Seminex with Pastor Rolf Preus pt. 1

In this episode of Christendom and the World, Pastor Andrew Preus sits down with his father, Pastor Rolf Preus, for a deep and personal conversation exploring the Seminex controversy, the theological legacy of the Preus family, and the broader historical struggles within the Missouri Synod. Together, they examine the historical and theological context surrounding the Seminex controversy, discussing key issues such as election, justification, and the role of faith. The conversation also addresses the influence of the anti-Missourian Brotherhood, the evolution of the Norwegian Synod, and the differing leadership approaches of Ralph Bohlmann and Robert Preus. In exploring these events, they reflect on the impact of theological disputes on church unity, the role of the seminary, and the personal struggles faced by key figures. Ultimately, the episode highlights the importance of objective justification, synodical identity, and maintaining theological integrity in the life of the church today.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
That was...
And who was it who called grandma the next day?
And it was Mrs.
Meyer and she was the one who had provoked me.
I blew off some fireworks.
She calls up quiet little boy and hangs up.
I think, I'm not going to let that go by.

(00:21):
So I blew off some more to antagonize Mrs.
Meyer.
Yeah.
And the next day, Mrs.
Meyer comes to my defense.
Yeah, it was funny.
But she
Her husband was a professor of history at the Sem.
A good guy, you know, there were some guys there at the Sem that went with the Seminexersthat were really good guys.

(00:47):
just didn't, they couldn't stand up against the movement, you know.
Well, and wasn't the System X department against higher criticism?
And yet only a couple members of the System X department didn't walk off campus, right?

(01:08):
So it had been grandpa and.
no, Grandpa Ralph Pullman, Richard Klan.
I don't remember what department Lawrence Wunderlich was in, but those three didn't.
yeah.
But then Robert Bertram, of course, was one of the leaders of the liberals and he was inthe Systematics Department.

(01:33):
OK, and.
But.
But most of the systematicians were solid.
Have we started yet?
Oh, okay.
so I wanted to, I wanted to talk about, we were just talking about Seminex and one portionof Seminex, or one portion of Missouri Synod history that people don't know much about

(02:04):
unless you, maybe unless you went to Fort Wayne and you really paid attention, um, is, uh,what we could probably call Seminex part two.
or the sequel, what happened in the 80s.
You you get the battle for the Bible in the 70s, and then you have, maybe we might call itthe battle for what's in the Bible that started and how we confess what the scriptures

(02:30):
actually say that continued into the 80s and 90s and beyond.
And a lot of the kind of worship wars that people might be familiar with, the churchgrowth movement and all that,
that it finds a lot of its origins or at least its most intense parts in that story.

(02:53):
And of course that involves grandpa, right?
And who, for those who are listening, is Rob Preuss.
So this is my dad, Rolf Preuss.
So first I just want to ask, and I know some of this myself, but you obviously know
better than I do, think.

(03:15):
Where did the Preusses come from?
How did they end up in the Missouri Synod?
So we could start with them.
Of course, great, my great, great, great grandfather, your great, great grandfather,Herman Amberg Preuss came from Norway.
He was ordained in what, 1851, I think, and came to Wisconsin from Norway.

(03:40):
And
was one of the founders of the Old Norwegian Synod.
could you give some give some background on that and how that fits into the kind oftheological milieu of the Missouri Synod?
Sure, I'd be happy to.
Herman Amberg Preuss, my great-great-grandfather, your great-great-great-grandfather, wasordained in Norway and had a call to a congregation in southern Wisconsin and he came over

(04:14):
and served there and he was one of the founders of the Norwegian Synod and he was also thelong-term president of the Norwegian Synod.
and to not to draw out the history, let's just say that the Norwegian synod was wastheologically sound.
When my great grandfather decided to go into the ministry and there was no OrthodoxNorwegian Lutheran seminary in America, Christian Kaiser Preuss learned German.

(04:53):
so that he could go to Concordia Seminary in St.
Louis and be instructed by the faculty there.
Herman Amberg Preuss and CFW Walther knew each other.
They were doctrinally united.
So the Old Norwegian Synod and the Old Missouri Synod were on the same page theologically.

(05:15):
But then what happened in the early part of the 20th century
You had a the ecumenical movement was very, very strong and it affected these Lutherans,these Norwegian Lutherans.
So they had this dream of having one American Norwegian Lutheran Church body.

(05:38):
they merged.
My great grandfather fought against the merger because they merged with these smallergroups that were synergists.
You know, they taught that.
human being helps God convert him and they taught a lot of false teaching and he foughtagainst that merger lost.

(06:01):
In 1917 this new Lutheran church was formed and as far as the proises are concerned theystayed within that body that had merged with the pietistic, synergistic
So they're kind of conscientious object.
that's what they were and they fought against it.

(06:22):
And there were those who wanted to get him into this little Norwegian synod, which wasformed a year after the merger.
It eventually became known as the Evangelical Lutheran Synod.
And they tried to get Christian Kaiser to go into it and he wanted to fight the fight inthe newly formed church body.

(06:43):
So he stayed.
So he was in Decora?
Was he teaching in Decora or was...
He would have taught in Dekora.
I don't know if he was teaching in Dekora at this time or not.
Okay, and so he's the, just to kind of back up a little bit, Christian Kaiser is theoldest son.
Is he the oldest son of Herman?

(07:05):
I think so.
Because the only reason I ask is that so Herman and Linca get married in what night?
1850 something they get married right before he's ordained.
1850 they're married by the great hymn writer Magnus Lansstadt who wrote, Lo many shallcome from the east and the west when sinners see their lost condition.

(07:29):
And there's also a penitential hymn or confession, absolution hymn that he wrote.
which I can't remember which one it is.
I can sing the tune but I can't, I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, anyway, yeah, okay.
So then Christian Kaiser Preuss, he's, we're talking probably 1820, or sorry, 1870s, thathe and Herman served together in South Wisconsin.

(08:03):
That's correct.
And this is when the election controversy blows up, which sort of seems to be somewhatrelated
to the absolution controversy.
And so I think that this does have a lot to do with what we're going to get into with thechurch growth movement and the kind of ecumenism that you've already talked about.

(08:27):
So if I remember correctly, by the time Christian Kaiser Preuss has been a pastor for alittle while, they have the seminary
So, the seminary in St.
Louis, there is a German who learned Norwegian named Schmidt.

(08:54):
And he then accused Walther of being a Calvinist, because Walther said that our faith isaffected by God's election.
And he wanted to say, no, God's election
is based upon God viewing our faith in the future and electing us kind of based on in viewof our faith.

(09:20):
And so then there's that huge controversy.
But then there was another one where there were some Norwegians who said that you cannot,when you give the absolution, you can't say your sins are forgiven because you don't know
his faith.
So you have to say some kind of
You have to have some kind of caveat there.

(09:42):
If you truly believe this, then your sins are forgiven.
And so then you have this, this, this, this controversy about the, the, the efficacy ofthe word, the power of the word, and then whether Jesus actually took away the sin of the
whole world, whether God has actually justified all sinners.
So those two controversies, predestination, then objective justification and the

(10:08):
efficacy of the words seem to kind of correspond to each other or did those sort of comeup on their own?
you do know much about?
Well, they were related.
They were part of the same controversy and they were the controversy between the theconfessional Lutherans who formed the the Norwegian synod.

