As I examine my attitude towards various issues within our Australian Lutheran Church, and, as I also look back to my child-hood years, which were spent in a Lutheran manse, I clearly recall various Lutheran women’s issues, which mainly related to the wearing of hats, to voting at the Congregation’s Meetings and at Synods and to women being ordained as Lutheran Pastors.
Since I was born during the Second World War on Yorke Peninsula and then lived in a town located on the River Murray, I spent my growing-up years until the Lutheran Union in 1966, in the ELCA branch. My father, who was Pastor F. W. Noack, had been a student at Concordia Seminary during the 1930s, during which time he drew portraits of his Seminary Professors, most of whom were members of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. When he graduated, he served as a missionary in New Guinea, until this role ended when the Second World War began.
Being the eldest son of a Lutheran Pastor, its was a common experience for me to be asked whether I intended to be a Lutheran Pastor, just like my Father. Certainly, I was familiar with the planning and providing of worship services for the six separate congregations in this parish and, apart from hearing many sermons, I was often able to play the organ for the singing as required. The members were loyal attenders and I particularly enjoyed the after-church chats and discussions about the latest weather conditions and issues relating to farm-life. Football was also frequent topic for analysis.
My Father liked to express his concern that the Australian Lutheran Churches remained “evangelical” and stressed the preaching of the “Gospel”. He liked to include the Law as a Mirror, which reveals our sinfulness and our deserved penalty. However, he also presented Laws as helpful curbs and rules, which have love and compassion as their underlying principle and which have the Love of Jesus’ as the motivation for loving our fellow-humans. In fact, my Father tried very hard to retain the word “Evangelical’ in the name of the united Lutheran Church in 1966, but this idea of an “ELCA” was not adopted.
He also spent much time preparing a booklet dealing with the differences between the biblical Creation Account in Genesis and the Theory of biological and psychological Evolution. During this research, he both communicated with relevant Scientists and he submitted many “Letters to the Editor” of the Adelaide Advertiser, in relation to this ideological conflict between a very young and a very old Universe. My own preference here was for a very old universe.
As a life-long Lutheran, it was not unusual for me to attend both Concordia College and Seminary from 1957 to 1968. During the Seminary Course, lectures were given by both the Lecturer from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod named Dr Rehwinkel and by our local Lecturers, including Drs Hermann Sasse and Dr Henry Hamann Jnr. Dr Hamann sought to maintain the biblical balance required by the Athanasian Creed, which stated that Jesus, Holy Communion and, by analogy, the Bible involved two natures, each of which was “fully human” and “fully divine” or “fully elemental” and “fully divine”.
Dr Hamann had observed that the biblical fundamentalism, which had emerged and had spread widely in the USA in the early 1900s and was being copied by some main-line churches, including Lutheran Churches, gave equal importance to every sentence and concept in the whole Bible. Hence, by stressing only the Bible’s “fully divine” dimension as only the “Word of God”, this view decreed the doctrine of inerrancy and infallibility. Dr Hamann was more honest than this about the Bible’s obvious limitations, faults and fallibility. He indicated that Lutherans, who correctly stress and give priority to Jesus’ Gospel, and not to everything written in their mostly obsolete Jewish Bible or Old Testament, can not be literalistic, anti-intellectual and naïve Fundamentalists. Lutherans are meant to be more discerning and Good-news based than such legalistic and literalistic Fundamentalism.
After my graduation and my ordination as a Lutheran Pastor in a country parish, I was once again involved in presenting the balanced Law and Gospel, with priority given to the Gospel. I also enjoyed continuing the after-church chats about the weather and the farming conditions. A bonus was working with the Committee to purchase and install a pipe organ, to replace the previous reed organ which required pumping with the legs.
In order to fully explore the Christian view that the Bible is “fully human” and “fully divine”, I enrolled in the course of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Melbourne. This course included the study of Near Eastern Archaeology, Ancient History, academic Biblical Studies, the Akkadian and Syriac languages and Eastern Christianity, including Nestorianism, which had spread to India, to Asia and to China. This information allowed for both a scientific and a spiritual investigation of the Bible Lands, Events and Persons. I continued there as a Tutor in Ancient History and later taught World Religions at a Grammar School.
It is evident that the requirements for women to wear head coverings and to be prohibited from voting at church meetings have been relaxed and that the gender equality and equal opportunity for both genders have been respected. Many Lutherans, now in the majority, are therefore asking why has this respect still not been extended to the Ordination of Women?
