Church, Family, and State In Contemporary Canada

A response to the CTCR Document: A Lutheran Response to Contemporary Issues, with a foreword by Gene Edward Veith.

Editor’s note: Rev. Williams's paper is a response to the publication of A Lutheran Response to Contemporary Issues by the Lutheran Church Canada’s (LCC) Commission on Theology and Church Relations.

THIS ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE AS A BOOK

Aphorisms on Christendom in the shadow of “Christian Nationalism”

Foreword

by Gene Edward Veith, Jr.

The modern church has endured repression and persecution under Communism, Fascism, Islamism, and other totalitarian regimes. Who would have expected during the Cold War that today the church would be in conflict with governments in the democratic West? Who could have imagined that “free countries” would be shutting down worship services, restricting what church practices would be allowed, and criminalizing the teaching of Christian morality?

Christians in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe are not used to such treatment from their own governments, though their brothers and sisters in much of the rest of the world have known it all too well. But it is hard to know how to respond. Christians know that Scripture commands them to submit to the governing authorities (Romans 13), and yet Scripture also states, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). How do we apply both of those teachings, and how can we discern when and how we should submit and when and how we should resist?

Unlike most theological traditions, Lutheranism has a rich and comprehensive theology of society, culture, and government. This consists of three distinct but inter-related teachings:

1. The Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms teaches the differences between God’s spiritual and His temporal kingdoms, so that the church and earthly governments must not be confused with each other. Nevertheless, the doctrine affirms that God is king over both realms. God’s moral law applies even to secular societies, while the gospel applies to the church and its members.

2. The second Lutheran teaching on the subject is the Doctrine of Vocation, which teaches that God works through human beings to care for His temporal kingdom. For Christians, vocation also teaches how they are to live out their faith in the world, as God calls them to various tasks and offices, in which they are to love and serve their neighbors.

3. The third teaching is not so widely known, but it ties together and gives practical application to the other two: The Doctrine of the Estates, which teaches that God in His creation has established three institutions for human flourishing: The church (ecclesia), the family along with the way it makes its living (oeconomia), and the state (politia).

Human beings are not autonomous; rather, we need to be in relationships with other people. The three estates are the distinct orders of God’s temporal kingdom through which He cares for us. Each Christian inhabits all three of the estates, and God calls us to multiple vocations in each of them: In the church, he calls all Christians by the gospel, and He also calls pastors to give them His Word and His sacraments. The family vocations are father and mother, through which He creates new life; husband and wife; son and daughter; and all of their kin. In the state, we have the vocation of citizens, with some having callings in the government, law enforcement, or the military. The purpose of all vocations is to love and serve the neighbors whom that vocation brings into our lives: the members of our congregations; our spouse, children, and parents; our customers; our fellow citizens.

Incidentally, Medieval Catholicism also taught that there were three estates: the clergy (“those who pray”); the nobility (at first, “those who fight,” the warriors who eventually became “those who rule”); and the commons (“those who work”). This corresponded to the rigid class hierarchies of the feudal system. With Luther’s estates, on the other hand, any given person would belong to all three: Everyone prayed (ecclesia); everyone worked (oeconomia); and, eventually, everyone ruled (politia). The Reformation brought unprecedented social mobility and built the foundation for social equality.

This work by Pastor Paul Williams unpacks the Doctrine of the Estates, outlining its principles in a systematic way, and, in doing so, he sets forth a compelling template for analyzing social dysfunctions. God has purposes for each of the estates and has designed the church, the family, and the state with its government to work together for the good of all. When those purposes are violated, society becomes dysfunctional and its members suffer. Things also go wrong when one estate usurps the others, violating their authority and attempting to take on their functions.

Just as it is wrong when the church seeks to rule the state, as in the medieval church or modern social gospels whether of the left or the right, the earthly governments of the state should respect the distinct spheres of the church and the family. Pastor Williams shows, by applying the Doctrine of the Estates, that the modern state is trampling over the other estates and is violating its own God-given purpose.

Today, the state has been presuming to determine what the church is allowed to teach, as when it criminalizes teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality as “hate speech.” During the COVID shutdowns, the state interfered with worship, prohibiting singing and the Communion chalice, and ultimately forbidding corporate worship altogether.

The state has been presuming to overrule and to change the estate of the family by creating same-sex marriage, allowing the abortion of children, and using the schools to indoctrinate children to oppose their parents’ values.

The state is even violating the estate of the state! God ordained the state to protect the lives of its citizens. A state that facilitates the abortion of children and the euthanasia of its weakest members is defying its own purpose. Scripture says that earthly governors are sent by God “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.” When the state punishes those who do good, such as pro-life protesters and truck drivers asserting their liberties, and praises those who do evil, such as mutilators of children in the name of transgenderism, it is contradicting its own authority.

