Autumn Greeting from LCMS President Harrison from VimeoLCMS on Vimeo.

In rhetoric, people use words in order to convince. Sometimes their words are logical, sometimes their words aren’t logical. Here are just a few “illogical” appeals to emotion that are commonly used by speakers in order to persuade.

The first is the appeal to consequences. An example might be, “Vote for proposition X. If X is approved, apples for everyone!”

Another is the appeal to fear. Here, an example might be, “Vote for proposition X. If you don’t, calamity will occur.”

Still another is the appeal to flattery. As in, “You have all the power, so I’m sure that you’ll make the right decision concerning proposition X.”

Yet another is the appeal to pity. As in, “Group A has done so much work on proposition X, it would be a shame if it were not approved.”

Still another is the appeal to ridicule. As in, “Surely those who do not support proposition X can’t be serious–and this is serious business!”

Yet another is the appeal to spite. As in, “You don’t want our opponents to succeed, do you? Then vote for proposition X.”

Finally, there is the appeal to ignorance. As in, “We don’t know what will happen if proposition X is not approved. But whatever it is, our gut tells us it won’t be good.”

When someone is trying to persuade you, listen carefully to their words. Avoid being swayed by appeals to emotion and ask yourself, “Does what I’m hearing make good sense?”

Decade of Mercy (LCMS WR-HC) from It’s Time on Vimeo.

Rev. President Kessa with Rev. Matt Harrison

An update from Matt Harrison:

I have been having trouble updating my blog for the past day or two. In fact, as I was trying to update my blog a few moments ago, we had an aftershock tremor that shook the building and I lost Internet again but was able to link the account to a phone.

Very briefly we went into Haiti today to meet President Kessa. We gave him an emergency grant for $30,000 as well as a few other items like the French version of LSB.

Six members of our assessment team accompanied President Kessa to Port-au-Prince. President Kessa asked me, Revs. Collver and Hernandez also to come to Port-au-Prince, but we declined so as to not complicate the logistics of the trip.

President Kessa expressed gratitude to the LCMS for assisting his church and for sending people on the ground.

Tomorrow we will travel to Haiti to retrieve the rest of our team and to distribute food stuffs (rice, oil, etc.) to President Kessa.

Meanwhile, the Medical Mercy Team has been warmly recieved and provided much needed assistance when the hospital was most in need.

The need is great, but the Lord contines to bless. I hope to update this again tomorrow.

MCH

While IVF creates thousands of new families a year, an increasing number of the newborns are twins, and they carry special risks often overlooked in the desire to produce babies. While most twins go home without serious complications, government statistics show that 60 percent of them are born prematurely. That increases their chances of death in the first few days of life, as well as other problems including mental retardation, eye and ear impairments and learning disabilities. And women carrying twins are at greater risk of pregnancy complications.

Yet curiously, The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations in their 1996 report on procreative issues find it difficult to say either Yea or Nay:

The Commission is troubled about the potential for abuse opened up by this technology. We understand why some Christians urge us simply to reject the entire practice. But we are reluctant to locate the problems that arise simply in the medical technique itself and to suggest that Christians could never faithfully use it.

Our discussion of the previous cases outlined the scriptural basis for taking into account the divinely established one-flesh union of marriage. We agree with the synodical representatives who argued that faithful use of in vitrotechnology will involve sperm and eggs only from within the marriage. This conclusion is consistent with the advice we offered in the cases involving surrogacy and artificial insemination by donor.

Why is it so difficult to see and believe that the divinely instituted means for the procreation of children is through the proper use of our created bodies, that is, the one-flesh union of male and female? It seems that the CTCR’s argument is similar to those who want to offer grape juice and rice cakes for the Sacrament, and then justify such because the Words of Institution were added.

Source: Christians and Procreative Choices: How Do God’s Chosen Choose? September, 1996, p. 37 (accessed October 11, 2009)

Dr. Baker, could you please elaborate on the “strong divine command theory ethic”? I was recently accused of perpetrating the heresy of “taking the Bible literally”, an error which was portrayed as being a phenomenon which sprang up in the early 1900s in response to scientific advances. I think my accuser was saying I am a Fundamentalist, which I am not.

Here’s my response:

Pastor Keith, at the turn of the last century many Christians were divided over the issue of evolution, the purpose, role, and authority of Scripture, etc.

The world was changing. Because believers also use the language of the world, which brings with it ideas and concepts foreign to the faith, they begin to reflect and write on their faith in a different way. Some believers followed after the Princeton theologians and accepted Fundamentalism. Others, following Kant and Schleiermacher, accepted Liberalism. When you are accused of being a Fundamentalist, or a literalist, or a traditionalist, for example, most likely the person making such an exaggeration is operating from a Liberal set of beliefs, whether or not he or she is aware of it.

In addition to Fundamentalism, another reaction to Liberalism came through the teaching of Swiss Reformed theologian, Karl Barth. Barth denied Natural Law and taught a strong divine command theory ethic, which means that the only commands valid for the Christian are those recorded verbatim in Scripture. If you cannot find a Bible verse specifically condemning any activity, then you are free to do that activity.

I find this line of reasoning being utilized, with no apparent credit to Barth, by Missouri Synod theologians beginning in the 1930′s, about the same time as when Barth was having his famous debate with Emil Brunner.

