August 29, 2004, from Bishop Bouman

Dear Gregory:

Thanks very much for your lengthy letter of July 19. You have written with both passion and learning. There is much in it with which I agree, and it is obvious that you have steeped yourself in the study of Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. But it also obvious to me that I have not communicated my own views and perspectives with sufficient clarity. The consequence is that I often had the feeling that we were talking past one another. I will try to do better in this response to you.

Communication is at best difficult, especially when we bring to the task of communicating deep convictions and understandings which perhaps may get in the way of our own hearing of the other. Some years ago, James Glasse, then president of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, wrote a book entitled Putting It Together in the Parish, a book I read at Concordia Seminary. In a chapter on "Learning to Fight like Christians in the Church" he formulated what should be an important rule for all of us. We should not disagree with another until we have first stated that person's position in such a way that is acceptable to him or her. I need to try to explain myself to you in such a way that it becomes possible for you to state my position to my satisfaction. I want to respond to four major topics in your letter.

1. The ministry of the bishop. I agree that the four "structures" or, as Bishop Mark Dyer has called them, the "living elements" of the church are liturgy, leadership, creeds, and Scripture. The Christian church began as a messianic movement in Israel. Because it was a movement, it did not have documents prescribing these structures. They developed historically in the sequence in which I have named them. The witness of the movement was to the crucified and risen Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the world. Its gatherings were characterized by the features described in Acts 2:42: apostolic teaching, prayer, the messianic meal, and committed sharing. Out of these gatherings emerged a plethora of leadership ministries (see Ephesians 4:11-16), and by the middle of the second century leadership ministry settled into a form that combined the Petrine ministry of presbyters and the Pauline ministry of bishops and deacons (Raymond Brown, Priest and Bishop). The need to witness outside of the Jewish matrix to the Hellenistic culture resulted in Christological controversies about the gospel which necessitated the Nicene Creed. The rise of Gnosticism and the fierce competition with the mystery religions eventually required the adoption of a formal canon, beginning with the canon of the Scriptures of Israel and including the movement documents which were deemed to be apostolic. The purpose of a canonical list of authoritative documents was thus again to provide a standard for the authentic preaching and teaching of the gospel. The separation from rabbinic Judaism was the tragic expulsion of the disciples of Jesus from rabbinic synagogues near the end of the first century. An institutional church separated from its Jewish matrix was clearly a necessity forced upon the Jesus messianic movement.

I am committed to serving these structures. I continue to preside at Eucharistic liturgies in communion with the pastors/presbyters of the synod. I care deeply about the gospel integrity of the liturgy as it is celebrated week by week in the parishes of the synod. I am taking leadership of the retreat of our ministerium, making it the "bishop's retreat." I am committed to giving pastoral leadership to the authentic evangelical ministry of the whole synod in communion with the pastoral/presbyterial collegium. I am committed to the normative creeds and confessions of the Lutheran Church for the sake of the gospel which the creeds and confessions serve in my own teaching and in my oversight of the teaching of the pastors in the synod. I am committed to the authority of the Scripture for the sake of the gospel, to the authority of the Scripture for the sake of joyful obedience to God's will as manifested in the history of Israel and the exhortation (parenesis) of Christ and the apostles.

I write all of this because it has everything to do with my understanding of the ministry of bishops. I trust that you saw at the recent graduation at the Episcopal School of Theology that I instinctively refer to the "marks of the church" in all that I share. Historically, bishops shared pastoral oversight with the collegium of presbyters as together they presided over the eucharistic gathering and gave pastoral leadership to their particular communities. Through the ministry of the deacons, the laity were led in their own diaconate and witness. The monarchical episcopate was a later development in the medieval Western church, and was rejected by the reforms of the 16th century. I understand my office in the light of these reforms. I preside over the synodical assembly, but I do not rule the assembly. The Committee on Reference and Counsel is a committee of the assembly. It assists and reports to the assembly, not to me. It is a function of my office to facilitate the business of the assembly, to make possible its deliberations and decisions. That is how the constitution of the ELCA defines the synod assembly, the committees of the synod, and the office of bishop. I understand your conviction to be that the Committee on Reference and Counsel "is simply an advisory committee to [the bishop], and that [the bishop] will be the one recommending for or against the resolutions and guiding the deliberations of the synod." But where is that conviction supported by a text in the constitution of the synod? You seem to see this as given with the passage of CCM, presumably as a function of the historical episcopate. But where are the texts that support such a possible understanding? I understand your expectations as more reflective of the monarchical episcopate against which our Lutheran confessions protested. Where in Article XXVIII of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology do you find support for your views regarding the relationship of the synodical bishop to the committees of the synod assembly? I would be grateful to learn whether I have understood you correctly. If I have understood you, I would be equally grateful for identification of texts which we should consider. Having said all that I have also confessed to you that I should have been more diligent here at our previous assembly. I take your admonition to heart.