(10:33):
And then you had others who had come into the Norwegian synod from these pietistic groupsthat had not, for example, on election.
They didn't subscribe to the formula of Concord, which settles the matter for Lutherans.
Whereas Herman, Amberg Preuss, Christian Kaiser Preuss, CFW Walther, these folks allsubscribe to the formula of Concord.

(10:59):
So that's part of the issue there.
But the two issues, election and then the absolution controversy, which is also deals withobjective justification.
Absolutely.
The Norwegians faced the same issue that the Germans faced in the Norwegian Senate.

(11:20):
It became a real, real hot topic.
There was one time, this was in the 1880s when Herman Amberg and Christian Kaiser wereboth serving the same church.
And he had this group in the Norwegian Senate called the anti-Missourian Brotherhood.
That's what they called themselves.

(11:41):
They did not like it that their fellow Norwegian Lutherans were teaching what thoseGermans in the Missouri Senate were teaching.
And so they came on a Good Friday.
It was on Good Friday.
They came and bodily removed Herman Amborg and Christian Kaiser from the pulpit in thechurch.

(12:02):
Over the doctrine of election and objective justification, the whole, the whole thing.
They, any association with the Missouri Senate raised their opposition.
Yeah.
They were, were strongly opposed to Walther and the Missouri Senate.

(12:25):
And so, just to kind of break it down a little bit, lest we get lost in all the jargon.
So these are related.
The way I see these being related is that, so predestination, the Bible teaches that Godhas predestined us to be conformed to the image of the Son.

(12:46):
Ephesians 1 says that he has chosen us in Christ from the foundations of the world.
And this means that our faith is not in any way dependent upon our own choice.
It also means that God's gracious call to bring us to faith is not in any way dependentupon our faith.

(13:09):
Rather, He brings about our faith by His grace through His Word, and our faith receivesthat righteousness that Christ has won for all people.
So on the one hand with
with predestination, if you say that predestination is God looking into the future to seeif you have faith, and then in view of that, choosing you for eternal life, that

(13:38):
undermines faith, that undermines the object of faith because faith must rest in thegracious call of the Gospel.
On the other hand, then, if you say that the pastor cannot say
You know, the pastor cannot say to Hannah, let's say Hannah confesses her sins to me and Isay, in this stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ, I forgive you all your sins

(14:03):
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And they say, no, you can't say that because you don't know Hannah's faith.
And Hannah's sins are only forgiven if she first has faith.
And so the response to this is, well, hold on.
God has reconciled the whole world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.

(14:25):
By one man's obedience, righteousness in life came to all people.
It is finished.
So the forgiveness by which Hannah is forgiven, or I am forgiven, or anyone is forgiven,has already been complete before you believe it.
And so the Word of God is therefore powerful.
And what that does is it doesn't—people will say, well, this makes it so that faith isn'tnecessary.

(14:48):
No, what it—
what it does is it sets the record straight of what faith actually rests in.
And faith, instead of faith being a virtue that adds to or makes God's Word true, insteadit becomes that receiving organism that simply receives the gift of the Gospel.

(15:14):
But in both of these cases, what they're doing with faith is
Is there turning faith into the thing that we might contribute to kind of make the gospelreal?
so wouldn't that also go hand in hand with a kind of synergism too?

(15:37):
Yes, absolutely.
Especially in the 19th century, it went hand in hand with synergism.
In the 20th century, you had a number of people questioning objective justification andthey just they and they were not synergists.
So you don't have to be a synergist to reject objective justification.

(15:58):
However, it's really very simple.
Does faith cause forgiveness?
Or does forgiveness cause faith?
And in arguing with these people who deny objective justification, this is their argument.
If God forgave the whole world, then the whole world is saved and there's no need forfaith.

(16:23):
And then you say, no, that's not true.
Only those who have faith have received the forgiveness of sins.
And then they go back.
Well, but their sins are not forgiven unless they believe.
And they keep on trying to make forgiveness of sins dependent on faith rather than theother way around.

(16:46):
Faith dependent on forgiveness.
Finally, what I think it comes down to is what you just said about absolving Hannah.
Can I say to another person when I can't see that person's heart, what the person believesor doesn't believe, can I say your sins are forgiven?
And if I can't,

(17:06):
then I would argue I can't even teach the gospel because the gospel isn't a message aboutwhat God is going to do if you do something beforehand.
But the gospel is the message of the forgiveness of sins in Christ who by His death hasmade satisfaction for our sins, that He is our righteousness, that He has the Lamb of God

(17:29):
who has taken away the sin of the world.
That's the gospel.
Faith simply believes it and
has what it says.
So the attack on objective justification is an attack on the very heart of the gospelitself.
That was an issue in the 19th century between the Orthodox Norwegian Lutherans and theanti-Missourian Brotherhood.

(17:55):
It also became an issue in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod back in the 1980s.
And it is also an issue with some of these splinter groups that have broken away from theLutheran Church, Missouri Synod, and they've denied objective justification.
Yeah.
So it is an issue that, you know, we really need to continue to teach this to seminariansand both the history and the theology here so that they not be sucked into this because

(18:26):
they're very easy to fall into this error.
Yeah.
And what you end up doing
is making faith the cause of God's grace.
Or, yeah, and what I've noticed too, is that it goes one of two ways.
There's the pietist who doesn't like objective justification because he wants to make hisfaith the cause of God's grace.

(18:53):
But then there's those who react against the pietists who want to make the pastor or theclergy the cause or the
or the maybe benefactor of God's grace.
And in both cases, they're going to kind of, they're often going to poo poo objectivejustification, because what it really comes down to is they don't want to rely upon the

(19:18):
Word, the objective Word.
And this, you know, people run into problems when they say that the Word of God is part ofthe subjective part of justification.
Well, the Word of God gives us faith.
And faith subjectively receives, personally receives it.
But this is the whole point of the debate historically and even today is that the word ofGod is objective.

(19:45):
The word of God is true whether you believe it or not.
It's like what we say about the Lord's Supper.
It's the body and blood of Jesus, whether you believe it or not.
you don't believe it, then you receive it to your judgment.
Yeah, that's a good analogy because, yeah.
And what happens then is called, they have a fancy term for this is called Fideism, whichis faith in faith.

(20:12):
And basically the object of faith becomes faith itself.
Well, where's my faith?
It's in me.
Right.
It's not new.
My faith isn't in you.
It's in me.
So if the object of my faith,
is my faith, where am I looking for my certainty of salvation?
I'm looking within myself.

(20:34):
And what do I have within me besides faith and the Holy Spirit?
Well, I have the felt, the flesh, the sinful flesh.
So what's the spirit and what's the flesh?
I don't know.
I get confused because the flesh is strong.
And so what you end up with is a torturous, awful

(20:56):
a kind of religion where you cannot be sure of your salvation and you're looking insidefor the assurance and inside is the sin and doubt.
So objective justification isn't just some technical quarrel among theologians.
It's a question is, is Jesus the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world or not?

