March 4, 2005, from Pastor Fryer to Pastor Derr

First, about the word "homoerotic." It is simply a word, not a discourse or an essay. It seems to me that it as little reduces the complexity of homosexual reality to "eros" as the word "bluebird" reduces the bird to its "blueness." That's not how language works. To refer to "homoerotic" action is to point to the particular reality I want to discuss. It does not evaluate that action, and certainly it does not propose to give a total account of homosexual relationships.

Furthermore, "homoerotic" has the advantage of precision. Such words as "homosexual conduct" or "homosexual behavior" are too general. Who would want to condemn anyone's conduct in a blanket way?

If you can suggest a more graceful word that would refer to the particular matter being discussed, I would be grateful to you. Meanwhile, let me try to say some more about why I used the word "erotic" in my resolution. Maybe I am mistaken about my reading of church tradition, but it seems to me that one of the settled convictions we inherit from the saints of the past is that one ought to be very careful about the eroticizing of friendships, lest something good and precious on earth - friendship - be spoiled. Some of the most beautiful relationships in the Bible are friendships: Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi, David and Jonathan, Jesus and his disciples. And what St. Paul says about a "good person" is true and strikes a chord with many of us:

Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person-- though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. (NRS Romans 5:7)

These friendships between Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Jesus and the disciples are close, complex, and loving, but they are not eroticized. It is the same with the relationships between pastors and parishioners, students and teachers, bosses and subordinates, priests living together in rectories, monks and nuns living in their communities: sex should not be introduced where it does not belong.

So, I am not opposing "committed relationships" or even loving relationships for which one "might actually dare to die," but am trying to stand up for the old understanding of the sixth commandment -- We should fear and love God, and so we should lead a chaste and pure life in word and deed, each one loving and honoring his wife or her husband -- where "his wife" and "her husband" are defined as our Lord affirmed marriage:

But from the beginning of creation, ?God made them male and female.' ?For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh.(Mark 10:6-8, NRSV)

Let me move on to your important discussion of "law" and "love."

The understanding of Law and Gospel. It is not true that "somehow you have managed to write 35 pages without one reference to the grace of God, incarnate in Jesus Christ?" I spoke of this in the major section of the correspondence on "the gospel is ordered to the law." Perhaps my paragraph on what the Creed reveals about the heart of the "Commander" is relevant to your worries:

Luther's insight here is both brilliant and human: It is hard for us to obey commandments unless we know something about the heart of the Commander. What the Gospel teaches us is that the Commander, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is good and full only of love. He does not give us commands in order to increase his own glory, as if he were some mad general using us as cannon fodder to gain glory for himself, but rather his commands are entirely full of grace and love. Therefore it is always rational and wise for us to turn to his commands, even in times of stress and temptation. The law of God, then, should be treasured as the very best thing for us. We should give thanks to God continually, as does Psalm 119, that God's mercy includes giving us his Law.

The proof of these things, that the heart of the Commander is good, is the joint action of the triune persons in the life, death, and resurrected life of Jesus of Nazareth. I cannot speak of the law apart from Jesus. If I do, then I fall into works righteousness. So, when I speak of "law" I do not mean the works righteous sense of law which St. Paul and Luther so rightly taught us to reject, but rather I am speaking of the content of salvation. Your discussion of love in the household is very helpful here, in my opinion.

I am grateful to you for talking about domestic love, because it is concrete and easier for me to follow. Let's begin with your opening line, "My two sons know exactly what I expect of them." How do they know? How do they know, for example, that they are not to bear false witness against their neighbors. Especially how are they to know the profound interpretation of that commandment, "We should fear and love God, and so we should not tell lies about our neighbor, nor betray, slander, or defame him, but should apologize for him, speak well of him, and interpret charitably all that he does." I think that the answer is that as a loving father, you taught it to your sons. You actually preached the law to them. Love compelled you to do so. And if you had not preached the law to them, the world would have filled in the gaps with its own various visions of what is good and true and lovely in a human life.