2. The church and marriage. According to the Lutheran confessions, marriage belongs to "worldly affairs" and is to be left "to the prince and town council to create and arrange as they want." I went into some of this in the course I taught at General Seminary on scripture and confessions in the light of the sexuality study. Marriage has "God's Word on its side and is not a human institution."(Kolb and Wengert, pages 367-368) In this respect, marriage is, like government itself, "instituted by God." (Augsburg Confession, Article XVI) But it is very important to note the tremendous changes that institutions ordained by God have undergone. The form of government has gone through significant development. The Scriptures of Israel recognize both theocracy and absolute monarchy as divinely instituted forms of government, presumably instituted by God, although these forms of government are totally rejected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights of the USA. I do not think that the authority of the Bible makes theocracy and absolute monarchy the only possible "God-pleasing" institutions of government. I do not think that in the name of the biblical warrant for theocracy and absolute monarchy we must reject pure or representative democracy. There is no text of the Bible that specifically or even by implication authorizes representative democracy as practiced in the USA. But it fulfills the function that God intends for human society by its protection of life and property, by its attention to justice and the rights of citizens. Precisely because its members are citizens, the churches must give attention to matters of government. We don't baptize people and leave them at the font. The churches must, among other things, decide whether wars are just so that its citizens "may without sin ... wage just wars; serve as soldiers." (Augsburg Confession, Article XVI) Note also that citizens are to "buy and sell; take required oaths, possess property; be married; etc" without sin.

Just as government, although it is divinely ordained, exists in a variety of forms and has gone through very significant changes in its development so that today it has a form quite different from that described or envisioned by the Bible, so also marriage has gone through significant developments. In pre-Christian Israel women were the property of men. Fathers could sell their daughters into slavery, give them as concubines, or give them in marriage. A man could divorce his wife without cause, in which case she would again be the property of her father, or be without protection and place in society if fatherless, husbandless, and having no male children. Husbands could have multiple wives, concubines, and female slaves, all of them sexually available to him. Levirate marriage was a duty. All of this was challenged and changed by the teaching of Jesus, and by apostolic exhortation like Ephesians 5. The Council of Trent required that marriages be regarded as valid only if blessed by a priest in the presence of two witnesses. The government today recognizes as valid marriages that are not performed or blessed by a priest, or indeed by any clergy person, and often without two witnesses.

Divorce was illegal for long periods in the history of the church because it was regarded as contrary to the will of God. The remarriage of divorced persons is still condemned by the Roman Catholic church, the largest Christian church in the world with a membership larger than all other Christian churches combined. Those churches that remarry divorced persons disagree with the church throughout history and the majority of Christians in the world today. Because they are in the minority, does that make their remarriage of divorced persons wrong? Do they no longer "stand on the foundation of Scripture? I have a deep problem with the ease of divorce these days, and the gradual debasement of marriage covenants over time. I remember when divorce was a "death sentence" for pastoral vocations.

In Scandinavia during the 13th and 14th centuries law suits and feuds over inheritances of childless couples were so common that the church refused to bless marriages unless the bride was visibly pregnant and in good health. Common law marriages were widespread in colonial America, especially among the poor. During many periods of church history, parents selected spouses for their children with the protection of property as a primary goal. In colonial American the median length of a marriage was seven years before one spouse died. "Being in love"as the moral basis for marriage is a consequence of 19th century romanticism, and has also served as the primary cause of widespread and legal divorce. We must indeed ask what in these developments is "God-pleasing;" and we must also ask by what criterion we would judge what is "God-pleasing. One could say that a "no fault" divorce and a "mutual consent" dissolution of a marriage are more God-pleasing than vindictive and acrimonious divorce actions which harm both former spouses and children. We could even say that God is pleased even by a divorce if the former spouses continue to relate to each other with consideration and share appropriate responsibility for minor children. But where is the Scripture warrant for regarding such divorces and dissolutions God-pleasing? Where is the Scripture warrant for the church's remarriage of divorced persons?