(21:22):
And did he take away the sin of the world or not?
does the forgiveness of precede faith and the reception of that forgiveness?
Or is this forgiveness only some theoretical possibility that will become true when Ibelieve it's true?
And so these guys are, it's a serious error.

(21:45):
I'm glad, and I should point out that back in the 1980s, after this issue had been raisedagain in the Missouri Synod,
The Commission on Theology and Church Relations, known as the CTCR, produced a document onjustification that was clear and just excellent on this issue.

(22:10):
And the primary author of it was Guess.
Your grandpa Preuss.
And that, did that settle it?
No, but it did at least put the Missouri Senate on record saying this is what we teach.
Yeah, yeah.
with that, okay, so that really helps, I think, give some background to the proises andhow we ended up in the Missouri Synod.

(22:40):
So we fast forward then back to World War I, the end of World War I, where you have thisunion group of Norwegians.
And you have the ELS or the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which eventually is ELS,and it's Mankato, is their headquarters.

(23:03):
It's what we call Mankato land, right?
And then, and Hannah is a graduate from Bethany Lutheran College.
but at any rate, so then the prices are still in the ELC, right?
So they're called the Evangelical Lutheran Church.
which is a much better, name than the anti-Missourian brethren.

(23:30):
Yeah.
so, so you have the ELC, which later merges with some Iowa Senate, Ohio Senate and becomesthe ALC, the new ALC.
Is that right?
Is that
No, no, the ELC didn't become the the new ALC.
The old ALC became the new ALC and the ELC joined with the the ALC.

(23:53):
And this is kind of confusing.
ELC, which was mostly Norwegian, Scandinavian joined with the ALC that was mostly Germanin the early 60s and became the new ALC.
OK.
But your grandpa was a student at Luther Seminary.
of the old ELC in the 1940s.
Okay.
And during this time, he had an excellent theological professor, affectionately known asUncle Herman.

(24:23):
Yeah.
And Uncle Herman was a professor at the seminary and he was orthodox as the day is long.
They also had a guy by the name of Oss who was a synergist.
Okay.
And my dad struggled over, can I join?
the ELC as a pastor when Aus' synergism is openly taught and promoted throughout the ELC.

(24:47):
Yes, his uncle Herman taught the truth, but they had the truth here and then they hadfalsehood there.
And so he struggled over whether to go into it.
Now, you got to keep in mind in the night in 1946, let's see, 47.
1947, the Little Norwegian Synod and the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod are all infellowship together.

(25:18):
Synodical conference.
That's the synodical conference.
And so Dad decided instead of joining the ELC, he would transfer his from he wouldtransfer from Luther Seminary to Bethany Seminary in Mankato.
and he became the first graduate of Bethany Seminary in Mankato and became a member of theLittle Norwegian Synod, which later became the ELS.

(25:47):
Okay.
So he leaves, he leaves the ELC seminary, Luther seminary in St.
Paul because of synergism.
Right.
And so, okay.
So now a little bit of his background then.
So Christian Kaiser stays in the ELC, but he obviously doesn't like the direction they'vegone.

(26:08):
His son, your grandfather, Jacob Al-Otisun, and I guess I should just mention that JacobAl-Otisun
was a colleague of Herman Amberg Preuss the first, and he and Walter were pretty close.
And so he was one of the founders of the old Norwegian Senate.
So obviously he was, it would have been a family friend, family name.

(26:30):
so Christian Kaiser Preuss names his son after Jacob Olladison.
And so Jacob Olladison Preuss the first, your grandfather, he grows up then basically inthe ELC, but also just kind of being
He's not a fan of synods.
He's not a fan of...
Because you've explained this before about how he didn't see himself as a member of anyparticular...

(26:57):
And just so you know that my grandfather, okay, he didn't go into the ministry.
There's long line of prices.
He was not a pastor.
All his brothers were.
His father was his son.
Yeah, but he ran for governor and he served a couple of terms in Minnesota as governor.

(27:25):
1924 was the year my father was born.
It was also the second, the end of his second term.
After that.
He moved down to Highland Park, Illinois.
He joined a Missouri Synod congregation in Highland Park where my dad and my uncle wereraised and confirmed.

(27:49):
So my father was confirmed in a Missouri Synod church in Highland Park, Illinois, back in1930, whatever, whenever he was confirmed.
And so the the connection with the Missouri Synod and my dad

(28:09):
was already established long before he went to the seminary.
But didn't your grandpa refuse to join formally, join the church?
Because he saw himself as a member of the evangelical Lutheran church, not ELC, but amember of the Lutheran
there's this conversation is kind of a funny thing.

(28:32):
think this was the pastor in actually in Highland Park.
And.
He, the pastor mentioned to grandpa that he was a member of the church and he's nottalking about a Senate.
He's talking about the congregation.
Okay.
And, grandpa says, I'm the member of the invisible church.
Okay.

(28:53):
And then the pastor says, am I your pastor?
And grandpa says, well, of course you're my pastor.
So then the pastor says, then you're a member of this church.
And I think grandpa.
Might have gotten the point.
Well, I guess I that would stand to reason.
Yeah.
But the point you're making and that I'm making is that he didn't have any strongsynodical loyalty.

(29:16):
Yes.
And so for for dad and his brother, Uncle Jack, to leave the ELC and join the LittleNorwegian Synod was not in it was difficult, but it wasn't as if they were, you know,
leaving home
Yeah, exactly.

(29:37):
Because their view of the church is according to what Markson identifies the church, thatis, its doctrine.
And this is something that I noticed with these Seminex guys.
I've watched a couple documentaries and they're interviewing these Seminex guys and they'dsay, I love my church.
This is the church that I grew up in.

(29:59):
of course, they're talking about the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.
And, you know, I don't...
I'm in the Missouri Synod.
I'm thankful for the confessional Lutheran biblical doctrine that is preserved in theMissouri Synod.
But I have, it's just that loyalty to a Synod is so, it's just kind of foreign to me.

(30:27):
it's not that, again, it's not that I don't care about it, you know.
there's a thankfulness that I have to God for using these human institutions to preservedoctrine and practice.
But there seems to be this loyalty to synod that I just didn't grow up with.

(30:51):
It's just not really part of the way that I
No, I didn't grow up with it and my dad didn't grow up with it.
But you know, something just struck me.
Never thought of this before.
Maybe I can share it now.
How do you look at the synod?
And I think the difference between a father and a brother, I tell you the way I look atthe Missouri Senate.

(31:15):
As far as the pastors go, they're my brothers and the congregations would be my sisters.
my sister congregations, but I do not look at the Missouri Synod as assuming the role offather or mother.
I look at the Synod more as brother and sister.

(31:40):
That is to say the Synod as a Synod has no authority other than the Word of God, which isthe same authority that every individual Christian has.
So the Synod, since it doesn't have any authority above and beyond God's Word, cannot bethe standard for what we teach.

(32:05):
What does Missouri Synod say about this?
What does Missouri Synod say about this?
What's our position on this?
What's position on that?
Read your Bible!
That's what...
Yeah.
And so...
Herman Amberg-Price made this point in these lectures that he gave.
not to jump all over the place, but just to jump back to the 19th century for a second.