This paper examines these and many other problems in greater detail. In addition, though, it considers whether Christians and the church in general may resist the authority of the state when it oversteps its bounds. Luther famously counseled submission to the Emperor even when it might have cost him his life, and Lutherans have a tradition of strict adherence to Romans 13. But Lutherans also have a tradition of resisting unlawful authority.

In addition to the thorough exposition of the Doctrine of the Estates, this work by Pastor Williams includes some fascinating, inspiring, and useful excurses on Lutheran resistance to the state, exploring confessions and actions that most church members are probably not aware of, and yet are important treasures of the Lutheran heritage:

1. The Magdeburg Confession, which was formulated after the Emperor defeated the Lutheran princes and re-imposed Roman Catholicism, which the Reformation states were being forced to transition to by means of the compromises mandated in the Augsburg Interim. This confession sets forth the conditions according to which the church “must obey God rather than men.”

2. The Bethel Confession, the work of the confessional Lutheran theologian Hermann Sasse, along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to counter Nazi ideology and Hitler’s attempt to take over the German churches.

3. The Lutheran Church of Norway’s resistance to the Nazi Occupation, a stirring account of an entire church body that rose up against an illegal and tyrannical regime.

I learned that even Luther became persuaded by the Torgau Declaration, the work of Lutheran lawyers, who made the case that since the Emperor was elected by Princes such as the Elector of Saxony, the Emperor too is under a Romans 13 authority. Thus, when the Emperor violates the laws of God and, indeed, his own laws, subjects should submit to the “lesser magistrate” who holds him to account. In a modern democracy, rulers are elected by the voters, to whom they are accountable and who may replace them. Voters in a democracy thus have the vocation of being the lawful authorities whom their rulers must submit to!

Pastor Williams’ work here focuses on the issues in Canada, but churches throughout the world are facing similar pressures. My impression is that Canada has slipped farther down the slippery slope than some other countries, including my own United States. Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) law was sold as an act of mercy for the dying, which is problematic enough, but it has expanded to allow the killing of those with non-terminal illnesses, the disabled, the mentally ill, the depressed, and the poor. Today over 4% of the deaths in Canada are caused by the state. Canada’s euthanasia laws are shocking even to secularists, scandalizing not just Christians but the civilized world.

Canada’s decline from a generous, friendly, famously “nice” nation into one that puts to death its weakest citizens who are most in need of care, has become an object lesson, showing that social evils once introduced become worse and worse. What the Canadian church is going through is likely to spread and intensify through all of the “free countries.”

But Pastor Williams’ work here will prove to be enormously helpful throughout the world, as Christians seek to defend and restore the church, the family, and the state.

I) INTRODUCTION

At her 2022 Convention in Edmonton, Lutheran Church-Canada (LCC) commended the document produced by the Commission of Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) entitled A Lutheran Response to Contemporary Issues (LRCI) to the members of the LCC for further discussion and reflection. Central to the concern of LRCI was the proper relationship of the Two Kingdoms, Church and State, with each other and the place of the Christian in his vocation to live within each of these realms.

The immediate concern was the challenges posed by the COVID pandemic and the various restrictions mandated by the state over the life of the church, but also addressed were ongoing issues such as laws that criminalize confession of the church’s Biblical stand on same-sex marriage, homosexuality, and the like ¹ Such further “civil discussion and charitable and fraternal understanding of others’ perspectives” clearly desired, encouraged, and hoped for by LRCI was long stifled and frustrated by the COVID restrictions of movement, travel, and gathering, and so the convention was eagerly anticipated as a place where such could finally take place. The numerous overtures submitted reflected widespread concern on such issues throughout the Synod. Unfortunately, the time constraints of the convention, where attention was required for so many other pressing matters, and that overtures on COVID matters were left at the very last hour of its last session, prevented profitable and necessary discussion. The commendation of LRCI to the Synod offers an opportunity for further careful debate on these issues, and this paper is intended to contribute to that discussion.

Recognized by LRCI (and therefore also acknowledged by the convention and Synod) is that these issues involve the interrelationship of not just the two estates of Church and State. In addition , there is also a third estate to be considered, the Family,² and all three estates are instituted by God and under His authority, with specific jurisdictions through which God works His will in the world, involving challenges brought forth by the COVID pandemic and other trends in our modern society.³ From the beginning, the CTCR document rightly expresses as the paramount concern the church’s ongoing ministry of Word and Sacrament, that “some of those precautions” enforced by the State “have stifled Word and Sacrament ministry and other Christian and LCC faith practices, traditions, and rituals.” Furthermore, LRCI resolutely states as central and nonnegotiable that “we rigorously defend the premise that God’s Word must have free course even in these days.”⁴ We firmly agree with these basic assumptions asserted by the LRCI. Still, at the same time, we find statements from LRCI need and can profit from a more precise and expanded explication of the Biblical basis for each of the three estates, their institutions from God and roles given them, and the distinctions and relationships which they have with one another without which one cannot speak clearly about such estates nor understand how to live appropriately within them in the face of the challenges of our time. This paper is intended to contribute to addressing these matters.

