St Stephen Lutheran Church Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: January 2013

The Joint Commission on Theology and Doctrine

North American Lutheran Church

Lutheran CORE

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of

the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The beginning of human existence, i.e., nascent

life, carries in it the fullness of the genetic code, the

complete chromosomal material of an individual.

The strengths and characteristics given to us by

God have not yet blossomed for all the world to

see, yet they are fully present in the beauty of His

love. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you; I

appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah

1:5) Luther’s Small Catechism proclaims, “I believe

that God has created me and all that exists,” so in

faith we continue to proclaim that our life, and every

life, comes from God and belongs to God. In our

earthly dependency upon the womb of our mothers

for protection, nourishment, and love from the first

moments of our lives, we see in the creation of

each life the shape of faith. We will always be fully

dependent upon God for life, for shelter, and for

mercy — the God who uses men and women to

bring forth every generation of His creation.

How we in the North American Lutheran Church

and Lutheran CORE speak about the dignity of

nascent life is indicative of so much more. As the

fullness of God’s mercy calls us into newness in

each day, we come to know that no day in our lives

is beyond His care. God himself has given us a

pattern by which we know His love: the conception,

gestation, and birth of our Lord Jesus. As we reflect

upon when life begins and what life means, we look

to what God has done in sending His Son to live

among us from conception, to death, to resurrected

life.

In the Annunciation of the Good News given to

Mary, the Mother of our Lord, we come to know the

gift of every life in a new way, and we come to know

the holiness of her womb as a sanctuary of mercy

for all humankind. She who is our Mother in the

faith shelters the One who is the Savior of the world

with her very body, a model of love beyond all fear,

of obedience beyond all personal security, of faith

in the One who is yet unseen.

In the self-emptying (kenotic) movement of God in

the incarnation, He was never more vulnerable,

more helpless than when He was in utero,

swaddled in amniotic fluid. He was also never more

intimately protected, swaddled in the myriad layers

of a mother’s love. It is the vision of this love that is

ever so needed in this day — a death defying love,

an eternal love, a fierce love, a sacrificing love. It is

this vision that we are called to bear for the sake of

generations to come. For in the disordered loving of

a fallen world that removes sexual intercourse from

the fidelity, trust, and delight of the marriage bed,

there will continue to be the littlest among us, made

in the image and likeness of God, who without a

holy love, will be unprotected from the lies that say

they are neither human nor of any value. In a time

in human history when the laws of many nations

sanction the destruction of new lives simply

because they are an inconvenience, the North

American Lutheran Church and Lutheran CORE,

and all who belong to the Body of Christ, are called

to teach and preach the message that the Lord who

created the heavens and the earth, the Lord, who in

the power of the Holy Spirit grew in His mother’s

womb, the Lord, who in obedience gave His life for

all, The Lord is with you.

“The Lord is with you.” This is what we are called to

speak to every woman with a child in her womb.

The Lord is with you, regardless of the

circumstances of your pregnancy. We urge the

NALC to commit itself as a church, as the Body of

our Lord on earth, along with those joined with it in

mission in Lutheran CORE, to be with you as well.

We seek to attend to your needs, to help you, to

guard you, and to guide you that you may bear your

child in a community of love. Whether a husband

and wife, or a mother alone raises that child or puts

that child into the arms of another family, we will

provide spiritual counsel so that parents and child

will have the abundant life that Christ Jesus has

promised them. We do not want a woman who is

overwhelmed by the news of an unintended

pregnancy to abort an innocent child, a child whose

cries for life cannot yet be heard, a child who is of

great value to God, regardless of the circumstances

of the child’s birth. Whatever the circumstances of

the pregnancy, the termination of the life of their

child will not make a mother’s or father’s life better.

Apart from victims of sexual violence, the NALC

and Lutheran CORE should call to repentance all

men and women who have engaged in sexual

behaviors outside of marriage. Men and women

who are not married to each another and who have

used their procreative abilities irresponsibly and

then have chosen to abort a child, as well as

husbands and wives who have aborted children

whom they do not want, are called to confession,

contrition, and amendment of life. God wants us to

know His joy, and until we acknowledge our sin and

throw ourselves upon His mercy, we can never live

rightly. The wanton destruction of a human life for

matters of one’s own convenience is sin. The

casual use of abortion as a final solution for a

conception born of recreational sex is sin. The

intimidation and emotional blackmail to undergo an

abortion that women have received from the men

who have impregnated them is sin.

The church also has great concern for those among

us, who under the advice, counsel, or persuasion of

family and/or medical personnel, have aborted a life

in utero as a result of rape, incest, severe

abnormalities of fetus, or endangerment to the life

of the mother. In these cases, we as a church seek

to be a vessel of compassion and consolation.

Even in the most difficult situation, the termination

of the pregnancy will not necessarily bring an end to

the intensity of the current pain. The end of any of

new life, even when it comes to be the only

apparent solution that one believes can be

endured, will still carry layers of sorrow. Again, we

urge the NALC to commit itself as a church body,

along with its partners in Lutheran CORE, to

provide pastoral care to all parties who are

involved, for there are no decisions in such times

that will be without familial grief. We seek not to

condemn but to console. As anger, abandonment,

regret, and the depths of despair each come in their

turn, so the mercy of our ever-present God will

need to be spoken. The Lord is with you. The Lord

is still with you.