(32:25):
He, in the 1960s, about 10 years after he had been ordained and moved to America, he wentback to Norway.
He gave a series of lectures, which are known as vivacious daughter, right?
You've read these, but what does he say about, he says that
the ecclesiastical authority that is by human arrangement, whether it's bishops ordistrict presidents or synod presidents or whatever, synodical structure, is not according

(32:54):
to the fourth commandment.
And I alarmingly hear this today, where people will act as if the district president'sauthority over me.
Now, do I acknowledge that my district president has authority over me?
Yeah, it's by human right though.
This is what the Confessions say, this is not a fourth commandment issue.

(33:16):
No, the.
You said you could make the only way you could make the Fourth Commandment issue withrespect to a Senate is if the Senate is your employer.
You could make a Fourth Commandment issue there that you owe your employer whatever, butsince the Missouri Senate is not your employer.

(33:40):
And this was not just Herman Amber Price, but it was CFW author saying that no.
The Fourth Commandment does not apply to a congregation's relationship with sinned or apastor's relationship with a sinned.
And to say it does is is to undermine the real authority of the sinned, which is thescriptures and the Lutheran confessions.

(34:01):
Yeah.
Once the Senate has authority above and beyond the scriptures and the confessions, it hasbecome a sect to be avoided.
And I think this is something that we Missourians have historically been very strong on.

(34:22):
have to say, if I can bring my own personal experience to bear on this, when I wassuspended from the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, it was on the basis of disagreeing with a
document that had just been adopted.
and opposed by 40 percent.

(34:45):
And this synod claimed the authority to require my agreement with the document.
And I would argue, no, you can only hold a pastor to that which he has voluntarilysubscribed.

(35:05):
And when we become Lutheran pastors, we voluntarily
subscribe to the book of concord yeah so i can be judged by that yeah and obviously thescriptures which are the only standard but the synod itself can't do that and back in the
day i'm jumping around here but just to to try to clarify this whole issue when theliberals were denying the inerrancy of the bible back in the 60s and 70s

(35:35):
and the Missouri Synod adopted a statement of scriptural and confessional principles,which is outstanding.
It's a good document.
And then the liberals claimed, this is a new standard of orthodoxy, which was falsebecause not once did the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod ever use a statement of scriptural

(35:56):
and confessional principles to discipline
a false teacher in the Missouri Synod.
It was always on the basis of the Scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions.
So we can say to the world, this is what we confess with the statement of scriptural andconfessional principles.
But when it comes to the authority of the Synod, we place it under the Scriptures and theConfessions so that the Synod doesn't end up, you know, becoming a sect.

(36:27):
Yeah, and you don't have this doctrinal doctrine by precedent.
It kind of reminds me of the Supreme Court, where you have to base your opinions uponprevious opinions and previous opinions.
so you see that kind of happen.
Well, I'll give you an example.
The women's issue is a prime example of this.

(36:50):
Here we have somebody somewhere in the Missouri Senate.
I don't really know the details.
I probably wasn't a member of the Senate when somebody somewhere said it's okay to havewomen electors.
But apparently somebody in the Missouri Senate said that's fine.
Well, I don't know that.
And so what we have here is a district, a district of our Senate, the North DakotaDistrict saying,

(37:13):
we want the Synod to affirm that this is against the Bible for women to be electors in theDivine Service.
And then people will respond by saying, well, the Synod has already decided.
Well, I mean, there's such a book, it's called, is it called the Bible?
Yeah.
And the Bible is the standard and source of all our teaching.
And according to the Bible, the way I, you know, it's pretty clear women cannot beelectors in the Church Service.

(37:37):
Or in my Bible.
So, so let's see here.
The Synod has this precedent and the Bible, which is the Word of God, says something alittle different.
Yeah.
Can we, can you, can you give me a few years to think this?
yeah.
So, okay.
So no, that's great.
And, cause I think again, this brings us to, okay.

(37:59):
So now we have Seminex and you've talked about Seminex, you know, we were just saying youwere on, Brian Stecker's podcast online and, you know, people can just go and listen to
that.
So you have the Seminex issue, but the one thing that I, that I'm curious about though,
is, if we could talk a little bit, this understanding that Grandpa and Great Uncle Jackwould have had of that doctrine, because Jack had a very similar kind of experience as

(38:32):
Grandpa was going.
He was in the ELS for a while when he went from ALC or ELC to ELS to Missouri Synod.
So they all kind of went in the same track, but they both clearly had this understandingthat doctrine revealed in scripture.
you know, exposited in our confessions is really the mark of the church.

(38:57):
And so they come into the Missouri Synod.
And I remember reading, there was some liberal version of Christian news that I found onGoogle books a while back.
And there was this guy talking about Jack Preuss and Robert Preuss and he's exposing thePreusses.

(39:19):
And he's saying, did you know that just a decade or two, or just a little over a decadeago, these guys were in the ELS, supporting the ELS in them breaking fellowship from the
Missouri Synod.
And now here they are in our church trying to tell us how to do things.

(39:42):
And I think that the disconnect with a guy like that is that, don't you get it?
their consciences are not bound by some synodical club.
Their consciences are bound by the Word of God.
And the only reason why they're in the Missouri Synod is because by God's providence, theyended up here because the Word of God is allowed to be proclaimed in its truth and purity.

(40:06):
Well, I'd like to address that particular thing because it is kind of an interestingepisode in my father's life and obviously in my life.
First of all, it was not the ELS in 1957 or 1955.
What happened is that the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod and the ELS, which at thetime was not the ELS, it was the Little Norwegian Synod.

(40:33):
was just what they called it.
Called the Little Norwegian Saga.
it was.
And it wasn't called the ELS until years after we joined Missouri.
But anyway, the Missouri Senate was moving in a certain direction.
And we use the term unionism.
Yeah.
Where they were going to declare fellowship with the old ALC based on reading

(41:01):
the same document and interpreting it in different ways.
And this was deliberate and clear.
And clearly, Missouri was poised to do wrong here.
Both the Little Norwegian Synod and the Wisconsin Synod warned the Missouri Synod, don'tdo it, don't do it, don't do it.
They kept on pushing in that direction.
In 1955, the Little Norwegian Synod suspended fellowship with the Missouri Synod.

(41:29):
and said as a brotherly act to say don't go this route.
Well then in 1957 the seminary in St.
Louis extended a call to my father to teach theology there.
Okay, and then didn't Springfield extend a call to Jack?
The following year, okay.

(41:49):
And when dad got that call, two things you need to know.
Number one is that while he had been told that he would get the position at BethanySeminary to teach doctrine, it was given to somebody else who was a couple years older
than he.

(42:11):
so teaching theology to some students
in the Little Norwegian Synod was out of the question.
Now he gets the opportunity to teach theology to seminarians in the Missouri Synod.
And he at first tried, I've read the correspondence, to retain his membership in theLittle Norwegian Synod while he taught at the Missouri Synod Seminary.

