory: "It is only a short step from a denial of the miraculous elements surrounding the greatest redemptive act of the Old Testament (the Exodus) to a denial of ... the miracles of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Resurrection from the dead...
...sent a team to the Concordia campus to determine whether the seminary's accreditation should be withdrawn.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...