The Holy Spirit Works Efficaciously Through the Law
J-904
"All Scripture ought to be distributed into these two principal topics, the Law and the promises."
Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article IV, Justification, Concordia Triglotta, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921, p. 121. Tappert, p. 108.
J-905
"But the chief office or force of the Law is that it reveal original sin with all its fruits, and show man how very low his nature has fallen, and has become [fundamentally and] utterly corrupted; as the Law must tell man that he has no God nor regards [cares for] God, and worships other gods, a matter which before and without the Law he would not have believed. In this way he becomes terrified, is humbled, desponds, despairs, and anxiously desires aid, but sees no escape; he begins to be an enemy of [enraged at] God, and to murmur, etc. This is what Paul says, Romans 4:15: 'The Law worketh wrath.' And Romans 5:20: Sin is increased by the Law. [The Law entered that the offense might abound.']
Smalcald Articles, Third Part, I. 3. Of Sin. Concordia Triglotta, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921, p. 479. Tappert, p.
J-906
“Thesis VIII. In the fourth place, the Word of God is not rightly divided when the Law is preached to those who are already in terror on account of their sins or the Gospel to those who live securely in their sins."
C. F. W. Walther, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, trans., W. H. T. Dau, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1928, p. 101.
When Lutherans speak about the efficacy of the Word, we should never neglect the power of the Holy Spirit in working through the Law. Although Christians in general seem to acknowledge the Law, and Lutherans often mention the concept of Law and Gospel, in practice the Law of God has been almost completely abandoned. Once again, it is because Lutherans have lost their trust in the Holy Spirit working through the Word alone. The evidence is all around us. Lutheran seminaries clamor for counseling expertise in their students. Counseling can be extremely valuable. The Christian faith has a long history of the Care of Souls, called Seelsorge in German. But the counseling which is advocated and put into practice today is a horrible hodge-podge of Freud, Jung, Masters and Johnson, Carl Rogers, and Reformed authors who vainly seek to Christianize a method plainly pagan and materialistic in origin. For instance, the analysis of dreams pioneered by Freud and his disciple Jung is nothing more than a rehash of Jewish occultism from the Kabala. Masters and Johnson, the dreary and sad looking sex experts from St. Louis, have turned the Scriptural revelation of “God is love” into “Love is god,” or rather, to be more precise, “Sex is god.” Carl Rogers, an apostate, bragged that he began a revolution by teaching all counselors to be non-judgmental. Some call his method “aren’t you counseling.” If a boy says he would like to kill his father, the properly trained pastor will respond, in a flat and non-judgmental voice, “You are angry, aren’t you.”
Reformed authors are even worse than the classical secular leaders. The case of the Journal of Pastoral Care is instructive. Clinical Pastoral Education began in part with the work of Anton Boisen, whose mental illness and divinity school background prompted him to work toward helping people by training ministers to be comfortable in the hospital setting. Boisen emphasized the Christian faith and influenced others to create organizations to promote the training of current and future pastors for hospital work and individual counseling. Seward Hiltner, Princeton Seminary, established the Journal of Pastoral Care with this idea in mind. In the 1970s, the Journal of Pastoral Care was written for ministers with an emphasis on theology. Later, the same periodical adopted the style and method of the psychological journals. The message was completely secular, because pastoral counselors look at psychiatrists the way socialists look at Marxists. A psychiatrist is the real thing, the expert who gains everyone’s attention. I recall a speaker in Cleveland stating quite bitterly that Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross got all the credit for grief counseling (from writing On Death and Dying) after working on the subject with two pastoral counselors.
The larger Lutheran synods established required Clinical Pastoral Education quarters for all their students. The standards in training were not Christian, but secular and were based upon the tendencies of the individual chaplain in charge. Most of them were ministers who were eclectic, borrowing a little here and there, depending upon what was popular at the moment. One Waterloo Lutheran Seminary program featured two Methodist ministers in charge of Lutherans, Mennonites, and Dutch Reformed.483 We spent a lot of time studying various therapeutic methods, including Carl Rogers and Masters/Johnson. When I took a second quarter of CPE at Yale’s alcoholism center after the required work at Waterloo, the psychiatrist in our group made fun of my comments about forgiveness through the Gospel, saying, “Should we tell the alcoholic to put his hands on the television and be healed?”
Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary has students studying the so-called Christian counseling books of Reformed authors. Walther’s Law and Gospel would be much better, but the WELS Pietists are smitten and will not be parted from the sanctimony of the Reformed. If we look at their attempt to add a tint of Lutheran doctrine to this effort, in The Counseling Shepherd, we find the Fuller influence writ large. The authors present Presbyterian Jay Adams as if he were a Lutheran who believes in the efficacy of the Word alone! According to this standard WELS and ELS seminary text, Larry Crabb, a favorite psychologist for the Church Growth Movement, is good reading for the shepherd who counsels his sheep.484 Interestingly, false doctrine in The Counseling Shepherd led the Church of the Lutheran Confession into the same error – that God commands us to love ourselves.
J-907
“Low self-esteem enters in when we see things in ourselves that prevent us from having the love of self that we normally have or would like to have…
As objects of God's love, we can properly love ourselves... The same love of God which redeemed me has also reached out to my neighbor. This fact gives motive and meaning to the Lord's command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' It leads me to see my neighbor as someone for whom the Savior died, and it compels Gospel outreach. Such love of my neighbor helps me avoid both pride and low self-esteem. It leads me to the kind of self-love that gratefully and humbly rejoices in the gifts, talents, and blessings of God which can be used in loving service to my neighbor."
Armin Schuetze and Frederick Matzke, The Counseling Shepherd, Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1988, p. 199. Cited with approval by David Schierenbeck.
Pastors David Schierenbeck and Paul F. Nolting accepted this nonsense and began promoting it in the so-called Church of the Lutheran Confession, causing enormous conflict. Several ministers left or were fired by the CLC. Three congregations left the CLC. Nolting made matters worse with his paper, delivered at an annual clergy meeting in his role as chairman of the board of doctrine. No one promoting self-love or self-esteem in the CLC seemed to care that it was just a regurgitation of WELS rehashing the false doctrine of Fuller Seminary, Robert Schuller, and James Dobson.
J-908
"A man loves his wife because she brings him a variety of pleasures, satisfies his needs, etc. His wife satisfies his love of himself. Is he sinning by loving his wife which satisfies his self-love? A young man desires the office of a bishop. He loves to preach the Gospel. He derives satisfaction and fulfillment from preaching. Is he sinning because preaching satisfies his love of himself? These questions need to be raised because of the contention that all self-love is sinful."485
Paul F. Nolting, "The End-time Heresy of the Cosmic Gospel of Self-Salvation," CLC Pastors' Conference, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, June 20-22, 1995, p. 8.
Therefore, the abandonment of trust in the Law of God has had the effect of letting Lutherans turn to the secular leaders of psychiatry or to the Reformed amalgamation of false doctrine and psychiatry. Either form of leaven spreads quickly and turns into hedonistic Unitarianism. Lutherans have already become used to this leaven and no longer wish to hear the pure Word of God. Once Christians are introduced to self-love in the sermon, the Bible class, and synodical press and thus after being exposed to it at work, they view the irritation of their Old Adam as the sign of bad preaching, bad pastors, and bad karma. They will not abide this and desire only to be praised and told God loves them. In truth, if the Law is removed, the Gospel also vanishes.