Because there are justice issues involved in all relationships of persons within society, marriage, too, involves justice issues. Justice is indeed something which the churches are required to address. The state must decide both how to define marriage and how to order the relationships of gay and lesbian persons for the good of the individuals involved and for the good of society as a whole. The legal ordering of gay and lesbian unions is not an attack on traditional marriage. It belongs to the development of the form of that most intimate of unions which God has ordained. The churches can and should address the government both on the good order of society and the administration of justice.

3. Fundamentalism. I note with great interest your understanding of "Biblical fundamentalism," and your description is one that merits further attention. But I limit myself to my understanding of the term. I was using the term in a way that I thought was in keeping with its historical origins and its use of the Bible. I refer you here to the excellent historical work of Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism 1800-1930. Historically American fundamentalism emerged from the Bible and Prophecy conferences of the 19th century. These conferences turned to the biblical documents of Daniel and Revelation to chart the course of history and to identify the date and place for the return of the Lord, the beginning of the millennium, and/or the cataclysmic end of the universe. These conferences turned to the scholastic Princeton theology of Alexander Hodge and Benjamin Warfield for a doctrine of biblical inspiration, inerrancy, and divine authority for their eschatological expectations. (See also Winthrop Hudson's "Religion in America," p.282, a book I read in seminary) The publication of a series of twelve tracts known as The Fundamentals from 1910 to 1915 had more to do with these eschatological expectations that any other topics. Bibles like the Scofield Reference Bible and the Thompson Chain Reference Bible were not designed to set people "free to set the Bible aside and to rest content with [one's] fundamentals," as you wrote. Rather they were designed to view the entire Bible through the monochromatic lens of millenarian expectation, to treat the Bible a-historically on the basis of the scholastic doctrine of the Bible's inspiration, inerrancy, and divine authority. What was at issue was the use of the Bible to support a particular set of eschatological expectations which were believed to be essential to being Christian. I see that same use of the Bible taking place to support a particular set of understandings about human sexuality and the morality of its expression.

Confessional Lutheranism does not treat the Bible in this way. The key confessional Lutheran principle for the use of the Bible is articulated in Apology Article IV, the division of all of Scripture into the Law and the Gospel. The reason for this crucial distinction is not to dismiss some of Scripture. It is to state that the saving message of the Bible is the Gospel, not the law. As Luther says in theses which I intend to quote later, we don't need the Bible for the law. We need the Bible for sake of the Gospel. And the reason is obvious. The Gospel has as its content specific historical events, namely the ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the world. The Bible is our only access to these events. It is also the church's authoritative standard for its witness to these events. The Bible is thus crucial for the Gospel. The issue is not the interpretation of specific passages of the Bible, and the issue is most certainly not to provide for a "pro-gay interpretation of the Bible," as you wrote. The issue is not the interpretation of the Bible, but the application of specific passages to the question of whether the church should bless gay and lesbian unions. For Luther, the issue is that one must trust the saving (Gospel) passages of the Bible against the condemning (Law) passages of the Bible. One cannot give ultimate trust to both sets of passages.