Furthermore, if your sons had asked "Why should we not bear false witness against our neighbors?" in the end, you must either answer, "Because God requires that of us," or be silent. If you instead say, "Because I say so," then that is tyranny. It is the same in the pulpit: either we are exhorting according to God's law or our own, and if it is our own then we misrepresent our Lord.

So, I figure that you preached God's law to your sons. They might obey your preaching because they love you, but that is not my point. My point is that it is valid to preach God's law. We do it all the time. Love requires us to do it because in the end, God's law is the path of love in this world.

If you should protest that you do not preach God's law to your family, nor to your congregation, but instead urge them to walk "according to the heart," and to aim not to "break the heart," well, it seems to me that that might work for your generation, but what of the next generation? I have always admired you as being well-formed in God's law. You know what would "break the heart" of God or of your wife. But how is the next generation to know if you do not preach the law of God to them?

I was led to think about that in my devotions earlier this week when I was reading Psalm 11, particularly verse 3:

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?

By "the righteous" I was not thinking of our generation, but of the next generations. As for us, I tend to share Bonhoeffer's fear that our generation has been too much involved in controversies and dark times. I certainly do not include myself in "the righteous." But I do have hope for the young. Only, how can they be righteous if we have destroyed the foundations? Refusing to preach the will of God for us destroys the foundations, in my opinion. It leaves future generations bereft of a blessing that many of us received from our mother's and father's knee: the blessing of God's law.

Even on the domestic level, the gospel is ordered to the law. That is, it is precisely because your sons know that you love them, that they ought to obey your word. But love requires that you have words for them. How could a loving parent not preach law to the children?

The relevance to the matter of homosexual erotic behavior is that if God has a law about the matter, it is no betrayal of love to preach that law. I think God does have such a law. And I think that I stand within Christian tradition in saying this. So, that leads us on to your discussion of tradition and Piepkorn.

Piepkorn. Let me begin by quoting you:

I am personally offended when anyone dares to use my dear friend and teacher, Arthur Carl Piepkorn, in defense of a legalistic interpretation of both scripture and catholic tradition.

That is a wonderful thing to be able to say: that Piepkorn is your "dear friend and teacher." I envy you for that, for I also honor Piepkorn, but I never knew him nor studied under him. Still, he ranks very high in my estimation. In my church study, for example, I have only a few pieces of art: a crucifix, an icon, and a painting I cherish -- one of the Richard Caemmerer Jr. paintings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn.

(I do not actually recall daring to use your dear friend and teacher in my arguments, and I have done a search ("control F") of the entire Bouman-Fryer-Jenson correspondence, and I cannot find that any of us referred to your great teacher, but that is okay. I take it that somebody has misused your teacher, in your opinion, and surely you have the right to defend him.)

In any case, I am glad that you mentioned Piepkorn because I think I know a little bit about his teachings. Would this be fair to say about the man, in your judgment? That there is no understanding of the Piepkorn labors apart from a presumption in him in favor of catholic tradition. He urged, didn't he?, that Lutherans ought to search for "evangelical interpretations of catholic teaching." I am quite sure I saw this in his treatment of Marion doctrines. It was glorious the way Piepkorn sought for charitable interpretations of doctrines that many Lutherans had shied away from. Like Luther, he avoided works righteous praise of Mary, yet, also like Luther, he presumed that there was truth and wisdom in the tradition. He sought that truth most earnestly and brought it to wonderful expression in his generation.

The relevance of this to the present discussion is that I think that there should be a presumption in favor of the catholic tradition of chastity for all, married and unmarried alike, with sex reserved for marriage, where marriage is conceived as our Lord affirmed it. The "evangelical interpretation" of this tradition is the pastoral counsel that we should not boast of chastity or celibacy as a means of salvation. The pastoral dimension of it is much harder: it is the task, hard for each of us at various points, of seeking joy in the ways of the Lord.

