Gospel vs. Bible? LC-MS official teaching (Part 2 of 3)

      This continues from Part 1, a short series unraveling the confusing teaching emanating from the LC-MS teachers since the Walkout of 1974. — In this segment, we demonstrate that the false dichotomy of "Gospel versus Bible" is again the firm, official teaching of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. 

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      In Dr. Samuel Nafzger's Confessing the Gospel textbook (CPH, 2018), he states explicitly what is to be taught officially to the future pastors of the LC-MS. The following is an excerpt (indented) from p. 739, interspersed with my comments in red text:

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      “Accordingly, the adequacy of faith is intimately linked to the inerrancy of Scripture, which necessarily becomes for many the “watershed doctrine” on which the church stands or falls. 

Luther blasted Erasmus for his “obscurity of Scripture” and answered Erasmus’s charge that Luther should “preach Christ crucified” instead of teaching against “free will”. See Prof. Eugene Klug’s “Saving Faith and the Inerrancy of Scripture” (🔗, Springfielder October 1975), p. 206. On p. 209, Klug states: “When Scripture is described as a medley or composite of divine and human elements, of truth and error, then the Good News itself, the Gospel, is no longer safe.”   

A straw man
"Gospel versus Bible"

Nafzger makes light of the Inerrancy of Scripture.  He creates a “straw man” argument that devalues the foundation of the Gospel. This explicitly denies that the Gospel comes from God in His Word. Nafzger pits a faith in divine inerrancy against the “proclamation of the gospel”. This is exactly the charge of the so-called “moderates” in the LC-MS against “old Missouri”. Where is the praise of those who defend Inerrancy?  There are none.  Then one must question Nafzger/LCMS’s “proclamation of the gospel” for it cannot be guaranteed to be a divine message, you are just to believe it without the foundation of Holy Scripture – pure Enthusiasm. One must question a "gospel" that has lost its foundation.

“Confessional Lutheranism, in opposition to this view [of Carl Henry], …

Again, this is a "straw man" argument. Nafzger sets up the Reformed theologian Carl F. H. Henry's view (fundamentalist?) as his target, yet he discounts Luther’s strong defense of Holy Scripture. Luther never set up the Bible as something “not the object of faith” as Nafzger (and Jacob Preus III). It is revealing that Nafzger singles out the Reformed yet leaves Roman Catholics untouched in his defense of “confessional Lutheranism”.

“… regards Scripture as the source, rule, and norm for the proclamation of the gospel 

In other words, NOT the Gospel, only the "proclamation of the gospel". This is clearly meant to cut off faith in “inerrancy”, and thereby Inspiration as unnecessary. But, as Pieper teaches Christian Dogmatics volume 1, p. 312, there can be no witness of the Holy Ghost… without the Word of the Apostles and Prophets.

“…in all its articles and for the administration of the sacraments, the means 

“Scripture” is “source, rule, and norm” but maybe it is not divine since faith in “inerrancy” is unnecessary to believe the gospel.

“…through which the Holy Spirit works to create faith. 

Neither Luther nor Confessions nor old Missouri taught this way.  This teaching only comes from the “growing number of systematic theologians” (p. 739), like Dr. Nafzger, Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus III and the LCMS in general.

“Accordingly, Jesus Christ, and not the Bible as God’s special revelation, is the object of faith”.

It is both-and, not the either-or of Nafzger’s false dichotomy, his brand of “confessional Lutheranism”. Franz Pieper admits in his Christian Dogmatics vol. 1, p. 313-316, that missionaries are to preach the Gospel, then adds: "And when faith in Christum 'crucifixum' has once been created, there is no need to worry about securing faith in the divinity of Holy Scripture." Pieper says that once there is a true faith, a faith in the Universal, Objective Justification of the world, then faith in the Scriptures automatically follows.  Pieper's statement charges today's LC-MS as preaching a faulty "gospel", a "gospel" based on a "divine-human word". This faulty "word" creates what Luther calls a "monster of uncertainty". So to divorce “the Bible” from “Jesus Christ” is to proclaim a false Christ, because it, at minimum, weakens the “foundation of the prophets and apostles”. And the “Jesus Christ” that Nafzger’s LCMS proclaims is weak for it does not preach a pure Gospel, but a "gospel" without a firm foundation of Holy Scripture, which, again, is essentially pure Enthusiasm (Luther's Schwärmerei). 

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      One could wonder that the light of God's Word is going completely dark in Pres. Matthew Harrison's LC-MS, but then one reads one of the essays in the book Defending Luther's Reformation (CPH 2017), that is a complete surprise… in Part 3.