If one is going to read Luther on the use of the Bible, of equal importance to the "Bondage of the Will" is his 1525 tract, "How Christian should regard Moses."(Luther's Works, Vol. 35, pages 161 ff.) There Luther says things like, "In the first place I dismiss the commandments given to the people of Israel. They neither urge nor compel me." (Page 166) He cites Deuteronomy 25:5-6, and comments, "So it came about that one man had many wives. Now this is also a very good rule." (Page 167). Or consider Luther's "Theses Concerning Faith and the Law" from 1535 (Luther's Works, Vol. 34, pages 109 ff.) I quote only theses 49 to 56:
49. Therefore, if the adversaries press the Scriptures against Christ, we urge Christ against the Scriptures.
50. We have the Lord, they the servants; we have the Head, they the feet or members, over which the Head necessarily dominates and takes precedence.
51. If one of them had to be parted with, Christ or the law, the law would have to be let go, not Christ.
52. For if we have Christ, we can easily establish laws and we shall judge all things rightly.
53. Indeed, we would make new decalogues, as Paul does in all the epistles, and Peter, but above all Christ in the gospel.
54. And these decalogues are clearer than the decalogue of Moses, just as the countenance of Christ is brighter than the countenance of Moses [I Cor. 3:7-11].
55. For if the Gentiles in their corrupt nature were able to know God and be a law to themselves, Romans 2 [:14],
56. How much more is Paul or the perfect Christian, full of the Spirit, able to set in order a certain decalogue and judge most correctly about all things. (Pages 112-113)

I have already shared with you my basic problem with "Journey Together Faithfully" and that is the listing in chapter one of the study of the many positions in the church on the sexuality issues before us. Such a list is disingenuous because the church has had a "default" position: marriage defined as the union between one man and one woman. Why not begin by saying, "for 2000 years of the church's tradition it has been taught that..." And why not begin by praising heterosexual marriage? It needs help and support! Then we can go about our study concerning what more the church might have to say in these times? The Background Essay on Biblical Texts for "Journey Together Faithfully, Part Two: The Church and Homosexuality" was written by two New Testament scholars, one more or less "pro gay" (Arland Hultgren) and one more or less "anti-gay" (Walter Taylor). They have described fairly all the interpretations of the texts on homosexuality, and they have agreed on what they regard as the most accurate reading of the texts. But they conclude with this very important and appropriate observation:

The Bible is the primary place to which Christians turn to discern God's will, but on the basis of the forgoing paragraph, it should be clear that decisions within and for the church concerning "homosexuality" and its attendant issues cannot be arbitrated by biblical scholars alone. Their role must remain modest. They are able to help clarify issues by bringing evidence, arguments, and proposals to the table. But finally their contributions are only one part of a larger discussion among those who seek the mind of Christ in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. (Page 18)

Here is the place to try to state again what I find wrong with the Pannenberg statement published in Volume 30, No. 1, of Lutheran Forum. If I understand you correctly, you seem to be saying that one must either agree with Pannenberg or recognize that one no longer stands on the foundation of Scripture. If that is what you are saying, I do not agree. I do NOT intend to say, "Yes, we no longer stand on the foundation of Scripture." I do not think that is the only alternative to agreeing with Pannenberg. Here is what I think about the issues addressed by Pannenberg.

a. Pannenberg treats Genesis 1-3 as if these chapters describe the historical origins of humanity and human sexuality. But here Pannenberg contradicts his own profound works on theological anthropology. I think Pannenberg is here operating, at least by implication, with the following historical sequence:
At creation there was perfect original human sexuality, divinely intended as "the purpose of the creation of humankind as sexual beings."
There was a historical fall into sin, after which there are "deviations from the norm in this area of life, as in others."
Death is punishment for human sinfulness.
Therefore homosexuals must be approached with "tolerance and understanding" but the church "must also call them to repentance."

b. I think this sequence is wrong in every way. I do not believe that human beings were created in accordance with a literalistic understanding of Genesis 1-2. I do not think that there was a historical "fall." I do not think that death is a punishment for human sinfulness. And I do not think that every expression of homosexuality is sinful. We must start with the incontrovertible fact that death is not the consequence of sin, but, as Jurgen Moltmann puts it, "Sin is therefore ?the wages of death.' It originates in the covenant with death, and it disseminates death." (The Coming of God, page 94). The sexual drive exists because only in this way can mortal creatures reproduce and continue the species. Human sexuality presupposes death, not sin. Hence, as Pannenberg himself has taught, there was no historical fall. There is only the experience of "falleness," the alienation of human being from its true vocation and destiny. Human heterosexuality is necessary for procreation. But today very little of human sexual expression has procreation as its goal. It has everything to do with intimacy, care, companionship. Is this a "deviation from the norm" involved in the command to be fruitful and multiply?

