Shrimp here:

I want to review the issue of statement that was drafted by two theologians from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Rev. Barbara R. Rossing and Rev. Ralph W. Klein, and released on Apr. 6 -- just three days prior to the ELCA Church Council meeting slated to tackle the topic of homosexuality in the Church.

The ELCA Church Council then made the church-dividing recommendation to ordain actively homosexual clergy as "an exception," thus going further than the task force on sexuality.

This, of course, is the pattern, to move the agend forward by degrees.

One might will wonder if the statement, which in actuality is an online petition, was not meant to do just what its ewffect was, to provide some justification for Church Council's actions?

There is one piece of theological reasoning in the petition (which by the way was signed by 107 theologians and can be seen at http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/ )

"We disagree with the claims of the seventeen theologians who have criticized the taskforce’s recommendations on ecclesiological and theological grounds. Churches in the Lutheran World Federation already hold multiple positions on both sexuality and ecclesiology, and the Federation’s communion holds together in the midst of this diversity. The taskforce’s recommendations do not jeopardize our Lutheran communion or our ecumenical partnerships. Differences on sexuality and ecclesiology do not threaten the unity of the gospel. "

As reasoning this is outrageous, but the real red flag is that 107 of the ELCA's finest minds put their name to it.

I am just a crustacean, I have no PhD (heck, my brain is smaller than a pea), yet common sense says if it is tearing the Anglican Communion apart that says their reasoning is a disregard of the potential of a similar dvelopment.

Since we know where there is smoke there is fire, let's look at the reasoning which one of the two authors gave to a reporter:

"During a phone interview Friday, Rossing further elaborated the fourth point: “The church does not divide on issues on sexuality and Christians can take different positions on that. We call these Adia Phora -- a Latin term that unity is sufficient if the Word is rightly preached,” said Rossing, an associate professor of New Testament. “We are taking a middle way, and I think that's a gift to the world."

http://www.christianpost.com/article/church/2025/section/lutheran.scholars.send.statement.supporting.%5Cmiddle.way%5C.on.homosexuality/1.htm

Is this a correct usage of adiaphora? Something can only be adiaphora if it is neither commanded nor forbidden by God (as Mark Chavez of WordAlone points out).

Moreover, common sense would reveal that the concept of adiaphora was used rarely by Luther. He used in once in his commentaries. If we do a search of the 55 volumes of Luther's Works we see that 12 0f 19 occurances happen in a few sections of the Formula of Concord. They are concerned with tne Melanchthan/Flaccius dispute over the Interim. Melancthon said certain church customs were adiaphora, but eventually recanted to Flaccius. Two lessons from this is that 1) there is no equivalence between an issue of whether there are seven sacraments of two and the issue of disregarding mutiple biblical injunctions against the practice of homosexuality and 2) Melanchthan lost. (hello?)

So, why propose the argument and why was it so popular amongst Lutheran theologians? Is it anything more than, "Because they wanted to?" or "They did it because they could?"

Ask a real theologian. The above reporter did:

"I wasn’t surprised, and I think the seminaries are washed in theology that is falling down to the culture of decadence,” explained Braaten, the Executive Director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. “More and more, this is the kind of Protestantism that is being absorbed by the culture.”

"Braaten said he knows "the people who drafted the counterstatement and their theology.” “There is no basis in scripture or tradition for what they are saying, so that means they are getting their ideas from contemporary culture,” said Braaten. “It has more to do with the collapse of Christian morality in Western culture.”

Now read, not a petitiion, but a real theological statement, well-crafted, succinct, touching on the several issues at stake:

http://www.thelutheran.org/0504/sexuality.html

I'm just a shrimp, but from where I swim, if the logic of the 107 trumps that of the 17, the future of the ELCA is very much in doubt.