Are Some Teachers of the Church Just Too Gifted to be Above Reproach?
Tullian Tchividjian is back in the news and that means we need to be reminded that his tribe uses the doctrine of justification like Orthodox Jews use an eruv.
Despite shameful conduct that automatically and permanently disqualified him from the preaching office, Tullian Tchividjian, armed with a spiritual burglary toolkit sourced from Lutheran antinomians1, soon enough barged his way back into the pulpit. From that perch, he is a prolific generator of pithy chestnuts about God’s radical grace. He casts bon mots out precipitously like a priestly Robin Hood showering impoverished sinners with riches that mere pastors have been hoarding for themselves. They pretty much all boil down to, “Your worst sin efforts - in every tense - are incapable of resisting God’s grace.”
Amusingly, Tchividjian’s aphoristic soul balm bombs are indistinguishable from those emanating from 1517’s and Mockingbird’s Bound Will Schools of Theology2. The teachings have some tangent of truth, which makes them extraordinarily seductive but also very dangerous because they are not the whole counsel of God.
Secret Knowledge
Orthodox and even liberal Jews rely on eruvs to circumvent halakhic prohibitions on certain Sabbath activities. A thin wire is erected around an area, supposedly converting public domains into private ones; no expensive walls are needed! This seems a good analogy for the ‘Bound Will Boys’,3 who insist on an ahistoric and unorthodox formulation of justification. If you stray outside their artificial boundaries, you apparently violate God’s inviolable promises!
We must not forget that Tchividjian, before his second “crash and burn,”4 was heavily courted to give up his dollar store Lutheranism and become a rostered Synod guy5. Instead, we ended up with the Romanists, EO, Reformed, and Evangelicals dunking on the antinomian teleology of Lutheran theology.
The unspoken common factor in Tchividjian’s “rehabilitation” and all cases like his seems to be that the preachers and their enablers believe their gifts are too mighty and wondrous to be muzzled by Scripture. Indeed, many of the fallen are incredibly talented and even expert. Still, one of the consequences of sin for a pastor is that he is obligated to lay aside the very gifts that enabled him to earn a calling, a sending, and his living from the Gospel. Not giving them up means that what was once a blessing to him and the hearer will ossify into the stoniest idol, declaring the First Commandment dead and buried.
The books, hymns, sermons, keynote lectures, academic papers, conference appearances, and social media zingers must all end. Forever. Even the pre-fall output probably needs to be purged because it will be a stumbling block of pride and create temptation to resume ministry.
The fallen pastor must descend to the pews to join the laity, where he is warmly welcomed and forgiven but remains mute insofar as his former self exists, avoiding even donning an acolyte’s robe. He stays ‘low’ in submissive obedience as he surely wrestles night and day with the now sinful desire and instinct to regain the Office of Holy Ministry. His sustained humility avoids the terrible offense of rekindling the mortification and anguish he caused his family, friends, parishioners, colleagues, and victims. Thereby, he makes partial restitution in an earthly sense and exhibits meaningful repentance. That is a salutary lesson for everyone as long as it is not just for a season but until his Christian funeral.
Alas, you will notice among the antinomians many individuals who see little need for restitution and penance, lest they be accused of self-justification. Indeed, there seems to be a tendency to flaunt their failures as a perverse testimony, and they attract devoted female followings.
Pastor Prison
The toppled preacher can never again meet the scriptural requirement to be above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2). To resume teaching and preaching in any context is to mock and test God, no matter how it is dressed up and justified as otherwise depriving the Church of one man’s wisdom. Graveyards are full of the Church’s wisest men, yet She continues as She always will until Christ’s return.
There is no prison for errant pastors, so unless they have violated criminal laws (the civil authorities having long ago ceased to penalize adultery…), the flock's safety is left to the mercy of his conscience and ecclesial authorities. Tchividjian has no meaningful supervision, so he is that most American of persons—his own man with his own church and a new wife who has taken up a mantle as a pastrix.6
The argument for a man returning to preaching and teaching is to accuse the questioner, “Okay, let’s evaluate your life.” Precisely whose serpentine voice does Scripture warn us about when your sins are surfaced and spotlighted for the purpose of shame, acquiescence, and capitulation? When those words hiss from the mouth of a pastor, you are best advised to take immediate and speedy flight (Matthew 16:23).