c. There are clear passages of Scripture which prohibit various kinds of sexual practices, including certain homosexual practices. But I can find no passage of Scripture which prohibits the committed union of two gay or two lesbian persons. And the issue before the churches has to do with committed unions, not with "blessing" all homosexual practices in general. If one responds that a committed union involves prohibited sexual practices, the response must be that the churches have no more right to say what should take place sexually in the committed union of two gay or two lesbian persons than it has the right to say what should take place sexually in the marriage of a heterosexual couple. I cannot speak for Roman Catholic moral theology, but to be as blunt as possible, non-Roman Catholic churches do not proscribe the practice of masturbation for husbands and wives who are separated from each other for longer periods of time. Nor do they prohibit mutual masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, or the many positions and practices described in the Kama Sutra. If these are not prohibited sexual expressions for married heterosexual couples, should they be prohibited to homosexual persons who are living in a committed union? In addition, there are fundamental aspects of marriage, namely care, commitment, compassion, fidelity, which can demonstrably take place even when sexual activities decline or must be discontinued altogether. I believe that these are "God-pleasing" also in the committed unions of gay and lesbian persons.

d. To state therefore that homosexual committed unions involve practices which "deviate from the norm," to claim that they are sins for which persons are to be admonished to repent, is to use the Bible in a way which does not honor its authority, but perverts its authority in a fundamentalistic way. Pannenberg is not in error if all that he is talking about is promiscuous "homosexual activity" in general, because selfishly individualistic sexual gratification is not in itself "God-pleasing." But he has neither Biblical text nor confessional Lutheran theological rationale to justify his judgment that a church which recognizes "homosexual partnerships as a form of personal relationship equivalent to marriage would no longer stand on the foundation of the Scriptures but rather in opposition to its unanimous witness." The foundation of Scripture has to do with the Gospel (John 5:39-40; I Cor. 3:11; Ephesians 2:19-20) and its clear exhortations to faithful living (e.g., Matthew 5-7, Romans 12-16, Ephesians 4-6, et al.).

e. Would I say this to Pannenberg face to face. Yes. Of course. Pannenberg's own students and colleagues shake their heads over this statement. No person, however eminent and respected, is beyond the need for admonition. In this statement Pannenberg has ceased to be faithful to his own Lutheran confession. He is neither the first nor will he be the last Lutheran theologian to be guilty of this.

4. The law. This is the matter on which I feel the greatest need to clarify what I wrote. I agree with so much of what you wrote. But I also felt that I elicited misunderstanding at key points. So I want to write as clearly as I can in order to facilitate your understanding. You yourself wrote: "It is time that we sort this out more carefully." I am trying to make my contribution to the task of sorting this out more carefully.
a. The Lutheran confessions could hardly be more clear. I quote:

All Scripture should be divided into these two main topics: the law and the promises. In some places it communicates the law. In other places it communicates the promises concerning Christ, either when it promises that Christ will come and on account of him offers the forgiveness of sins, justification, and eternal life, or when in the gospel itself, Christ, after he appeared, promises the forgiveness of sins, justification, and eternal life. Now when we refer to the "law" in this discussion we mean the commandments of the Decalogue wherever they appear in the Scriptures. For the present we will say nothing about the ceremonial and civil law of Moses. (Apology IV,5-6, Kolb and Wengert, page 121)

The key here is that "law" is identified with "the commandments of the decalogue wherever they appear in the Scriptures." The Lutheran confessions identify a political or civil use for the law. In so far as this "law" is what God uses to govern the world, it is evident that Luther and Melanchthon understood that the Decalogue was identical with the "natural law" innate in human beings. See "How Christians should regard Moses," where Luther says that the only Mosaic commands which apply to us are those which agree with the "natural law," such as the prohibitions against adultery, murder, and theft, and the command to honor God. (Luther's Works, Vol. 35, page 168) Melanchthon, too, identifies the Decalogue as identical with what "human reason naturally understands ... since reason contains the same judgment divinely written on the mind." Thus "The Decalogue requires ... outward civil works that reason can produce to some extent..." (Apology IV, 7-8, Kolb and Wengert, page 121) It is clear, however, that the commandments of the Decalogue cannot be the foundation, much less the content, of that immense body of law required by civil government.