The strong divine command theory ethic is why, in my opinion, that modern ["conservative"] Lutherans accept contraception (because it is not specifically condemned in Scripture), whereas orthodox Lutherans (Luther, Melanchthon, Chemnitz, Gerhard, et. al.) condemned it as violating the first, fourth, fifth, and six commandments.

This [ethic] is also why “conservative” Lutherans today are unable successfully to address current moral crises. To wit, most current condemnations of the ELCA’s decision to allow same-sex unions and the ordination of gays and lesbians highlight that these are condemned in Scripture.

True, but same-sex attraction and activity also violates the moral law embedded in human nature. [In addition to God's wrath, there are also severe temporal consequences for violating Natural Law. "Conservative" Lutherans don't talk about those, either.] Even without Scripture, these folks should know better. If you don’t believe me, ask St. Paul.

For more about my views, log on to bioethike.com.

Blessings,
Robert C. Baker

This morning, I contacted Dr. Judith Reisman by e-mail, asking her if she knew the provenance of the term “sexual beings.” Dr. Reisman has spent a considerable part of her life exposing the fraudulent statistical data Kinsey used in support of changing sexual mores during the 1930s-50s in the United States, not to mention numerous unseemly sexual details about Kinsey himself.

Here is part of Dr. Reisman’s response:

From: jareisman@cox.net [mailto:jareis...@cox.net]
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 2:38 PM
To: Robert Baker
Subject: Re: Greetings

Dear Dr. Baker,

That is the direct Kinsey fallout, of all children are sexual from birth to  Planned Parenthood’s Mary Calderone to the fields of psychology, social work, sociology psychiatry and the general society. Calderone extended it to the womb, claiming a boy baby has an erection in the womb thus proving “sexuality” in the womb.

I discuss this in my book Kinsey Crimes and Consequences. . .

Best, JA Reisman

As I mentioned here, sexual beings is used several times in Human Sexuality: A Theological Perspective, published by The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations (1981). This is all the more important given the recent passage of Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America at its General Assembly meeting in Minneapolis this week.

Actually, the ELCA sexuality statement uses the term sexual beings three times:

Erotic desire, in the narrow sense, is only one component of the relational bonds that humans crave as sexual beings. (lines 355-356, p. 11).

The counsel to love and care for the neighbor is not a command that is foreign to our created natures; rather, reaching out in love and care is part of who we are as relational and sexual beings. (lines 361-363, p. 11)

We are sexual beings from the beginning of our lives. (line 884, p. 24).

Note again similar verbiage from SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States):

All persons are sexual, in the broadest sense of the word. . . Sexual feelings, desires, and activities are present throughout the life cycle.

Planned Parenthood:

We are all sexual. We are sexual from the day we are born until the day we die. Our sexuality affects who we are and how we express ourselves as sexual beings.

And now, Human Sexuality: A Theological Perspective:

Few characteristics so deeply stamp our selfhood as our maleness and femaleness. In fact, it is quite impossible for us to know ourselves as God’s good creation without a recognition of our identity as sexual beings. . . what Jesus did to redeem us from the power of sin and its affect on our lives as sexual beings. . . it is hoped that the affirmations stated at the end of the study will provide guidance for Christians as they seek to order their lives as sexual beings. . . (pp. 4-5).

More later. For now, here is the first part of a video about Alfred Kinsey:

The two largest Lutheran church bodies in the United States are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) with 4.8 million members and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) with 2.4 million members.

On Friday, Aug. 21, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to open the ministry of the ELCA to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional workers living in “committed relationships.”  In an earlier action, the assembly approved a resolution that commits the ELCA “to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod has repeatedly affirmed as its own position the historical understanding of the Christian church that the Bible condemns homosexual behavior as “intrinsically sinful.” It is therefore contrary to the will of the Creator and constitutes sin against the commandments of God (Lev. 18:22, 24,20:13; 1 Cor. 6:9-20; 1 Tim 1:9-10; and Rom. 1:26, 27).

Addressing the ELCA assembly on Saturday, Aug. 22, I responded to their aforementioned actions, stating: “The decisions by this assembly to grant non-celibate homosexual ministers the privilege of serving as rostered leaders in the ELCA and the affirmation of same-gender unions as pleasing to God will undoubtedly cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA. It will also negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies. The current division between our churches threatens to become a chasm. This grieves my heart and the hearts of all in the ELCA, the LCMS, and other Christian church bodies throughout the world who do not see these decisions as compatible with the Word of God, or in agreement with the consensus of 2,000 years of Christian theological affirmation regarding what Scripture teaches about human sexuality. Simply stated, this matter is fundamentally related to significant differences in how we [our two church bodies] understand the authority of Holy Scripture and the interpretation of God’s revealed and infallible Word.”

Doctrinal decisions adopted already in 2001 led the LCMS, in sincere humility and love, to declare that we could no longer consider the ELCA “to be an orthodox Lutheran church body” (2001 Res 3-21A). Sadly, the decisions of this past week to ignore biblical teaching on human sexuality have reinforced that conclusion. We respect the desire to follow conscience in moral decision making, but conscience may not overrule the Word of God.

We recognize that many brothers and sisters within the ELCA, both clergy and lay, are committed to remaining faithful to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, are committed to the authority of Holy Scripture, and strongly oppose these actions. To them we offer our assurance of loving encouragement together with our willingness to provide appropriate support in their efforts to remain faithful to the Word of God and the historic teachings of the Lutheran church and all other Christian churches for the past 2,000 years.

Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick, President
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

“Transforming lives through Christ’s love …  in time … for eternity …” John 3:16-17