Gospel vs Law, or vs Bible: LCMS false dichotomy – Part 1 of 3

      What is a "dichotomy"?  Merriam-Webster defines it thus: "a division into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups or entities". This is a useful tool to unravel the teaching in today's LC-MS institutions.

      Franz Pieper taught that

“There are ... but two religions ... the religion of the Law, or of man’s own works, and the religion of the Gospel, or of faith in Christ” (Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 10, 19)

So Pieper's teaching has the Christian "dichotomy" of Law versus Gospel.  And although God's Law in the Holy Scriptures is to be taught in the Church, yet it is only faith in the Gospel that can save.  This is popularly known as the teaching of "Law and Gospel". Another version could be stated

"Gospel versus Law".

This dichotomy is clearly taught in the Bible – Ephesians 2:8-9 and Galatians 2:16 come to mind.  Luther clearly taught it, for example in his sermons (see here).  All Christian doctrine, so far as it is Christian, teaches this.

      Although it would seem that the LC-MS teaches this, yet they also teach something else.  In 1986, Jacob A. O. Preus III (son of J.A.O. Preus II, former LC-MS president), wrote the following in his doctoral thesis, >> p. 133 <<:

“The Lutheran confessional understanding of the inerrancy of Scripture is significantly different from that found among many Reformed or fundamentalist theologians. … The inerrant Bible, therefore, is not the object of faith, but Jesus Christ and His vicarious satisfaction are the object and the source of certainty of faith. It is therefore from the perspective of faith that the Confessions view Scripture as being without error.”

One may understand the following "dichotomy" from this assertion:

"Gospel versus Bible"

So faith in the Gospel saves, not faith in the Bible.  Preus claims that this is the "Lutheran confessional understanding", but offers no explicit evidence from the Book of Concord directly stating this dichotomy.  So he separates "Christ" from the "inerrant Bible" and creates a dichotomy of these two to create his "Lutheran confessional understanding", an assertion that I will call a False Dichotomy. The Lutheran Book of Concord never creates this dichotomy. There is no dichotomy between these two.  Momentrix explains further what a "false dichotomy" does:

"This fallacy is common when the author has an agenda and wants to give the impression that their view is the only sensible one. Readers should always be suspicious of the false dichotomy.

Franz Pieper warned against this "false dichotomy" in Lehre und Wehre 1890 (emphasis mine):

"To fight for the doctrine of justification [i.e. the Gospel] and for Holy Scripture and the Christian religion amounts to one and the same thing.… Furthermore, as regards the understanding of Scripture let me say: Theologians who err in regard to the doctrine of justification are sitting not in Scripture, but before a closed door, no matter how diligently they may study and quote the Bible. To those who do not understand the doctrine of justification the Bible is merely a book of moral instructions with all manner of strange side issues."

Dr. Preus would certainly not admit to erring on the doctrine of Justification.  So then why would he make this substitution:

"Gospel versus Law" – Biblical dichotomy (Gal. 2:16) is transformed into

"Gospel versus Bible" – Preus/LC-MS dichotomy (false dichotomy).

Preus's low view of Holy Scripture in essence takes the Bible's focus of the Law's ineffective nature to save and substitutes the Bible's ineffective nature to save, a foreign teaching to Christianity, the Lutheran Confessions, Luther, Walther, and Franz Pieper. Could it be that this false dichotomy indicates a weakness in the proper distinction of Law and Gospel? — In the next Part 2, we find that this teaching is not isolated in the LC-MS. 

- - - - - - - - -  (After the break below read the statement of Dr. Robert Preus on this matter:)  - - - - - - - -

Dr. Robert Preus, uncle of Dr. Jacob A. O. Preus III, stated the following in his 1977 book Getting Into the Theology of Concord : a Study of the Book of Concord, p. 28, (quoted on BookOfConcord.org here):

"Scripture is authoritative, according to our Confessions, not because it contains and proclaims the Gospel—the Gospel is proclaimed in many writings—but because it is God's Word".

Confusion on this teaching rules in today's LC-MS, even among those of the family of "Preus". In a later post, we will discover a surprising current teacher at Concordia Theological Seminary-Ft. Wayne who seems not to have forgotten this teaching.