The rationales, however, for legalizing abortions in

North America are far from these limited cases of

“therapeutic” abortion. The arguments have

changed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries

from easing the burdens of the poor on the society,

to the right of a woman to have autonomy over her

own body (Roe v. Wade; Morgentaler v. Her

Majesty the Queen, Supreme Court of Canada,

1976), to sex-selection of children from cultures that

value male progeny over female, to simply one of

economic gain, (i.e., not wanting to support another

child). In too many cases, legalized abortion has

simply become a form of retroactive birth control.

Abortion dehumanizes and diminishes all who are

involved. It affects the father, who has lost what it

means to be a guardian to his family and who has

lost the learning that comes from a relationship in

which spirituality and sexuality are not divorced. It

affects the mother, whose denial may break down if

she later conceives and bears a child, or is later

unable to conceive a child, or whose guilt may

spiral into the bondage of shame as she seeks to

keep her abortion a secret. At last, it affects the

child, the blessed child, a living human presence

who is denied the fullness of body that was

intended for him in this life and in the age to come.

Legalization of abortion puts the state at odds with

the historic witness of the church, and so we are

called to listen again to the Word of God as

proclaimed in the Holy Scriptures, the wisdom of

the Church Fathers, and the insight of the

Reformers as we seek to follow Christ faithfully in

our day. The Didache clearly speaks the law as

stated in the fifth commandment to the issues of

abortion and infanticide in the ancient world, “Thou

shalt not murder a child by abortion, nor again shall

thou kill it when it is born.”1 The Epistle of Barnabas

speaks of those who seek to end the life of one in

utero as “killers of the child, who abort the mold of

God.”2 The Nicene Creed professes that Jesus is

fully human and fully divine from the moment of His

conception and in doing so declares that human life

begins at conception.3 Again and again the Psalter

sings that fearfully and wonderfully made, we are

the work of God's hands (Ps 139:14). John Calvin,

in concert with the early Fathers, regards an unborn

child as “already a human being.”4 Martin Luther

regards procreation as “the work of God” and

speaks of those who kill the growing fetus as an

example of the wickedness of human nature.5 The

witness of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic

church is clear: There is no life that is beyond God’s

care, beginning at the moment of conception. The

child in utero is not simply the possession of the

father or the mother, for each nascent life is the

handiwork of God. “For it was you who formed my

inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s

womb.” (Psalm 139:15).

The North American Lutheran Church and Lutheran

CORE strive to witness to the all-encompassing

love of God in early 21st century North America,

when nearly 50 million abortions have been legally

performed since 1973 in the United States and

1988 in Canada. We urge the NALC and Lutheran

CORE to commit not only to protecting the next

generation of children during those first exquisite

nine months of life, but to helping those for whom

abortion mars their procreative histories. As parents

come to healing through the counsel and ministries

of the church, their witness will be invaluable. In the

renewal of their faith, the lies that were told against

the littlest among us will come to an end. As their

voices then sound within the assembly of all who

believe that He who is the Savior of the world is

fully human and fully divine from the moment of His

conception, so we come yet again to understand

the giftedness of the creation of our own bodies.

May each of us seek to live out the dignity with

which we were created, so that our lives as the

enfleshment of God’s love will bear witness to His

love for all the world.

December 14, 2012

Joint Commission on Theology and Doctrine

Robert D. Benne

Kenneth H. Sauer

Carl E. Braaten

Amy C. Schifrin

John F. Bradosky

Henry Schulte Jr.

David E. Hahm

Paull E. Spring

Benjamin A. Johnson

Sue A. Tolton

James A. Nestingen

Paul T. Ulring

Eric M. Riesen

J. Larry Yoder

1Didache 2:2.

2The Epistle of Barnabas 19:5.

3The Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) is explicit, “We

confess the Holy Virgin to be the Mother of God

because God the Word was made flesh, and became

man from the moment of conception.” See also the

Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article VII.10, “Therefore

we believe teach, and confess that the Son of man

according to his human nature is really (that is, in deed

and in truth) exalted to the right hand of the omnipotent

majesty and power of God, because he was assumed

into God when he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in his

mother's womb and his human nature was personally

united with the Son of the Most high.” Book of Concord:

The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church,

trans. and ed. by Theodore Tappert (Philadelphia:

Fortress Press, 1959), 488.

4John Calvin, Commentaries on the Last Four Books of

Moses, trans. Charles Bingham (Grand Rapids:

Eerdmans, 1950), 3:41,42.

5Martin Luther, Luther’s Works vol. 4. ed. by Jaroslav

Pelikan and Helmut Lehmann (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing, 1964), 304.

St Stephen Lutheran Church Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Monday, January 28, 2013

Site Updates

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

‘The Lord Is with You’ A Word of Counsel to the Church - The Sanctity of Nascent Life

Thursday, January 17, 2013

NALC News for January, 2013