Did We Preach A False Gospel?
An Open Letter to Our Bishops
“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and our faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God,  . . .” 1 Corinthians 15, 14-15.

A lay person from B.C. forwarded the following item to me
.-----Original Message-----
From: gracewords@bcsynod.org [mailto:gracewords@bcsynod.org] On Behalf Of
RSchultz@elcic.ca
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 11:48 AM
To: gracewords@bcsynod.org
Subject: Re: The word of God

Charlie Fox speaks for me.  My story very closely matches his, including
the reticence of faculty to admit what they knew from their professional
reading and research.

Both the Jewish Bible and Christian Bible were assembled at particular
times in history to support what those communities believed then. The Roman
Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox and Romanian Orthodox
each added even more books to support their version of Christianity. Luther
wanted to leave James and Revelation out of his German translation, but
later changed his mind about James. I agree with Charlie that how the Bible
came to be is as important as what it describes.

The unfortunate reality is that our constituency has been sheltered from
this knowledge and finds it threatening when we should be able to move
forward from the inherited tradition into a future where we grow more
gospel from the seeds planted in the ancient readings.

+ Raymond L. Schultz, National Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church In Canada
Email: rschultz@elcic.ca
Phone: 204-984-9157
Web: www.elcic.ca

This e-mail is intended for the recipient's eyes only and is not guaranteed
to be secure or error free.

Gracewords is a chat room in the B.C. Synod. It is hardly a very personal and private forum.

If National Bishop Ray Schultz was right and there needs to be a major revising of the teaching of our ELCIC then our National Bishop and any other Bishops who agree with him, face a major challenge.

If what our church has taught in the past and what we as pastors have preached in the past have been misrepresenting God, we all have some major repenting to do.

If our seminary professors have known this new theology for years and if there has been a “reticence of faculty to admit what they knew from their professional reading and research”, our seminary professors have some major repenting to do.

How can we as pastors ever be trusted if we have acted politically and preached the “old gospel” for fear that the people would not like to hear the truth and “that our constituency. . . . . . . . . finds it threatening?”

We need clarification from our bishops who are the defenders of our faith and the upholders of our constitution.

If we have misled our people to believe what is false that is a serious matter. We must have the integrity and the courage to admit that. It is not sufficient to attack as being in error those that still believe what we have preached and taught. We, the pastors and especially our bishops, are accountable, and we all have to face up to our responsibility.

According to Marcus Borg his book The God We Never Knew is intended to describe a “revisioning of Christian theology for people for whom that older understanding doesn't work.” According to his autobiography Me and Jesus, “The gospel of John is highly symbolic and essentially not historical…Most (perhaps all) of the ‘exalted titles’ by which Jesus is known in the Christian tradition do not go back to Jesus himself. He did not speak of or think of himself as "the Son of God," or as "one with the Father," or as "the light of the world," or as "the way, the truth, and the life," or as "the savior of the world…It follows that Jesus’ message was not about himself or the importance of believing in him…I do not believe that Christianity is the only way to salvation, or that the Bible is the revealed will of God, or that Jesus was the unique Son of God. Rather, I now see that the Christian tradition – including its claims about Jesus – is not something to be believed, but something to be lived in.” 

If we do not object to those among us who proclaim the faith of Borg and Spong and Crossan then faith has become a local option in the ELCIC. The confessional integrity of our Church is at stake.

The “Living The Question” DVD series that is promoted by a mission congregation of the B.C. Synod of our ELCIC and advertised in the Canada Lutheran, the official paper of our ELCIC, promotes the revisionist theology of Borg, Spong and Crossan. That is the theology that is being promoted in many of our congregations. If they are wrong then our bishops have the duty to correct them and if they are right, then our bishops have to admit that Article II of our constitution does no longer apply. Our bishops have that responsibility.

We as pastors of the ELCIC have to come clean on what we stand for.

I still believe what I have preached in my ministry. I still believe that Article II of our constitution is correct. Jesus is still my risen Lord and Saviour. The key questions are: Is our understanding of Jesus restricted to what historical critical exegesis can deal with or does the Holy Spirit leads us in that understanding? Is there a “Revealed Theology”? Does the Holy Spirit enlighten us through the gospel also in our understanding of who Jesus is?

I had to deal with these questions when I studied Bultmannian theology under Ernst Fuchs in Tuebingen. I came to the understanding that this type of theology cannot discover the real Jesus. Left-brainish reasoning can only get to the historical Jesus as far as reason (that is not the same as rational thinking!) allows it to get. Faith, trust, and love are not accessed by reason alone. Faith alone? Yes! Reason alone? No!

Where does our Church stand?

Lothar Schwabe

Note: This letter was sent to the bishops of the ELCIC by Dr. Schwabe over a month ago on September 5th. As of October 27th no acknowledgment of or response to this letter has been received from the bishops.