That word "salvation" leads me on to an important subject: the Christological content of Salvation.

The Content of Salvation. While it is true that Jesus unconditionally accepts everyone -- no "ifs, ands, or buts" about it -- it is also true that what he accepts people into is his own life. And that is an extraordinary life, a saintly life. The Gospel does not affirm all of our deeds because, alas, some of them are vicious or wicked or sinful. While the church welcomes white supremacists, for example, it asks them to leave off their racism because it does not accord with their new life in Christ.

In general, the word "salvation" is not a cipher ready to be filled in according to whatever we happen to think would be saving. Rather, it has a concrete meaning: life in Christ. That is why St. Paul can phrase our highest Christian ideal as he does:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (RSV Galatians 2:20, my emphasis)

Jesus walked in the law of the Lord, and walks thus still. In fact, it is his law, along with that of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Therefore we should urge ourselves and one another to walk in that law too -- not in a works righteous way, but simply in order to move toward our baptismal gift of life in Christ.

And so again, I am standing up for the law. It is time to consider some of your claims concerning the law of God.

The law accuses. It seems to be an important point for you that God's law accuses us:

"the Law always accuses." Always means always. Therefore, Bishop Bouman is entirely correct and you, Pastor Fryer, and you, Professor Jenson, are in error.

But I fear that you have missed my point. I am not denying that God's law always accuses. In fact, I do not see how it could either reveal our sin or guide our discipleship unless it did so.

I wonder whether you have made an error of reasoning here. I had said something for which I believe there is good Biblical and confessional support. In fact, you quoted me: "The ?law is the way in which we should walk that we might live a life pleasing to God,' or ?the law is the will of our loving God for us.'" Now, you seem to think that it somehow disproves me when you say that the law always accuses.

The error of reasoning would be akin to this. Suppose I say to you, "The hummingbird is breathing." But you angrily respond, "The hummingbird is flying. Furthermore, if it were not flying, it would be dead." Well, I would still be free to answer, "Nonetheless, the hummingbird is breathing, and if it weren't breathing, it wouldn't be flying either."

Likewise, you passionately declare that "The law always accuses," to which I simply answer, "Nonetheless, the law is the way in which we should walk that we might be living a life pleasing to God. Furthermore, if it is not the way in which we should walk that we might please the Lord, it would not be accusing us either."

I think that I recognize your conceptuality. I think I see it in Werner Elert. It might be simply a happenstance. Elert says such things as this:

However, law and gospel dispute and contest each other's territory. The common territory over which they both claim sovereignty is the totality of humankind. Here they are engage in combat with each other, as the one abrogates the validly of the other.

But the law of God is the rule of death (Rom. 7:10; 8:2; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6ff). It reveals man's sin as it reveals the wrath of God -- in both instances, it leads to death. For that very reason, it is a destiny to which everything human is forfeit, it is a curse that rests on all.

I doubt that Elert would agree with my rather cheerful description of God's law as the way in which we should walk that we might live a life pleasing to God. I got that notion from Luther and Melanchthon:

Here, then, we have the Ten Commandments, a summary of divine teaching on what we are to do to make our whole life pleasing to God. They are the true fountain from which all good works must spring, the true channel through which all good works must flow. Apart from these Ten Commandments no deed, no conduct can be good or pleasing to God, no matter how great or precious it may be in the eyes of the world.(Luther, Large Catechism, Conclusion of the Ten Commandments)

We teach, furthermore, not only how the law can be kept, but also that God is pleased when we keep it ? not because we live up to it but because we are in Christ, as we shall show a little later. So it is clear that we require good works.(Melanchthon, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV. Justification. Love and the Keeping of the Law.)

Whether or not Elert and the Erlangen School stand behind your convictions, Pastor Derr, about law and gospel, I think that it is still worth pointing out that for any of us, our construal of Lutheranism is one of many in our long history. The Lutheranism of John Gerhard's Sacred Meditations, for example, or the exciting modern-day Lutheranism of the Finnish School of Luther Research is different from that of the Erlangen School or whatever school has formed us. Maybe the best we should claim is that we speak up for "a Lutheran view," not "the Lutheran view."