There is also a theological use for the law, because "it is false that reason by its own powers is able to love God above all things and to fulfill God's law, namely, truly to fear God, truly to conclude that God hears prayer, willingly to obey God in death and in other visitations of God, and not to covet things that belong to others, etc. -- although reason can produce civil works." (Apology IV, 27, Kolb and Wengert, pages 124-125). Hence "the law always accuses and terrifies consciences." (Apology IV, 38, Kolb and Wengert, page 126) "Sin terrifies consciences. This happens through the law, which shows us the wrath of God against sin." (Apology IV, 79, Kolb and Wengert, page 133)

There is also a didactic use for the law. Through Christ we are regenerated so that through the power of the Holy Spirit "we might then be able to live according to the law of God, namely, to love God, truly to fear God, truly to assert that God hears prayer, to obey God in all affliction, and to mortify concupiscence, etc." (Apology IV, 45, Kolb and Wengert, page 127) We cannot keep the law unless we first receive the Holy Spirit (Apology IV, 70, Kolb and Wengert, pages 131-132)

b. Here we have the basis for the three "uses" of the law which are identified in the Formula of Concord.
The law of God is used (1) to maintain external discipline and respectability against dissolute, disobedient people and (2) to bring such people to a recognition of the sins. (3) It is also used when those who have been born anew through God's Spirit, converted to the Lord, and had the veil of Moses removed for them live and walk in the law. (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, Article IV, 1, Kolb and Wengert, page 587)

Confirmation 101: the law as a curb, a rule, a mirror

c. Biblical scholars have pointed out that the Decalogue, and indeed the Torah of which it is a part, does not have these three uses in Israel. The Torah, including the Decalogue, with its commandments does not so much accuse the righteous Jew or terrify consciences. It has one purpose only, namely, to command those behaviors which will give the Jews their distinguishing identity as the People of Yahweh in the midst of the nations after the return from the Babylonian exile. (Note that the Torah -- the Pentateuch -- achieves its final form during or immediately after the Babylonian exile.) They do not have a national identity because they are still a conquered people living in land often occupied by an alien military power. But they do have a behavioral identity that comes from obeying the 613 commandments which the scribes found in the Torah. Obedience to these commandments is not a burden, but a joy and a delight, as some of the Psalms indicate (e.g., 1, 19, 119).

d. So we must ask what it is that does accuse and terrify consciences. Here Robert Jenson's great insight into the occasion for Luther's experience and the meaning of justification by faith comes into play. What accuses and terrifies consciences is the encounter with mortality. For mortality makes life meaningless and raises the question, "Have I any justification for existence?" (Gritsch and Jenson, Lutheranism: The Theological Movement and Its Confessional Writings, page 40) It is not the Decalogue that raises these issues and questions. It is mortality. This is the "law" that all of Luther's good works could not satisfy. This is why the works of the law cannot justify, for the righteous die as certainly and surely as the unrighteous. This is why we are directed to Christ alone, because, as Jenson writes, Christ is risen. Christ has death behind him, and therefore he alone can make unconditional promises. (Gritsch and Jenson, pages 41-42) That is what I was referring to when you quoted me as saying "The law is the sound of approaching death, a sound that can be heard in a leaf falling to the ground."

e. You quoted yourself as thinking that "the law is the way in which we should walk that we might live a life pleasing to God." Or more simply, "the law is the will of our loving God for us." I agree. But what is significant here is that in your definition of "law" I do not hear you thinking of whatever accuses and terrifies, to use the language of the Apology. For whatever accuses and terrifies is not "the will of our loving God for us." I believe, as I am sure that you believe, that the will of our loving God for us is revealed and grounded absolutely and finally in the death and resurrection of Christ. God's will is that life and not death is victorious because in Christ the power of death has been endured and overcome. Therefore the power of sin is broken as well. Sin feeds on death, for sin means that we do not trust Christ (Romans 14:23 -- often quoted in the Lutheran confessions). We do not trust in Christ alone when we despair over the meaningfulness or justification of our existence. But mostly we do not trust in Christ alone when we seek to justify ourselves with deeds or rationales or accomplishments, when we seek to protect ourselves at the expense of others, when we need to exalt ourselves in comparison with others (Luke 16:9-14), when we are self-righteous, unforgiving.