(42:40):
And of course, that was not permitted.
so he finally, this was a
struggle for him, but he finally thought to himself, because I had this conversation withhim, I can do more good in the Missouri Synod than out of the Missouri Synod, because I'll
have the opportunity to teach theology to future pastors.
And so he accepted the call to teach at Concordia Seminary in St.

(43:05):
Louis in 1957.
And so we moved to St.
Louis.
And so you grew up in Clayton, Missouri.
I grew up on the campus of Concordia Seminary in Clayton.
We ruled, the kids ruled.
And for those who are familiar with that campus, imagine the campus without any apartmentsoff by Big Bend Boulevard, without a chapel.

(43:30):
All of this is wide open and you got the woods.
It was great.
Yeah, it was a fun place to grow up in, but it's weird.
because all of your friends have fathers are professors at a seminary, which isn't anormal kind of a thing to grow up.

(43:50):
Yeah, yeah, no kidding.
Yeah, so, okay, so kind of fast forward, grandpa gets there, you grow up there, he isfighting this battle for the Bible, he's exposing this higher critical method that totally
undermines the inerrancy of Scripture and denies the inerrancy of Scripture.
Things finally come to a head after Jack is elected president of Senate in 69, but also wedeclare fellowship with the ALC.

(44:18):
And so,
And women's suffrage comes in.
So you have kind of the liberals get a couple of their wins, but then the conservativesget Jack Preuss in.
He then starts investigation.
We get to Seminex by 1974.
Is it that they finally walked off in February of 74?
There's all this stuff in the New Orleans convention, 1973.

(44:41):
I think you've talked about all this stuff.
Okay.
So then by that time, grandpa is one of five professors who hasn't walked off.
He's what acting president for a little while at St.
Louis and then gets a call to Springfield to the seminary in Springfield.
And that must have been 1975.

(45:02):
And then you started that year, right?
And then they moved to Fort Wayne.
So
I spent the first year of my seminary training was in Springfield.
Okay.
And then they moved to Fort Wayne.
Dad got a call as president and tenured professor to the seminary.

(45:22):
Okay.
So this is where I want to get into now the second part of Seminex or the Seminex episodetwo, whatever you might call it.
So it's the 1970s, late seventies going into the eighties.
So maybe we could start with your time at seminary and what was going on?

(45:43):
What were the theological issues that led to
grandpa's road of sorrows that happened in the late 80s when I was still, you know,needing not able to use the bathroom on my own, right?
I think that that back in the day.

(46:04):
Okay, I'll give you my take on it.
And for anybody who's listening, you you can consider the source.
Obviously, I don't have an unbiased opinion because this was my father had went throughthis and and we all participated in it with him.

(46:25):
But here's what you have.
You've got a synod.
And while we're just talking about a Synod doesn't have authority, the Word of God does,still the Synod has a certain moral authority.
There's a consensus.
The Missouri Synod had a unity.
And this battle for the Bible has shattered that unity.

(46:46):
And so the Missouri Synod is in a precarious position.
And you have two different approaches as to how we can pick up the pieces.
You got the Ralph Buhlmann approach.
and the Robert Preuss approach.
Ralph Bowman is the president of the Missouri Senate.
Robert Preuss is president of one of our two seminaries, the one in Fort Wayne.
The Ralph Bowman approach is to empower the Senate to enforce conformity, whatever thatconformity may require.

(47:15):
As an example, you had professors at the seminary in Fort Wayne who were questioning whatthe Missouri Senate had done in 1969.
in voting in women's suffrage.
And they challenged this.
This angered Ralph Buhlman, president of Synod, who demanded that my father put the thumbdown on these men because the Synod has spoken.

(47:39):
The Synod has spoken.
And so he's very much into requiring the institutions to submit to the Synod.
My father's approach was different.
His approach was, let us rediscover our theological roots in the Lutheran confessions.

(48:02):
Now you got to keep in mind, 1977 is the 400th anniversary of the formula of concord and1980 is the 400th anniversary of the book of concord.
And with these anniversaries came a renewed interest in the study of the Lutheranconfessions.
Since the

(48:22):
Unity of the Synod has been shattered by the whole battle for the Bible.
Let's find our unity in the Confessions.
So on the one hand with Ralph, you've got our unity is imposed from above, from the top bythe president of the Synod, exercising hegemony over the institutions of the Synod.

(48:47):
I know this is kind of a strong word to use, but I would use the word
tyrannical kind of authority, just boom.
Whereas the approach of the seminary was, let us return to our roots.
And what happened as a result of that is that you saw the seminary was criticizing thingsthat the president of the Synod didn't want criticized.

(49:17):
And this would have included the church growth movement.
with a lot of its, they borrowed the methods and approaches of the Pentecostals andBaptists and so forth, you know, and other issues where the Fort Wayne seminary simply
wanted to address what was happening in the synod from a scriptural confessionalstandpoint.

(49:42):
Ralph's approach was, well, what has synod said on this issue and let's enforce the synod.
decision.
Now, Bollman was, he obviously was one of the confessional or conservative heroes duringSeminacs.
I wouldn't call him a hero.
I'll tell you what happened.
You had the five minority men, which people call the faithful five.

(50:06):
When this whole thing blew up and you had the walkout and they're trying to shut down thatseminary and you've got Martin Charlemagne, who at first is the acting president, and then
he has to resign because he had a nervous...
breakdown, he was just suffering terribly from awful persecution.

(50:28):
mean, the man was really...
Anyway, and then Dad took over the duties.
During this time, Ralph Bowman, who lived two blocks from the seminary, refused to teach,to help out.
They got people from Springfield to come down to teach.
They got people from Valparaiso to come down to teach.
had pastors all around Missouri.

(50:50):
and Illinois coming in to teach, but Ralph wouldn't even teach.
He had nothing to do with that seminary until after it became clear that the seminarywould survive.
And then once it would survive, then they make him the president of the seminary.
But so I would not say that Ralph was a hero at all.
I would say that he sat there back in the weeds looking to see which way it would go.

(51:16):
And then he joined the winning side at the.
What I'm curious about here though is, so you have the ALC, which is liberal.
We've declared fellowship with them in 1969.
I think it's by 1971 or 72, the ALC is ordaining women while they're in fellowship withthe Missouri Synod.

(51:39):
When it comes to Ralph Buhlmann, my question is, when do we break fellowship with the ALCand how does Buhlmann support or...
not support that or is he kind of like what you described sort of waiting to see howthings go?
What is his stance on fellowship with the ALC or breaking culture?

(52:02):
Well, I don't know, maybe this is unfair to point out, but his daughter did become apastor of the United Church of Christ.
So, we know what she believed about that.
Ralph, as far as I recall, never publicly disagreed with the Missouri Synod's oppositionto women pastors.

(52:27):
I don't think he obviously wasn't as strong on that as the
Fort Wayne faculty would have been, but Ralph would have been, he had his own principlesand he would not have deviated from this is what Missouri Senate
But would he, was he, because I know that grandpa, I remember reading something thatgrandpa wrote about fellowship with the ALC and how we need to break fellowship with the

(52:56):
ALC.
Did Ralph Buhlmann support that effort to break fellowship with the ALC?
Well, as a matter of fact, we broke fellowship with the ALC.
Now here, my memory isn't gonna work quite right.

