Ylvisaker cries out: “love of the truth is greater”, no "undue sympathy"; answers Theodore Graebner

      A key period in the downfall of the LC-MS was during the 1940s, and there were plenty of warnings given to it to avoid continuing its descent.  One of the most stirring rebukes came from the leading teacher of the ELS, or "Little Norwegian" Synod, the faithful Lutheran Norwegians who were assisted by Franz Pieper in their formation of a new synod. In 1944 a heated exchange of editorials came about at the instigation of the Editor of the Lutheran Witness, Prof. Theodore Graebner.  There are too many details in this situation to relate here.  For the interested reader, one may learn more of the background of this exchange from a 4-page excerpt from Theodore Aaberg's book A City Set on a Hill;: A History of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (Norwegian Synod) 1918-1968, available as a download >> here <<.  Below we pick up Aaberg's report with a strikingly passionate quote from an editorial of Dr. Sigurd Ylvisaker (p. 153-154, all emphasis mine):

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As for Dr. [Theodore] Graebner’s statement [in the Lutheran Witness] that in trying to be fair to the NLCA [Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, then ELC, now ELCA] he had not implied any accusation against the brethren of the Norwegian Synod [fellow Synodical Conference member ELS, after 1917], Dr. Ylvisaker cried out from the printed page [Lutheran Sentinel, April 27, 1944, p. 121]:

Dr. Sigurd Christian Ylvisaker
ELS ("Little Norwegian") leader
"The Truth, then, keeps us apart."

“Trying to be fair to the Norwegian Lutheran Church”? It is not fair to the Norwegian Lutheran Church or any other body to condone its errors in doctrine or practice, its dangerous associations, its false tendencies. It is not fair by undue sympathy to strengthen the Norwegian Lutheran Church in its wrong course. It is not fair to make much of a “strong reaction against unionistic services in the Norwegian Lutheran Church” and of a certain “conservative trend which is being manifested” there, while unionism and doctrinal indifferentism are two of the very factors which most seriously threaten the Lutheranism of that body. We express no mere sentiment when we say that we should gladly give our lives as individuals and our life as a synod if we could bring back to our former brethren in Christ that pure Gospel and clear Lutheran doctrine which we at one time shared with them. It is not prejudice against them that now draws us apart, but rather prejudice in their favor that would continually draw us together again. In other words, no one would be more inclined to be “fair” in our evaluation than we. But the love of the truth is greater, and, too, that love of these former brethren which owes it to them to tell them the truth. The Truth, then, keeps us apart.

We ask the Lutheran Witness to consider again what it owes this same Truth.

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Norman Madson, Sigurd Ylvisaker

The figure of Sigurd Ylvisaker is quite striking – he was a stately man, and I might add a handsome one.  But much more important than this was his passion for the Truth, the truth in defense against the main figure in the LCMS's downfall.  In 1955 the ELS would end its fellowship with the LCMS, a separation that continues to this day.  Dr. Ylvisaker was a champion for the doctrines of the Inspiration of Scripture, Objective Justification, and Church Fellowship, the very doctrines in which the LCMS was falling.  He and his fellow teacher Norman A. Madson (Sr.) were among the strongest defenders for the Truth in the 1940s.  As I look at Sigurd Ylvisaker, I see one who spoke like… Franz Pieper.