f. The Torah remains in place for Israel. It still gives Israel the behaviors which identify it as Israel. Israel is still God's people, and "to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen." (Romans 9:4-5) At the end of this long and very important section of Romans (9-11) Paul praises God's faithfulness. "For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29) "For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." (Romans 11:32) It is this universal mercy of God that evokes Paul awe. For what is "unsearchable" about God's judgments and what is "inscrutable" about God's ways is God's Mercy! So, in speaking about "the Christian Torah of the NT" I do not mean "that God has deprived Israel of his mercy by keeping his law from them" or that "the law of Israel is defective and that the Church has a better law." Israel's Torah as the commandments for behaviors which identify Israel STILL identify Israel.

g. But, you ask, "do Christians have different law from Israel?" Where to begin? I turn first to the work of the outstanding NT scholar, N. T. Wright. His big scholarly works have been summarized in a superb set of lectures published by InterVarsity Press under the title, The Challenge of Jesus. I quote from the conclusion of his discussion of the relation between Jesus and the Pharisees.

What mattered, then, was not religion but eschatology, not morality but the coming of the kingdom. And the coming of the kingdom, as Jesus announced it, put before his contemporaries a challenge, an agenda: give up your interpretation of your tradition, which is driving you toward ruin. [Wright is here referring to the nationalistic agenda which sought a Messiah to deliver Israel from Roman rule.] Embrace instead a very different interpretation of the tradition, one which, though it looks like the way of loss, is in fact the way to true victory. It was this challenge, I suggest, which when backed up by symbolic actions generated the heated exchanges between Jesus and the Pharisees and resulted in plots against Jesus' life. (Mark2:7 "why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?")

The controversies focused not least on the purity codes; but, as I said a moment ago, the purity codes were not simply "about" personal cleanliness, but, as the social anthropologists would insist, were coded symbols for the purity and maintenance of the tribe, the family or the race. Passage after passage in Jewish writers of the period, and indeed in modern Jewish scholarship, emphasizes that the Jewish laws were not designed as a legalist's ladder up which one might climb to heaven but were the boundary-markers for a beleaguered people. Jesus' clash with the Pharisees came about not because he was an antinomian or because he believed in justification by faith while they believed in justification by works, but because his kingdom-agenda for Israel demanded that Israel leave off her frantic and paranoid self-defense, reinforced as it now was by the ancestral codes, and embrace instead the vocation to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth. I therefore propose that the clash between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries, especially the Pharisees, must be seen in terms of alternative political agendas, generated by alternative eschatological beliefs and expectations. Jesus was announcing the kingdom in a way that did not reinforce but rather called into question the agenda of revolutionary zeal that dominated the horizon of, especially, the leading group within Pharisaism. It is not to be wondered at that he called into question the great emphases on those symbols that had become enacted codes for the aspirations of his contemporaries. (Pages 57-58)

This is what lies behind Jesus' radicalization of the Decalogue and indeed the whole set of behaviors called for in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

The disciples of the risen Jesus recognized his messianic agenda for Israel by evangelizing the Gentiles. But they also recognized that the behaviors commanded by the Torah were not required of the Gentiles. This was a main point of my Hein Fry lecture and my report to the synod assembly, that evangelism burst this rabbinic enclave. We see this in the agreement reached in Jerusalem in Acts 15. "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell." (Acts 15:28-29) Even much of this is no longer required of Gentile disciples of Jesus, as every weekend cookout demonstrates. What we have then in the apostolic sections that can be identified with the term parenesis (Romans 12-16, Ephesians 4-6, Colossians 3, Galatians 5:13-6:10, etc.) is the set of behaviors which identify believers in Jesus the Messiah. They are a kind of Christian "torah." They serve the same function as the Torah of Israel, "boundary-markers for a beleaguered people." So disciples of Jesus the Messiah can be addressed: "I...beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called." (Ephesians 4:1) This is not a burden, not an onerous duty. It is the joy of those who want to be witnesses to the great good news that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the final judge.