(53:17):
Okay, Uncle Jack's elected in 69.
When does his last term end?
When does it end?
79 I think.
No, is it 81?
No, B81.
When did we break fellowship with the ALC?
Wasn't it right when you were ordained?
You were a d-

(53:38):
ordained in 79 and it was after I was ordained a couple years.
a couple years, so it's like 81, probably around the 80s.
when Ralph became president, so Ralph's position on breaking fellowship with the AOC ispretty much irrelevant because his presidency began with the breaking of fellowship.
With the ALC.
Because I know that, the reason why I'm asking this, I remember listening to a paper thatgrandpa gave in the early 90s, where he mentions all these issues, like the church growth

(54:11):
movement, charismatic movement, which kind of went together, women pastors, you know, the,the, or the overall orders of creation.
He also mentioned fellowship with the ELCA.
fellowship talks with the LCA.
Or wait, no, this wasn't Grandpa.
This was in this document called Anarchy that I read that mentioned that kind of tellingthe story of how Grandpa was removed and some of the issues.

(54:39):
So was it like Grandpa and Mark Court and Scare and these guys, and I guess you hadWeinrich and I think even Veltz was involved in that in the Fort Wayne Seminary.
they're speaking against women's suffrage, they're also speaking against fellowship withthe ELCA or they're speaking against the ELCA and women's ordination.

(55:06):
The way I gather it is that these things were bothering your kind of saltwater liberals,your high church liberals, or whatever kind of liberal cohort in the misery synod, and
it's sort of making
things, it's ruffling the ship a little bit and that that Bowman doesn't like that becausehe not that he supports the liberal side, but he doesn't want these guys in Fort Wayne to

(55:39):
be, you know, stirring the pot so much.
Is that kind of
Yeah, and something too on this, you have to understand the Missouri Synod back in theday, with what we're talking about, and today too.
You've got to understand the old boy network.
It's very, very strong.

(56:00):
And when Robert Preuss becomes president of the Springfield Seminary, they're all watchingto see what's what.
What's he going to try to do?
Dad tried at, and then of course it moves to Fort Wayne right away, Dad tried to get adoctorate program there, shot down by the Board for Higher Education.
Every effort Dad made to increase the academic status of that seminary was thwarted byRalph and that whole clique.

(56:29):
They were bound and determined to keep that Fort Wayne Seminary as the
so-called practical seminary and not to take away the dignity that belonged to the St.
Louis Seminary.
Which is the flagship seminary.
Which is the flagship seminary.
And if you want to understand the undercurrent of this, how Ralph got a lot of the supporthe got against Dad, you know that Ralph is working within that old boy network.

(56:59):
Okay.
But part of it is,
rather than these specific issues, fellowship with the ELCA, well we never had fellowshipwith the ELCA, but the fellowship issues, the communion issues, the women in the church
issues, all these different issues, was the fact that the seminary in Fort Wayne did notlook to the synodical administration for guidance and direction, but simply followed its

(57:30):
own course according to its
devotion to scriptures and the confessions.
And with that, would Christian news, since this is Christendom and the World brought toyou by Christian news, we should probably bring up Christian news.
Christian news, I mean, Herman Ottens started publishing, I think at 58 was the first timeor 59 or 60.

(57:55):
But at any rate, during, so of course he played his role during Seminex exposing all thishigher criticism.
during the 80s, he was very supportive of grandpa.
Was that something, I imagine that that's something that they would point to and say thatgrandpa, Robert, Kurt, in particular are too close with Herman Otten.

(58:25):
Was that something that that played a role
my asses.
I'm trying to remember the specifics, but Trudy, who was an excellent secretary for dad,put the wrong letter in the wrong envelope.
so a letter that dad was sending to Herman, who ended up going to Ralph or something likethat.

(58:52):
And then, aha, aha, you're a friend of Herman Otten's.
Dad says, guilty, guilty.
But see, no, because first they're going to make a pariah out of Herman Otten.
Yeah.
And then anybody who is friends with him, they're going to make a pariah out of him.
Yeah.
And the thing about if I could just make a couple of comments about about Pastor HermanOtten, two things.

(59:17):
One is that.
His theology was very standard, old Missouri theology.
He was not extreme in any respect.
And the second is that he had a very strong sense of brotherly loyalty and that hedefended my dad, not based on just a personal thing, but that he knew

(59:49):
that he and dad were united in the same theological commitment.
And so he was very, very supportive during that time when dad was under fire.

(01:00:09):
But it just got just really nasty stuff.
So it was professors at the seminary in Fort Wayne.
There were a few, which we don't necessarily need to get into all the details, butbasically there were a few professors who were removed or they were demoted for various

(01:00:31):
things and they were kind of, they were not at the seminary anymore, but they had somebeef with grandpa.
Well, yeah, you had individuals who had been removed or who didn't get their contractsrenewed or whatever.
But.
The.

(01:00:54):
I don't know how much that the only name I would want to mention on this would be WaldoWernig, because he was an extremely destructive force.
he had been part of the conservative movement way back before uncle Jack got electedpresident.

(01:01:17):
dad got him a position at the seminary as a fundraiser, and then he gave him some, someelective courses on stewardship or something.
Well, then Waldo was deeply devoted to the church growth movement paradigm and he.
was not a particularly good scholar.

(01:01:41):
I mean, he just wasn't seminary material, if you know what I mean.
And he sees, he goes after Scare, Markhort, Dad, because Waldo's just, he's a verysensitive guy.
And they're not, you know, and then the students started kind of, I shouldn't say maybepoking fun of him.

(01:02:05):
sure.
And so he got really angry.
So many students never do that.
And and and it was it just drove him to distraction.
Yes.
And he was used by the Bowman administration as a weapon against dad.

(01:02:26):
And it was it was really kind of a tragic thing.
OK.
Yeah, because that's scare.
David Scare said all theology is Christology, which obviously means that everything pointsto Christ in all of Christian doctrine.
And Christ is the sum of all theology.

(01:02:47):
so which means that if you're going to compromise on, let's say, the orders of creation.
This isn't just some random part of theology that you're just kind of ignoring.
This is going to end up attacking the very heart of the gospel that Christ, who is thebridegroom, who takes the church as his bride.

(01:03:08):
so that's just one example.
So anyway, so he says all theology is Christology.
And I think that most people know what he means.
And Walder Werning accuses him of some kind of false doctrine.
in trying to say that.
And this statement, the statement to which Waldo objected was that Christology is the onlypart of theology.

(01:03:35):
And Waldo says, well, the Father and the Holy Spirit, you know, and of course, Waldo justdidn't get David's point.
Waldo was successful in pressuring Scare to revise the statement to make it palatable toWaldo.
Then he goes to dad and says, now Scare,
has changed, agreed with this change.

(01:03:58):
So I want you to as well.
And Dad says, no, I'm not going to.
I'm going to stick with what he said.
And on the basis of that, Waldo accused Dad of false doctrine and he accused me of falsedoctrine.
really?
It was great.
It started as as eight instances of false doctrine and 17 instances of false witness.