II) THE THREE ESTATES

The Lutheran Confessional writings consistently refer to God’s work in the world within a divinely established structure of three estates, realms, or hierarchies. For instance, the Table of Duties in the Small Catechism outlines the “office and service” within the “holy order and positions” of “bishops, pastors, and preachers” and “hearers” (the Church), those in “civil government” and “subjects” who “owe to their ruler” (the Civil Government), and “husbands,” “wives,” “parents,” and “children” (the Family).⁵ Furthermore, when the Epitome of the Formula of Concord lists the “erroneous articles of the Anabaptists,” it does so as “articles that cannot be tolerated in the Church,” then “in the government,” and finally “in domestic life.” ⁶

Such a three-fold distinction can also be found throughout the writings of Luther, such as in the following:

“But God must be over all and nearest to all, to preserve this ring or circle against the devil, and to do everything in all of life’s vocations, indeed, in all creatures. Thus Psalm 127 [:1] says that there are only two temporal governments on earth, that of the city and that of the home, ‘Unless the Lord builds the house; unless the Lord watches over the city.’ The first government is that of the home, from which the people come; the second is that of the city, meaning the country, the people, princes and lords, which we call the secular government. These embrace everything—children, property, money, animals, etc. The home must produce, whereas the city must guard, protect, and defend. Then follows the third, God’s own home and city, that is, the church, which must obtain people from the home and protection and defence from the city. These are the three hierarchies ordained by God, and we need no more; indeed, we have enough and more than enough to do in living aright and resisting the devil in these three.”⁷

III) THE THREE ESTATES: DIVINE INSTITUTION AND BASIC DISTINCTIONS

Before anything can be understood, it must first be accurately defined, identifying the properties that make up its essence, which makes up what it is, which must then be carefully distinguished from its accidents, that which it may have but without which it would still continue to be what it is. In this way, each estate can be properly defined, understood, and clearly distinguished from the others to avoid confusing them with each other. The essence of each estate is found in its institution from God, which describes its purpose, role, and characteristics, which, since each institution is from God, are absolutely certain and sure.

A. THE CHURCH

1. The church is defined by the Augsburg Confession (AC) liturgically, as not just a particular group of people,” or even “those who believe a certain teaching,” but “the congregation of saints and true believers,”⁸then in the Large Catechism (LC), “a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, Jesus Christ,”⁹and also, known by a seven-year-old child, “holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their shepherd.”¹⁰ The emphasis here is on the people of God assembled around the Word and Sacraments, where Christ is graciously present, creating and sustaining saving faith.

2. The Church is instituted by God at the creation of Adam in the Image of God (Gen.1:26-27) before the Fall through the blessing of God’s Word upon him, and through the first Word of God addressed to mankind, “you may freely eat of every tree in the garden”¹¹ (Gen. 2: 16). The church is thus from her beginning created and sustained by the Word of God, which draws man into its promises, and which man hears and receives by faith, created by God's Word, which trusts such promises. The church structures the perfection and fullness of God’s relationship with man, incorporating man into the Life of the Holy Trinity. This constitutes the beginning of the Christian church, indeed, specifically, of the Lutheran Church.

3. The church exists from the beginning as Church Triumphant, One, Holy, without sin, in perfect communion with God, the Holy Trinity, and in perfect bliss, joy, and peace. As Church Triumphant, she can be aptly pictured by a choir, singing one divine melody, yet each member has the vocation of different individual parts in perfect harmony and never out of tune. (Rev. 4)

4. Instituted in this Church Triumphant are relationships between God and man and between human beings themselves; vocation, therefore, is hardwired into human creation and the church in particular. From the beginning, within the created order, there is both a natural/common and also a sacred distinction and hierarchy.¹² The fundamental natural/common distinction within the created order is that between Adam and Eve as male and female, from which, within God’s institution of marriage and human sexuality, natural life is created and sustained, and thereby flowing from this are the further distinctions between father and mother and between parents and children. Within this male/female distinction between Adam and Eve is the role of serving headship bestowed upon Adam over his family. The fundamental sacred distinction within the created order from which spiritual life is sustained is that between those who proclaim God’s Word (pastor) and those who hear God’s Word (hearers). From the beginning, Adam exercised the vocation of both Head/Ruler/Governor of the world and Pastor/High Priest/Bishop of the “Church Triumphant of Eden,” serving Eve in love in both vocations.¹³

5. This Kingdom of the Church Triumphant was lost by man in the Fall when Adam abandoned his vocation as a loving and protecting pastor and governor over Eve and Eve abandoned her vocation as a hearer of God’s Word (Gen. 3), the two ceasing to sing together the Liturgy and Divine Melody of God’s Song, and their mutual harmony with each other is lost in the discordant noise of sin.