Cauterize the Casuistry
The LCMS quickly yanks men out of the pulpit for serious infractions, but it has a profound problem with divorced pastors still preaching and teaching7. The fancy casuistry indulged by the Synod’s ivory towers is above my paygrade, but it could and should be this simple:
If an unmarried or married pastor fornicates, he ceases to be a pastor.
If a pastor divorces his wife and takes a new wife, he ceases to be a pastor.
If a pastor marries a divorcée who is not blameless (Romans 7:2), he ceases to be a pastor.
If a pastor is abandoned by his wife (adultery being one form of abandonment),
and takes another wife, he ceases to be a pastor;
and remains unmarried for the rest of his ministry, he continues to be a pastor.
These simple rules would avoid a great deal of scandal and suffering and would not tempt the laity to be led astray to reason, “Well, if pastor so and so can be divorced, then so can I.”
Similarly, the casuistry dance to justify divorced pastors contributes to the Synod’s confusion about the role of women in the Church. After all, if the Scriptural standards for being a male pastor can be warped to the situation, then we can do the same for the ladies, right?
The Holy Spirit was not ambiguous or sentimental in documenting the qualifications for the preaching office. We are duty-bound to maintain, police, and enforce the boundaries of the OHM with the same clarity and conviction.
☩TW☩
In Tchividjian’s own words, “… it was through conversations with Michael Horton, the host of The White Horse Inn, that I was introduced to the proper distinction between the Law and the Gospel. Then, through Horton I met a plethora of Lutheran individuals, individuals such as Dr. Rod Rosenbladt—who then introduced me to Harold Senkbeil, Robert Kolb, and others.”…
“Other than Luther though, probably the best book that I’ve ever read was a book written by Kolb… The title was The Genius of Luther’s Theology. I have also appreciated the writings of Harold Senkbeil, Gene Veith, Rod Rosenbladt, Oswald Bayer, and a Saskatchewan Lutheran named, William Hordern. Oh, I cannot forget the book by Bo Giertz titled The Hammer of God. I just love that book! Not only was the book by Giertz well written, the theology in it is most excellent. I promote Giertz’s book to everyone I can.”
The Antinomians adore Luther’s Bondage of the Will as the final word and Word. Starting with theologian Oswald Bayer and taken much further than he probably intended by Werner Elert, Gerhard Forde, Norman Nagel, James Nestingen, Stephen Paulson, et al, posits a version of justification that becomes detached from Christ’s vicarious satisfaction and universal atonement for the sins of the world. The “performative speech act” is the crown of this theology, whereby the preacher actually brings about the promises of God through his utterances - he literally creates a new reality for the hearer at that moment. The pastor's job is to preach to the bound will of the hearer continually, ultimately implying, bizarrely, that his parishioners are never Christians. For antinomians, the unforgivable sin is to believe that God’s promises have any conditions attached to them. Hence, they abhor the third use of the law as only attempts at self-justification that dissolve God’s promises.
Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, IN (CTSFW) is, unfortunately, ground zero for the war between the vicarious satisfaction camp and the categorial preaching faction headlined by Prof. David P. Scaer and Prof. John T. Pless, respectively.
Perhaps this is unfair… the antinomians seldom hesitate to put forward female and lay preachers and teachers.
By his own public admission, Tchividjian’s first crash and burn was his debauched teenage life.
He does have a “pastor,” Pat Thurmer, who presides over a small Lutheran Brethren congregation in Florida, which is yet another weather vane in the antinomian wind farm. Stacie Tchividjian has stormed the preaching office with her husband’s approval. The link to one of her sermons is provided only for the record. I do not recommend listening to any of its vacuousness.
The LCMS did not take seriously the many pastors who apostatized over Holy Communion during COVID-19. Read more here.
I was blindsided when an LCMS pastor started preaching on how he ruined his first marriage only for God to bless him with a new wife. It was like an antinomian perversion of Job. While I was certainly scandalized in the moment, the bigger scandal seems to be exactly what you touch on, which is that I feel as if I’m alone in being scandalized by such things in the LCMS of today.
"The argument for a man returning to preaching and teaching is to accuse the questioner, 'Okay, let’s evaluate your life.' " We have heard a slightly different form of this in this and other contexts: "We're all sinners and all sin is the same" is the argument used to allow egregious and unrepentant behavior to continue and the victims are told to "forgive and forget".