(01:04:23):
you
But as it progressed, all of the false doctrine disappeared and the false witnessremained.
is that because you wrote, where's Waldo?
I wrote an article from Christian News.
Herman Otten let me know that I'm causing him to lose friends.

(01:04:47):
I thought, well, I'm sorry.
You caused him to lose that.
You know, I mean, he would publish.
He had some courage in publishing some stuff, you know.
But he still had some prudence.
He still had some.
the stuff that I wrote that he that he published would make some people angry.

(01:05:09):
How old are you?
About a little younger than you are.
sure.
Well, I mean, you know, I.
Well, and your dad's getting attacked.
That's getting attacked and Waldo was just such an arrogant guy and I just resented thefact that he dad had shown.

(01:05:32):
hospitality and kindness to Waldo.
And Waldo responds with this vicious attack.
And so I just made some observations in this Where's Waldo column.
And I put in there that he invited himself up to the lake and didn't bring any food, whichof course, only people who've been up there could understand that if you come up to

(01:05:55):
Gunflint without food,
Where are we going to get food?
mean, you Hannah, you've been to gun fun, right?
You get it.
You have to bring food.
You can't just, I'm here.
Feed me.
We got Grand Marais, which is about 45, 50 miles away, the closest grocery store.
And the people who go to Gunflin also know you don't go shopping at Grand Marais unlessyou're just going to get ice or a few things.

(01:06:21):
You go shopping in Duluth and then you, yeah, so.
I mean, the thing of it is it was kind of sad because Waldo would be up there and he'sgoing to tell Uncle Jack what to do.
Look, I mean, you don't have to be an expert on church politics to know that once you getelected president, you're not necessarily going to give the same attention to the people

(01:06:48):
that got you elected.
beforehand as you do now, because now you're the president and you really don't need Waldoto tell you how to do your job.
But that's basically how that all worked out.
So so the things then that were, so basically there's a rumor mill going around sayingthat Robert Price has a spiritual problem.

(01:07:11):
Yeah.
There's these accusations of false doctrine that you mentioned.
There's a, I mean, I even heard that some people even tried to accuse them of being adrunken adulterer and they could never substantiate it.
it's just disgusting.
asked, they would just say something.
say stuff like, well, we don't really want to say, it's just suggestive slander.

(01:07:35):
And that's what they do.
That's what they do.
The thing the thing about my dad's case for anybody who has any question about whether,you know, what is the because I may have a bias on this when the Board of Regents removed
him from office.
That was what, August of 89?
Or when was that?

(01:08:00):
It would have been.
Yeah.
they were, they kind of tried, didn't they?
Just to back up a second, they tried in the mid 80s and, but they didn't have the Board ofRegents.
They needed the majority of the Board of Regents and they finally got
Yeah, then in 88, 89, they were able to then spearhead it again and get him, honorablyretire him against his will.

(01:08:29):
And this is the thing, an honorable retirement according to the bylaws, since it isassumed that it would be with the consent of the one being honorably retired, there were
no provisions made for appealing this decision.
Now, Dad could appeal the decision, but according to the bylaws, that wouldn't affect himbeing replaced.

(01:08:56):
So if he were to win,
it wouldn't do any good because if he won, somebody else would have already taken over hisoffice.
Had they removed him for cause, then immediately the bylaws would have guaranteed that noone could take his position until he exhausted the adjudication process.

(01:09:17):
So they did that in such a way as to keep him from getting the church to make a brotherlydecision on this.
So dad goes to court, not
because he wants the civil authorities to make the decision, but to force the Board ofRegents to give him the due process that the church provided.

(01:09:39):
in that process, he was totally vindicated and the Board of Regents was severelycriticized as using what the Commission on Appeals called the Jezebel method.
So they were severely criticized, but then...
at the Pittsburgh Convention in 1992.

(01:10:00):
After Dad had been vindicated, after he had won his case, the Board of Regents wasstubbornly refusing to submit to the authority of the Commission on Appeals.
And so there was a kind of a crisis going on.
And Dad, this was a mistake on his part.
But he signed an agreement which would

(01:10:24):
make him the spiritual head of the seminary, but that the administrative functions wouldbe given to somebody else.
Well, what that meant was he wouldn't be anything at all.
They wouldn't even let him teach anymore or preach or anything.
And so he got the shaft by signing that Pittsburgh agreement was a disaster.

(01:10:48):
At the convention that he signed it.
So and then that's the same convention 92 where L Barry was elected.
So it was kind of both it was it's similar to 69 you have you have you have give and take.
So one question I was going to ask is, Grant.
Okay, so grandpa went to court not for money, not to not for not to get the court to makethe decision, but simply to

(01:11:12):
forced the synod, tell the synod that they need to follow their own adjudication process,which then they did.
Now, when he, and I read some stuff in the filing cabinets here at Christian news, and,when he was severely rebuked for going to court and it was portrayed as if he was

(01:11:36):
violating first Corinthians chapter 6 which tells us not to bring our brethren to courtwhen You've argued this and I would agree with with your take that he wasn't that he was
bringing them to the civil court It's that he was appealing to the court to to doprecisely what Paul says to do in first exactly Which is if there is a wise man among you

(01:11:57):
that you should adjudicate it yourselves right now during that time He was then rebukedand and called
you know, called to repentance for breaking 1 Corinthians 6, was he removed from theclergy roster?
And so he was kicked out of the Missouri Synod.
then the adjudication process finally went through, and he was reinstated then in theMissouri Synod, but the Board of Regents was still not...

(01:12:28):
They wouldn't put him back in office.
But he was back on the clergy roster.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
So here he is kicked out of the Missouri Synod and then all of this finally kind of endswhere he was then gonna go back in the spring I think of 96 to teach a class, but then he
died.
Yeah, he died.

(01:12:49):
Right.
Yeah.
So that was a tough time.
When I quit the Missouri Senate in 97 and joined the E.L.S.
My district president, man by the name of Ed Souffleau, is a great man, said, I wonder ifyou're leaving the Missouri Senate because of the way your father was treated.

(01:13:17):
And at the time, I didn't really want to acknowledge that.
But in retrospect, I think that Ed Souffle was right that I was disgusted with a synodbecause of what happened to my father and was never, you know, he just was mistreated.

(01:13:41):
And but, you know, synods are full of sinners and you don't
You loyalty to a synod.
You pledge loyalty to God's Word.
There are always going to be good Christian people.
You know, those who supported dad the most were the parish pastors.
They were the ones who, most of the professors just tatted for the tall grass.

(01:14:06):
I mean, can honestly, I can count on one hand, the number of professors at the seminarywho stood up and said, no.
there was a document that was passed around the 92 convention that I've read calledAnarchy that kind of lays all this out and at the end of it there are what three
professors who signed their names to it which took a lot of courage and that was DanielRoining and who it was at Mueller was to Mueller

(01:14:36):
probably Harold Bulls.
Okay.
And that would have taken a lot of courage for them to put their names to that.
Now, one of the professors that was absolute hero was Mark Hort.
He was a hero of the faith.
And during all these legal things, he was Dad's theological advisor, so he'd write thesetheological opinions.

