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WELS Campus Ministry UW-Platteville
“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” - Psalm 119:105
Meeting Minutes for February 7, 2011
This Weeks Attendance: 13 Members
1) New Business
a. Weekly activity: Game night in the basement of the Engineering Building in the
conference room on Wednesday (Feb. 9th) at 8:00 pm. Please bring games to
play.
Bible Study:
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What ELCA says about creation:
o Professor Stanley Beck and ELCA layman, is quoted in the Lutheran Standard
as saying: “The principle of evolution is now as well established as the atomic
theory; it is as well documented and verified as any scientific principle
known. And to announce that you do not believe in evolution is as
irrational as to announce that you do not believe in electricity.”
o Rev. Alvin Rogness, former President of Luther Seminary writes in the
Lutheran Standard, “I am a bit impatient with all this excitement over Adam.
Whether God shaped Adam out of clay and had him burst instantly into life
(like the story of the Gingerbread Boy) or whether He took eons of time to do
it really disturbs me very little.”
o Pastor Thomas Mails’ Confirmation Manual, widely used in ALC, His Kingdom
Come, states on page 2: “Genesis is a theological story; not scientific.” On
page 6: “When we refer to Genesis Chapters 1 through 11 as a ‘theological
account of creation,’ we mean that the account is the result of God’s having
made Himself known to a believing writer or writers. Perhaps no one can say
for certain how these first chapters are to be understood; but the individual
believer who accepts them as theological accounts of creation seems to have
far more to gain and fewer problems that the one who prefers to take them
as literal history.” In the Summary Chart on page 164 it reads; “Genesis 1
and 2 - From millions to 4000 B.C.”
o From Christian Dogmatics, 1984, Vol. 1, p. 298, edited by Carl Braaten and
Robert Jenson, the suggested doctrine textbook for the seminaries of the
ELCA church: “Creation is all of the world viewed as belonging to God…It is
not an historical event; it is the doctrine of how we understand the world
when God dominated our thinking.”
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What the Missouri synod says about creation:
o Dr. Martin Scharlemann, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, said in Baal or God,
page 197: “Beyond Noah are the accounts of creation and the fall. What
shall we make of them? This is the area, I would suggest, where the
dimension of the symbolic (or mythical, if you wish) bulks large.”
o Dr. Alfred Von Rohr Sauer, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis: “As a result of
scientific research in geology, biology, archeology, and scholarly study of the
Bible, we can now accept theistic evolutions as an alternative. For the sake
of our young people it is well to tell them that theistic evolution is acceptable
as an alternative.”
What the WELS says about creation:
o From “This We Believe” (a book of the official doctrinal statements of the
WELS), p.45: “We believe that the universe, the world, and the human race
came into existence in the beginning when God created heaven and earth
and all creatures (Genesis 1,2). Further testimony to this event is found in
other passages of the Old and New Testament (for example, Exodus 20:11;
Hebrews 11:3). The creation happened in the course of six consecutive days
of normal length by the power of God’s almighty word.”
o The main difference is that WELS uses Bible passages when showing what
we believe about creation.
o From “Exegesis of Genesis 1 and 2”, by Dr. Siegbert Becker, in the Wisconsin
Lutheran Quarterly, August 1967: “If the evolutionary view of man is correct
then the Fall can only be a step upward. What is described for us, then in
Genesis 3 should no longer be spoken of as a fall but as one of the greatest
forward strides in the whole history of the human race, and it is certain that
St. Paul’s statement in Romans 5, that “just as sin entered the world by one
man,” will have to be given up as only a rabbinical misunderstanding of the
Old Testament. “If scientists would be truly scientific and say that the
universe seems to be millions of years old, or even that it is millions of years
old unless at some time in the past the whole natural world came into being
in a supernatural, miraculous way, or that some catastrophic event or events
speeded up certain processes of nature at one time or another, we would
have no reason to quarrel with them; in fact we would agree and say that the
earth appears to be far more ancient than it is, and we know that it is much
younger that it seems to be only because God, who is the only one who really
knows how all things came to be, has shared this secret with us in Genesis 1
and 2…And so it is a question of how we are going to read our Bible. If men
are to be free to say that the story of creation is a myth, then what will
prevent them from saying the account of the resurrection of Christ is a
myth, that the prophecy concerning the second coming of Christ is a myth?
All of these things are being said in the Christian Church and also in the
Lutheran Church today. Find a church that will tolerate theologians who
deny the historical accuracy of Genesis 1 and 2 and you will also usually find
a church which will tolerate men who question the historical correctness of
the accounts of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. . . . Such arguments
always assume that if there is a conflict between the opinions of men and the
teachings of the Bible, it is the teaching of the Bible that stands in the need
of revision, whereas we ought to remember that it is the evil, unbelieving
heart of man that needs to be renewed and the corrupt and blinded reason
of man that needs to be enlightened.”