6. The church is restored by God’s promise of a Saviour (again, through God’s Word) but she is now a Church Militant, existing within the suffering, struggle, and fight against the devil, world, and our flesh. (I Tim. 6:12) The apt picture of the Church Militant is, of course, an army that must train, struggle, endure, fight, suffer, and be willing to give up her life, yet fights under a King Who gave up His life for her, Who has already won the battle and the victory, and Who gathers His church even in this age for the Victory celebration of Word and Sacrament (“This is the Feast of Victory..., Lutheran Service Book (LSB), Divine Service 1 & 2, Hymn of Praise)

7. The Kingdom of the Church is eternal which will reach her fullness yet again, in a Church Triumphant but which already exists in her fullness in the Church Militant, where “stills on the ear the distant triumph song” (LSB 677), and which amid battle she begins to follow the melody, even if still somewhat out of tune, of the perfectly harmonious song of the Church Triumphant, and to celebrate in the Holy Sacraments a foretaste of her eventual victory. (Rev. 7). The Church is eternal and will “remain forever.”¹⁴

8. The Church Militant's sole purpose is the salvation of man in the eternal Kingdom of Christ by the free bestowal of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to the world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. “Everything in the Christian church is so ordered that we may daily obtain full forgiveness of sins through the Word and through signs appointed to comfort and revive our consciences.” (Large Catechism, Apostle’s Creed, III, 55).

9. The church cannot be built up nor governed by the compulsions of the Law since such can only affect outward behaviour and not renew the heart nor create faith. Since the preaching of the law in the church cannot build up the church but only show the need for salvation in Christ and its free gift in the Gospel, it follows that even less can laws enacted by the state build up the Christian church.¹⁵

10. The church is governed by the Gospel and God's free gifts to His people, and God rules this Kingdom through the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

11. The church is wholly the creation of God alone and is wholly shaped in all she is and does by God and His Word. The church is not the creation of man, nor any human grouping or institution, least of all the state, nor is her existence ever derived nor dependent upon them.

B. THE FAMILY

1. The family is instituted by God before the Fall at the creation of Eve after His Word concerning Adam that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18), also His further Word instituting and blessing marriage that “a man shall leave His father and mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh,” (Gen. 2:24) and the command and blessing to both Adam and Eve that they should be fruitful and multiply. (Gen. 1:28). This estate, the oeconomia, is understood by Luther to comprehend all that exists within one's domestic life, including marriage, family, business, work, and education. Therefore, as God in His very essence is a community of Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of the Divine Persons being defined by a relationship with the Other, so also the Holy Trinity has created humanity in His image to be a community of persons in relationships and having vocations with one another.

2. God created humanity in His image as male and female and instituted and blessed marriage as the joining together of one man and one woman to one another. Such truths of the created order are explicitly affirmed by Jesus (Who is God, the Creator incarnate) in the New Testament (Mark 10:6-9) and express facts “hardwired” into the reality of human nature and person-hood which cannot be contradicted, disregarded, updated, or set aside by the church, state, family or society for the sake of current alternative philosophies, trends, or sociological or political agendas.¹⁶

3. The family is the basic structure of the created natural order of man’s perfect relationship with one other on earth, in each person's vocations with one another, and work in the temporal realm within the context of man’s ideal relationship with God lived by faith in Him. It is constituted by the divine institution of the marriage of man and woman, from which children are brought forth. It forms the basic foundational structure and “cell” of all other structures of earthly human relationships and society and the vocations of each person to another.