(01:14:57):
The best theology I've ever read, Kurt Mark Hort was a hero.
But most of the professors at the seminary were, they don't have courage.
You know, they can be very good, very clever, very orthodox, you know, good teachers.
to stand up for a brother.
A guy like Herman Otten, he can do that.

(01:15:20):
He's not afraid.
No, but the is, this is the thing about, and these are the people that I grew up knowingand looking up to.
Guys like my dad and guys like Pastor Otten, guys like these other men who would juststand up and say it.

(01:15:42):
and to see a minister of the word cowering in fear at, well, if I say this, then what willthey think?
And if I put it this way, maybe I should say this.
For Pete's sake, are you a man of God or are you a chicken, whatever?
mean, be men, stand up.
I think that's in the Bible, 1 Corinthians somewhere.
Somewhere in there.
He says, be men.

(01:16:03):
Or in what the prophet talks about the dogs that don't bark.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, these guys are supposed to be defending the church and standing on the word of Godand they're threatened by some big shot and then they run away.
Yeah.
No, I'd love to, we've, we've been talking for a while here.

(01:16:25):
I'd love to get into then your time in the ELS.
which I think I could speak to a lot more because that's my childhood.
but I suppose I'll just ask here, what would you say grandpa's legacy is, you know, fortoday?
Like what, what, you know, obviously there's a

(01:16:47):
People hear the price name and they're like, all these prices and I've heard all the jokesand they're not funny.
They're not offensive.
They're just not funny.
It's like, how many prices does it take to screw in a light bulb too many to count?
you know, that kind of, that kind of, there's lots of prices and that's great.
And that's a wonderful gift of God.
you know, you got.

(01:17:08):
How many, you, you have nine, nine boys in the ministry right now.
and another who's going, Samuel's going to be starting the seminary, God willing.
So, you know, there's that kind of thing that people see.
But what, besides the fact that he had a bunch of kids and a bunch of grandkids and a lotof people serving as pastors in the church at large, what would you say the legacy of

(01:17:38):
grandpa is and what we can kind of take away from that?
Well, I would say that it would be theological integrity that you put God's Word, you putthe pure teaching above all other considerations and that you continue to contend for the

(01:18:05):
truth.
Dad would do it in a, I mean, Dad was a scholar and he was able to hold his own with inany group.
that you could find, because he would be an expert in the area where he's speaking.
Not all of us can say that.
But he also combined that with a pastoral heart and an absolute commitment to confessingthe truth.

(01:18:35):
So I would say that the emphasis, the positive influence, emphasis that you have in theMissouri Synod today on confessionalism, as opposed to simply
signing here and going along, whatever you say, that's fine with me, but rather this is myheartfelt conviction.
I think that would be his primary contribution.

(01:18:57):
also, think, to reintroduce the 17th century Lutheran theologians to the Church so that wecould look at our history, our roots.
And see, I think that if it hadn't been for what Dad had done in his
volumes on post-reformation Lutheranism.

(01:19:17):
I kind of wonder whether you would have now the writings of John Gerhart and all theseothers being published.
So I think that the rediscovery of our Lutheran heritage that Dad did a lot.
then and this is where his difference with Ralph Bollman.
I think that in many ways, Dad prevailed among those who are truly confessional.

(01:19:45):
today.
Yeah.
And so.
What I would add to that is the conviction that theology is always practical and thatsometimes there's this disconnect in people's minds between theology and practice.

(01:20:06):
And so what they see theology as this academic discipline.
And in order to make it practical, you got to kind of mark it.
with this sociological jargon and get in tuned with sort of how the culture, the peopleare thinking in the culture and sort of supplement the word of God in that way, which

(01:20:29):
inevitably makes it waters down the theology and makes it more of a kind of moralism.
But for him, it was that theology, and this gets to, I think, scare's point, that alltheology is Christology.
The theology is
always practical.
If you're talking theology, now obviously it's true that I'm not going to go, you know, goto when, if I'm sitting and have a conversation with Hannah, I'm not going to be sitting

(01:20:56):
there saying, you know, Hannah, just, these Calvinists, they just don't get the, the, thecommunicatiu edi morum.
They do not get, they deny the genus maestaticum, you know, and they think that, and they,and, and, and, and that's why they can't
they can't accept the bodily presence in the Lord's Supper.

(01:21:16):
If I talk to you, you have any idea what I was talking about there.
No, no, no.
you there?
Do you remember when when my dad was at St.
John's in Racine?
And our son Paul was being examined.
We had this examination and dad was there witnessing the examination.

(01:21:37):
And I said to Paul, my our third son, Paul, why is there no reciprocity of the genusmyostaticum?
And dad.
of laughs and then Paul says, because if there were then Jesus wouldn't be God.
And then dad bursts out laughing and the whole congregation is going to sit in there.

(01:21:58):
What in the world are you talking about?
So I did that just because my father was there.
thought he'd get a kick out.
So that's, I you have that theological jargon and Latin terminology.
And so, yeah, obviously you're not going to speak that way to, to, you know, kind of yourregular Christian, but let me explain, let me reword that Hannah and let me tell me if, so

(01:22:24):
what I just told you is totally impractical as far as you know, because what, what do youmean?
Even Calvinism?
What, what, what do you mean?
But let me reword it to you.
There are those who teach that because Jesus is at the right hand of God, that thereforewe cannot eat his body and blood in the Lord's Supper, because his body and blood are at

(01:22:50):
the right hand of God.
his human nature, his divine nature might be able to be with us, right?
So he could be with us in his divine nature, but he can only, his human nature is up inheaven.
But the Bible says, Jesus says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given tome.

(01:23:11):
And therefore Jesus is not only in heaven, but he's also here on earth with us in his bodyand blood and in his gospel.
And so you can know that Jesus is with you in your baptism, in the preaching of the gospeland in his body and blood.
Would you say that that's practical?
Yeah, that's practical.

(01:23:32):
And so this is the point.
It's not that
So sure, it's true that when we speak with academics and we talk history and that kind ofstuff, we might use the jargon.
You got to bring it down to where the regular Christian can understand it.
But what people do is they say, well, theology is all that high jargon talk.

(01:23:53):
And therefore, in order to relate to the people, you're not going to use theology.
You're rather going to try to bring in some cutesy things.
don't think that people don't understand which if they just give it some thought theywould.
Truth is simple, error is complicated.
Now the truth is simple and we can teach it to a 12 year old.

(01:24:17):
However, then the errors come up.
So then you got to refute the errors.
That's what makes it complicated.
It's not complicated at all.
I mean, as far as the two natures in Christ, He's true God and true man.
I think I can teach this because I've been doing it or I've done it for many, years.
I can teach this to 12 year olds and they have perfect understanding of the three genera'sthat the Latin terms describe in that.

(01:24:48):
You don't have to get into all that lingo.
In fact, when I got to seminary and we were learning all that lingo, was, I think I wasvery well prepared to understand it.
I already learned it.
you just didn't know all the technical terms.
I'd like to maybe call a little bit of a of a pause right now.

(01:25:11):
Can we do that?
And I don't know how much longer we're going to go, but.
Take a little break and would you mind going a little little?