A few more matters: You wonder how I can believe in the abolition of slavery and the ordination of women, given that there is scriptural evidence against each. You might have added the important topic of anti-Judaism, also in the Bible. But the answer to this is plain. The answer has to do with the phrase I used again and again in the correspondence. It has to do with the Church's "apprehension of scripture." Of course, there is much in the Bible that we do not observe nowadays, including much ceremonial law from the Old Testament, dress regulations in the New Testament ("Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head," 1 Corinthians 11:4) and the big items of slavery and anti-Judaism. But the important point is that the lifting up and the suppressing of the Biblical testimony is not random or mindless, but is done through the Lord of the church, who lives and rules his church to this very day. So, the plain answer to why we obey some teachings and not others is because "The church says so."

Up till now, the church has always said no to homoerotic behavior. I admit this: It is a true possibility that the Holy Spirit might be leading the church into a new apprehension of scripture concerning homosexuality. I think that in fact happened in our own lifetime concerning the ordination of women. I know that much of the rest of Christ's church on earth disagrees with the ordination of women, and that the near universal witness of church history also disagrees, and yet scriptural evidence is ambiguous enough that I can honestly believe that the ordination of women is consistent with a deeper apprehension of scripture. To use that nice phrase of yours, my "best reverent guess" is that the Holy Spirit in our day and age is lifting up in our consciousness the ordination-kind of ministry of Mary, the Mother of our Lord, Mary Magdalene, and the women co-workers with Paul. To me, it seems an honorable proposal to make to Christ's whole church on earth that it is our Lord's will that women too should be eligible for ordination.

But from a scriptural point of view, the case for homoerotic behavior is profoundly doubtful, in my opinion. The weight of scripture seems so very clear. It seems that it would take not a "deeper apprehension" of scripture to justify changing the church's traditional teaching, but more along the lines of a "setting aside" of scripture.

That is why my dispute with you, Pastor Derr, might be somewhat along the lines of timing. I believe that the scriptural case is so doubtful that we must wait until there is much more consensus across Christ's Church on earth that there has been a true development of holy tradition in our day and age. At best, I think that the proposals for the blessing of same-sex unions and the ordination of homosexuals who refuse the discipline of celibacy must be considered as that -- as "proposals," not "the Gospel which it is somehow wicked to oppose."

It is because I think the scriptural case for the blessing of same-sex unions and gay/lesbian ordination is so very doubtful that I am laying my cards on the table to my clergy colleagues. Pastor Derr, you have questioned my pastoral heart. I do not question yours, for I know yours to be wide and deep as the ocean and full of love. But there is a larger issue at stake than whether we have pastoral relationships with homosexual people. It is a larger question than "pastoral heart" or "pastoral conscience." It is the question of souls. It is a question of what we are actually preaching to the souls entrusted to us. For the sake of those souls, I do not want to step outside the traditional teaching of the church.

Finally, I have attached a recent document, "A Response to the Report and Recommendations from the Task Force for ELCA Studies on Sexuality." It is signed by sixteen seasoned and honored Lutheran theologians, including two theologians important to our Metro New York Synod. As we read this response, let our spirits and imaginations wander all over this earth of ours, in all those places where Christ's church is. Let us think of our brothers and sisters in the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Churches, the Lutheran churches in Africa (including our companion diocese in Tanzania), and the vast number of Christians in America in the Evangelical churches. And then, let us multiply their witness ten thousand, ten thousand times by recalling the beliefs of the apostles and the saints through all the ages. The proposals for same-sex unions and homosexual ordination are extraordinary. They are out of the tradition and out of the settled convictions of most of the Communion of Saints. They are very rare. They might also be very wrong. I think they are. But in any case, God's will be done. To him be the glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Respectfully submitted,
Pastor Gregory Fryer