4. After the Fall, the family, constituted of sinful humans, suffers deeply from distortion, disfigurement, and corruption but does not lose the essential properties that characterize it derived from its institution from God. At all times, the family can only flourish with a father, mother, and children who are faithful to the proper roles that God has instituted them to have. The structure of family and marriage, as well as male and female, are hardwired into the created order. Such structures can be (and, in fact, are) marred and distorted by sin, but such cannot change the essence of what marriage is instituted by God to be. No authority on earth has the power or jurisdiction to modify nor alter the divinely instituted definition of marriage (such as is attempted with so-called “same-sex marriage”)

5. The common/natural institution of marriage and family differs from that of the church in that it is not eternal; its glory to be outshone and eclipsed by the even greater glory of the light of the eternal marriage of Christ and His bride the church, and family by the splendour of the family of God in the Church Triumphant under the heavenly Father, when both God's right-hand rule of His perfect communion with the church triumphant and His left-hand rule of the saints' communion and life with one another are folded together into one united kingdom of Christ (Matt. 22:30)

6. The earthly family provides the basic structure instituted by God, which icons and proclaims the Eternal Marriage of Christ and the Church and the Holy Family of God, the church, and which sets and provides mankind’s life and vocations in this world to serve one another in such a way that there is rooted and cultivated deep and abiding love between persons, spouses with one another, and with children. (Col. 3:19, AC XVI, 5)

7. Before the Fall, mutual vocation and family service came naturally and spontaneously from a free and merry spirit. After the fall, the family is so distorted and marred that such service is imperfect and can only develop through suffering, discipline, and punishment (such as in raising children), anticipating “the sword” used by governing authorities.

8. The various vocations of members of a Family are governed by Law and with responsibilities and obligations towards one another, but in such a way that such outward actions for one another grow out from love cultivated in the heart so that they are done freely and as a fruit of the Spirit, and as vocations and “masks” of God.

9. God rules the family through the agency of Fathers and Mothers (or various guardians in place of them) (Eph. 5:22, I Peter 3:5-6, Eph. 6:1-3)

10. The family is wholly the creation of God alone and is wholly shaped in all she is and does by God and His Word. The family is not the creation of man, nor any human grouping or institution, least of all the state, nor is her existence ever derived nor dependent upon them.

C. CIVIL GOVERNMENT

1. Civil authority exists as an institution from God (Rom. 13:1) that finds its roots in the institution of Fatherhood and is not to be considered independently from it. The distinction between civil government and fatherhood arises from the appearance of sin in the world. While fatherhood is instituted before the Fall as the chief instrument of God's “left hand' rule but is adjusted to accommodate its responsibilities to a fallen world of sin, Civil Authority is an application of the institution of Fatherhood made necessary only after and because of the Fall, serving as an interim structure for governing man in the abnormal situation of his fall into sin.

2. Civil government is an extension of Adam’s vocation of fatherhood (LC, Part I, 4^th Commandment, 141) adjusted because of the appearance of sin and the Old Adam after the Fall. With the growth of the human population from Adam’s one local family to many scattered families within various groups and tribes, the distinction of Adam’s vocations as Father and Governor united in his one person became distinct and separate offices overseen by various persons overseeing Family and Government respectively.

3. The ultimate purpose of the state is restraining outward evil and protecting man’s temporal life by carrying out wrath on the wrongdoer (Rom. 13:1-4, I Peter 2:14), approving those who do good (Rom. 13), and promoting the welfare of man’s life in this world (First Use of the Law, “Curb”). The state governs by the sword, law, threats, compulsions, rewards and punishments, and even war.¹⁷

4. Temporal authorities rule as agencies of God, Who rules through them (the State can never be autonomous from God’s rule), and are “good works of God.” (AC XVI: 1) God works good even through the selfishness and evil of fallible, and indeed, tyrannical rulers. (Apology of the Augsburg Confession (AP) XVI, 55)

5. The office of the governing authority is derived from God’s institution of the created order so that every particular magistrate exercising such authority is under God’s authority and is subject to Him regardless of whether such ruler believes this to be the case or not or whatever his personal religious beliefs may be.

6. Therefore, Christians are to recognize all legitimate governing authorities as instruments of God and must “obey present laws whether they have been framed by heathen or by others.”¹⁸

7. God’s Word governs the authority of the State, but the State rules through Reason, Natural Law, Common Sense, and man’s innate sense of God’s sovereignty and sense of right and wrong, which can also be enhanced with the enlightenment of Christian wisdom. “Christian values” revealed in Scripture can often restate outward actions which are evident to natural reason. When Christians insist upon opposing, for instance, abortion, “woke,” homosexual or transgender agendas, it is not in the interest of forcing upon the public at large an exclusively Christian agenda that they cannot understand apart from revelation accessible only to Christians but rather an agenda which is and should be perfectly evident as good and right to everyone from natural law and reason.¹⁹

8. In one of his most compact and incisive summaries of the divinely mandated roles and responsibilities of the left-hand kingdom, Luther notes in his commentary on Psalm 82²⁰that three central virtues should characterize the state and which all princes and rulers should pursue:

   1. Honour God’s word above all things and further its teaching.²¹

   2. To make and administer just laws so that the poor, the wretched, the widows, and the orphans are not oppressed but have their rights and keep them.²²

   3. To protect against force, harm, and prevent violence, punish the knaves, and wield the sword against the wicked so that peace may be kept in the land.²³

9. Therefore, in the New Testament, Christ (and therefore, the incarnate God Himself in His state of humility!), the apostles, and the early church dutifully obeyed the Roman authorities as long as they fulfilled their vocations from God and as far as conscience could permit, serving as a model for all Christians of all times while they are under the governing authorities in which they find themselves.