One large issue has been the stress by some members of the LCA/NZ on the mentions of the Law in the Bible and on the Law’s supposed infallible and absolute status. This has been connected with their view that the statements and concepts in the whole Bible are equally infallible, inerrant and absolute. The next step is then for such Lutherans to claim that everything that they utter, which is based on only a literalistic and legalistic interpretation of the Bible is also infallible, inerrant and absolute. This belief in turn enables these members to assume the role as paper-based popes, who are equally infallible and authoritative.
The use by this Group of the “Law” in 1 Corinthians 14:35, is evidence that the Law here is given priority over the Gospel, even though this text is located between 1 Corinthians 13, which is Saint Paul’s Great Hymn of Love and 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8, which is Saint Paul’s summary of the Gospel or Good News of Jesus’ sacrificial death and victorious resurrection for our deliverance from sin, death and evil.
This narrow literalistic and legalistic interpretation of “Law” also ignores the other essential methods of fully understanding the Bible. Such interpretations include [1] its literal or surface; [2] its analytical or higher-critical; [3] its moral or ethical; [4] its poetical or figurative; [5] its parabolical or allegorical and [6] its spiritual or anagogical understandings.
Their biblical Fundamentalism also ignores the fact that the Bible contains the Writings of three different Religions. The Christian “Old Testament” is the Jewish “Tanakh” or Scriptures, which contains their 613 Mosaic Torah Laws, along with their strict and even lethal penalties for non-compliance. Since Jesus fulfilled these harsh Laws for us, these Jewish Laws are now redundant for all Christians, including Lutherans.
Although the Gospel of Matthew and the Letter of James are part of the Jewish-Christian Religion, they both also stress the importance and power of Christian Love. Saint James, in chapter 2:9, even refers to the Supreme Law of Love, which is expressed in the words: “You must love your neighbour as yourself”.
Recently, I have sought to articulate the traditional Lutheran emphasis on and the required priority to be given to Jesus’ Gospel or Good News, which bestows on us Jesus’ forgiveness, love, compassion, spiritual freedom and his egalitarian acceptance of all human races and genders. I have contributed posts to the website “Australian Lutherans”, until it was discontinued. I also contributed posts to the “Lutherans in Australia” web-site. My posts sought to stress [1] the priority of the Christian Gospel over the Law; [2] the egalitarian treatment by Jesus of those whom he encountered during his ministry, and [3] the Roman Catholic and Lutheran “Dyo-physite” or “Two Natures” position, which is included in the “Athanasian Creed”.
This position requires that the two natures which constitute Jesus and the Bible and the two elements which constitute the sacramental union of the bread and the elemental wine with the divine body and the blood are both “fully human” or “fully elemental” and also “fully divine”. The administrators of LiA appear to be so fixated by their adopted self-infallibility, self-authority and status as proclaimers of the absolute truth, that they have both rejected what Lutheranism has traditionally deemed to be the truth and have also exercised their inquisition and censorship powers to ban me and my attempt to present the traditional Lutheran truth.
I have indicated that the Lutheran Churches in Australia have for many decades dealt with issues relating to their female members. In the early 1970s, I recall that my wife purchased some token ladies’ headwear, which would not have impressed the race-goers at the Melbourne Cup. However, it acknowledged the sensitivities then, in relation to female head-covering. I also noted that the males were always able to hang up their hats on the hat pegs provided.
Since various women, who have been detrimentally affected by the current rejection of the Ordination of Women, are related to me and since I have witnessed what trauma and personal offence the current priority being given to the Old Covenant Law over the Christian Gospel is causing, I have been pleased to recall my life-long Lutheran experiences, including the practical wisdom and insights of such Seminary Lecturers as Dr Henry Hamann Jnr and Dr Vic. Pfitzner, so that the LCA/NZ can restore to its loyal but long-suffering members the gender justice, the respect, the egalitarian and equitable treatment and the Christian Love and Compassion, which has so far been withheld by a legalistic minority of fellow-members. The Supporters of WO are therefore living in the hope that this un-Lutheran spiritual abuse and “Bad-news” legalism will very soon be replaced by the “Good News” of Jesus’ love, compassion, forgiveness and deep respect for both the male AND the female genders within the LCA/NZ.