And does this come from Luther. Of course it does. See to begin with "How Christians should regard Moses."(Luther's Works, Vol. 35) And the "Theses Concerning Faith and the Law" (Luther's Works, Vol. 34) which I quoted above. But see above all the explanations to the commandments of the Decalogue in the Small Catechism and the Large Catechism. Luther uses the Decalogue (medieval version, not Exodus 20) along with his explanations of the Lord's Prayer in both catechisms to lay out his understanding of the Christian life -- including his opposition to lending money at interest! (The Large Catechism, The Ten Commandments, 228, Kolb and Wengert, page 417) And yes, the Gospel is therefore "ordered to the Law." In this sense, the Decalogue, adapted on the basis of the whole apostolic parenesis has only one use, to serve the life and the behavior of Christians. I agree therefore with all of the fine quotations you have assembled in pages 5-9 of your letter.

h. But I note well two things. First, Christian behavior and the law which guides it always concerns how with our behavior we are witnesses to the Kingdom of God which is grounded in the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Second, in a complex world, concern for Christian behavior and the law that guides it will plunge us into situations and contexts in which we can only ask about choices, about behaviors which do the least harm, or are the most conducive to loving our neighbor. Thus the "just war" doctrine is not the expression of the absolute forgiveness of enemies which Jesus and the apostolic parenesis teaches. We must always note that the "just war" doctrine to which we are confessionally committed (Augsburg Confession, Article XVI) did not begin with the right to protect ourselves, but with the duty to come to the aid of those who are unjustly attacked. (See John Howard Yoder, When War is Unjust, and Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace) The point is not that violence is good, but that some violence is necessary and under certain circumstances less evil than simply doing nothing, and that therefore Christians can engage it just wars "without sin" (Augsburg Confession, Article XVI). So we must continue to adapt the teachings of Jesus and the apostles in contexts in which we must ask what Christians can and must do in order to be witnesses to the Kingdom of God. Sometimes we will engage in behaviors that are the best we can do in the face of the alternatives.

I believe that we are now faced with such a context with regard to the committed unions of gay and lesbian Christians. I am very mindful of the apostolic warning in I Corinthians 6:9-10: "Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers -- none of these will inherit the kingdom of God." Assuming that the NRSV has correctly translated arsenokoitai and malakoi, we could agree that "male prostitutes" and "sodomites" are not witness to or inheritors of the Kingdom of God. But what are the alternative behaviors for Christians who have a homosexual orientation? Of course these Christians are not to be promiscuous, exploitative, abusive, violent, harmful to minors. What then? To change is traumatically difficult, if not impossible for most persons who experience their homosexual orientation as not self-chosen. To require celibacy contradicts Augsburg Confession Article XXIII. To enter into a committed union that is intended to be life-long may be the best or certainly the least bad alternative for gay and lesbian Christians. And I can find no passage in the Bible which forbids such a committed union.

Such an understanding is not antinomian, nor does it set aside or reject the authority of the Bible. It adapts the law teaching of the Bible, as the church has done in the just war doctrine, in the remarriage of divorced persons, in the acceptance of lending money at interest, and in other areas.

 * * * * * * *

This is the best that I can do to express myself on these matters. I have tried to take your questions and concerns seriously. I have tried to listen to you and to understand you as best I am able. I have tried to express myself with as much clarity as I can so that you have an opportunity to understand me. I have tried to listen to Scripture, to the Lutheran confessions, and to the writings of Martin Luther. I have also tried to listen to biblical scholars, historians, and sound Lutheran theologians.

I ask of you one important question. Identify if you are able one Biblical text that forbids gay and lesbian committed unions. Not by implication, or inference, or logical conclusion. Just a clear Biblical text. You are concerned about texts. So am I.

I conclude with a prayer written by Thomas Merton and appropriate for me, for the church, and certainly for our gay and lesbian Christian brothers and sisters.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me,

Nor do I really know myself.
And the fact that I think I am following your will
Does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
Does in fact please you.
And I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
You will lead me by the right road
Though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore I will trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
And you will never leave me to face my struggles alone.

Sincerely, in Christ,

+ Stephen, bishop of the Metropolitan NY Synod