10. The state will not be eternal but will cease when the abnormality of man’s sin has passed away in the eternal kingdom of the Church Triumphant.

11. The common secular perspective on the state is that it is a humanly devised institution fashioned for man’s enlightened self-interest in any way he pleases to create and provide for his happiness with the things of this world. Opposing this, and central to a Christian perspective of government, is that man’s self-interest is deeply flawed, self-destructive, and evil. Furthermore, such sin is so deeply rooted in man’s nature that the government can never hope to solve it (and compounds evil when it attempts to engineer utopian societies—such as in fascism, communism, socialism, or modern corporate statism) Government is instituted by God in His gracious mercy to restrain and hold in check man’s innate self-interest, and at best channels his sinful selfishness to productive ends.²⁴

D. SUMMARY

1. Each of these three estates must be carefully distinguished from the others without confusing their purposes, activities, and means. Luther mentions, “'I am constantly obliged to beat, hammer, drive and knock in the distinction between these two kingdoms, even though I should write and speak about it so often that it becomes wearisome. The accursed devil is unceasingly cooking and brewing these two kingdoms into one.”²⁵ The fundamental distinction between them is deeply tied to the distinction between Law and the Gospel. God rules the church only through the Gospel, forgiving sins, justifying and sanctifying, always giving to those who deserve nothing, never threatening nor demanding through the Law except to drive to contrition and repentance to show the need for the gifts of the Gospel. But the state is ruled only through the Law: demanding, coercing, punishing, threatening with the sword, rewarding only those who deserve it and have earned it with commendable behaviour. If the law is used to rule the church, it will result in choking the Gospel and life out of the church and from each Christian, for the Law only kills and puts to death and cannot bring forth faith and spiritual life. Likewise, if one attempts to use the Gospel to rule the state, the Gospel would be turned into the Law, and the outward practice of sin would go unchecked in the world, resulting in chaos and discord in society.²⁶

2. Such structures, distinctions, and operations of each of the three estates, reflecting how God instituted them, are not merely a “Christian” theory among many other theories about them but express unchangeable and unalterable facts and realities that are true of all times and all places for all people.²⁷

IV. THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES, PRINCIPLES, AND MOTIFS SURROUNDING THE THREE ESTATES

A. The Kingdom of God and Two Kingdoms Terminology

1. The phrase “kingdom of God” can have several different meanings, which bear upon discussions of the three estates (or “kingdoms!”), and each must be carefully and clearly distinguished from the other.

2. God (and, therefore, Christ) as the Creator and King of Kings and Lord of Lords has supreme sovereignty over all the universe, so that the Kingdom of God can be said to refer to all of creation, with nothing outside of such rule. By His rule God maintains and sustains His creation, provides life and well-being to all creatures, and restrains evil. (Ps. 46; 50:9-12; 102:25-27; Is. 44-47; Mt. 28:18Eph, 4:10; Col. 1:15-17) Such is called God’s Left Hand Kingdom or Kingdom of Power.

3. However, the primary meaning of the “Kingdom of God” to which the church refers when she prays in the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come,” is God’s gracious and saving rule through the Ministry of Jesus Christ over those of faith and so which refers to the whole Holy Christian Church. (Col. 1;13) ²⁸ Such rule God exercises through the Word and Sacraments alone and never through the advance of political agendas. This kingdom is hidden in the humble lowliness, weakness and even suffering of the Church militant and is known not by sight but by faith and properly called “the Kingdom of Grace.”

4. This Kingdom of Grace constitutes the ministry of the Church. After all earthly kingdoms are gone, the Kingdom of Grace will become the Church Triumphant at the Lord’s Second Coming, the eternal Kingdom of Glory.

5. Nevertheless, Christians have a role to play in the Kingdom of Power. In their various callings and vocations, Christians can be instruments of God through which, under His rule, He provides life, well-being, and sustenance to His creation through His instituted structures and vocations of family, government, and society.

6. “The kingdom of God,” understood in such different ways, can be contrasted with

   different things, leading to different senses of the phrase “two kingdoms,” which must be carefully distinguished.

   1. “Two Kingdoms” can be used in the sense of the contrast between the church, “Kingdom of the Right,” ruled by God through the Gospel, and the State, “Kingdom of the Left,” ruled through Law and reason, both of which are under God’s rule.

   2. Also, “Two Kingdoms” can refer to the contrast of God’s rule with that of the kingdoms of the world (Mt. 4:8) or Satan (Mt.12:26; John 12:31, 14:30; II Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; I Jn. 5:19), as it is used, for example, in St. Augustine’s City of God.

1. God's Kingdom of Grace (the Church) is never to be conceived of as the antithesis of the world and its kingdoms, since the world, even as it is fallen into sin, is still the Lord's creation and Kingdom of Power over which He has dominion, and whose redemption, salvation and sanctification He seeks through the ministry of the church. Therefore, the church and her members should never seek to retain its integrity or purity by withdrawing and retreating from the world, or that Christians see the church as a refuge to escape from the world. Rather, as Christ came to the world in order to seek and to save it, so also the church's mission is to enter into the world to give it life, and for Christians to live out their vocations in the midst of the people of the world.

2. God's Kingdom of Grace (the Church), while in the world, is not of the world as just another organization “with its part to play” among all the others, each contributing in its own way to the world's agenda.. The church has a reality, purpose, and agenda which is not of this world, and yet which in the Person of Christ and the church's ministry comes into this world to bring life to the world and purpose and meaning which alone come from her., and to bring to mankind the eternal Kingdom of glory which cannot come from this world and its kingdoms.

3. God's Kingdom of Grace (the Church) never regards the world and its kingdoms as their enemy which they need to oppose, defeat or conquer, but rather she fights on their behalf against the evil kingdom of satan which oppresses and enslaves them in order to save and rescue the world from them. The church does not exist for itself, nor does she struggle and fight against the world to guard her own relevance or existence, but rather, confidently trusting in God that the gates of hell will never prevail against her, she serves the world for the its salvation through her ministry of Word and Sacrament

B. Civil Righteousness:

1. Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions recognize and laud a certain “civil righteousness" of outward good works and virtues that can be done and are to be cultivated and encouraged by not only Christians but also pagans and non-Christians. Such outward morality concerns civil government in its policies and laws. It can be understood, guided, and practised by non-Christians and pagans by the natural reason implanted by God within them. Indeed, the pagan Greek philosopher “Aristotle wrote about civil righteousness in such a learned way that nothing further about the topic needs to be demanded.”²⁹

2. However, one cannot be justified before God on the basis of external civil righteousness since such works proceed from a heart that remains completely fallen, sinful, and unrighteous. To be distinguished from such civil, outward righteousness is the perfect righteousness God required in the Law for man to have. However, he does not have nor can attain it unless he receives the alien righteousness of Christ. That gift is imputed to man by grace and justifies him, and is given to him through the church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament and received by faith.

3. Since no civil righteousness of any individual can contribute to his salvation, it follows that no civil righteousness in society at large can advance the kingdom of God as it is properly understood (as the church). Civil righteousness may advance the church in the power, influence, or outward prestige of her external institution or make society (and therefore the church’s influence) appear righteous, impressive, and indeed “Christian,” but such nevertheless does not regenerate hearts in the Christian faith, nor truly build up the church.

4. Therefore, the Christian church must clarify that her ministry does not involve advancing purely secular agendas that advance civil righteousness. At the same time, she must not neglect to teach the state and individual Christians in their vocations as citizens that attending to promoting such civil righteousness is their calling.

C. Vocation:

1. The restored and renewed relationship with God that the Christian has through the salvific work of Christ through the Ministry of the Church always puts him in a renewed relationship with each fellow member of the Christian church. Likewise, he is also in a renewed relationship and station with members of society with whom he lives, and he has a calling and vocation in his life towards them.

2. In the Gospel and the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, the Lord provides each Christian with everything he needs with the forgiveness of sins and the promise of life eternal. The Lord also promises that He will “richly provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.”³⁰ Each Christian is thereby free from the enslaving, self-centred, and self-indulging life of using others to seek the fulfillment of his needs and desires, but is rather free instead to serve his neighbour in love. The liturgy of the Divine Service, where the Lord, in His self-sacrificing love, serves the faithful with His gifts, is defined by a posture of faith by which they receive the Lord’s Divine Life. This leads to living out the liturgy of life in the world with a posture of self-sacrificing love towards one's neighbour. The rubrics of that liturgy are defined by their specific callings, vocations, and responsibilities towards particular people whom God has put in their lives.

3. Each Christian has numerous vocations, or callings from God, in which they live out their Christian faith toward individuals in society with specific duties toward them. As spelled out in the Table of Duties, the Three Kingdoms give structured clarity to such vocations.

4. The Small Catechism’s Table of Duties calls such vocations “various Holy Orders and Positions,” terms reserved in the medieval church to only such unique “holy” positions of the church such as the priesthood and monastic orders, but which the Reformation now applies to all ordinary natural honourable earthly positions which ordinary persons may find themselves engaged in with others in their natural life. Such “natural” positions are “holy” because they are sanctified by the “holy one” - the Christian saint—engaged in this office and the Holy God Who is working through them.

5. God is actively at work “wearing” the person fulfilling the vocation who functions as a mask and an instrument through which God “gives daily bread to everyone... even to all evil people”³¹and “richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life,” and “defends me against all danger and protects me from all evil.”³²Therefore, one should never regard one’s own work as one’s own personal business but as a holy calling from God, doing His will in loving service to one’s neighbour. So, when fathers, mothers, and government officials are at work, God works through them. Consequently, they are to be respected and honoured. The faithful fulfilling of work which might be regarded as mundane, humble and non-essential by the world is from God’s perspective a holy, honoured and reverenced vocation because He Himself is at work through it.

6. God is also actively at work “wearing” the person being served by another's vocation so that when one directs his vocation to God, seeking to serve Him thereby, God hides Himself in one’s neighbour so that it is the latter who receives the benefit of the work of that vocation. In this way, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it unto Me.” (Matt. 25:40). So, father, mother, and government officials are to reverence those whom they serve (ordinary children and common citizens) as temples of God Himself. The work done to them is a holy work.

D. Theology of the Cross/Theology of Glory

1. God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, according to His nature naturally exists in an eternal state of profound glory and exaltation, and He graciously and lovingly created man in His image to share and live reflecting and sharing in the life of His eternal glory. However, in the Fall into sin, man was so profoundly debased into a state of humiliation, death, and hell, that he has lost this divine image and fellowship with God, so that he not only can no longer reflect God's glory but such glory will bring him into judgment, curse and death and is no longer a blessing for him, but rather curses him.

2. Man cannot repair his broken relationship with God by the exaltation and glorification of his own capabilities, efforts and works by which he would seek to lift himself back up to God or make himself more worthy for God to be moved to step down to save him (theology of glory) Rather, while we were yet dead in sin, God Who is rich in mercy, and wishes to save mankind, steps down to save us by grace alone, in Jesus Christ, Who “found in human form, humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (theology of the cross). Furthermore, although man through his reason and conscience, can have a theology of glory natural knowledge about God's existence and His majesty, glory and sovereignty, he can have no “theology of the cross” Gospel knowledge of God's gracious saving heart towards man, which is found only through the revelation of Jesus Christ. In a theology of glory, God remains hidden and is not seen truly, fully, rightly nor with blessing.

3. Both the Holy Scriptures teach and the Ecumenical Creeds confess the deep structure and pattern of our Lord's Work of Salvation and Ministry for the world to involve a profound humiliation in His incarnation in lowly circumstances, His suffering, death, and burial. (state of humiliation,(Phil. 2:5-8; Is. 53:4-8) and then a glorious and victorious descent into hell, resurrection, ascension and exaltation to the Right Hand of the Father in heaven (state of exaltation) The good news of the Gospel is found only hidden in the revelation that God in Jesus Christ is humbled upon the cross for us, and only in this do we know that His exaltation is also for us.

4. As the Church is one Body with Christ her head, and His holy bride, she with all Christians shares all things with Christ, including a state of humiliation in this age as a church militant and only in the resurrected age to come as the church triumphant. A state of humiliation is the natural “self-inflicted” situation of fallen man who has debased himself with sin, but God has joined us in our humiliation through the humiliation of Christ Who became sin for us. This good news of the Gospel exalts us to the restored position of sons of God and brides of Christ, but such in this age is only known by faith and is hidden under crosses, sufferings and afflictions in this life, which God uses for our good to strengthen faith.

5. Christian repentance and faith accepts such humiliation in this life and sees God's blessings and purpose for good in the midst of them and does not seek a theology of glory in this life to escape from them, but patiently awaits to see his exhalation in the life to come which he knows he already has now by faith. The marks of the true church by which she may be found in this world do not consist of such outward earthly marks of success such as power, popularity, numbers, impressive morality in her members, effective influence in the world, public square or civil government (which will be found most fully in the false church of the Anti-Christ) but the true church is marked only by the pure Word and Sacraments, where Christ promises to be, and her glory is hidden under weakness, lowliness, suffering, that which is outwardly unimpressive and the cross.

V) ORDER BETWEEN THE THREE ESTATES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS WITH ONE ANOTHER

1. Each estate has the authority to operate only from its institution by God, which defines its jurisdiction, obligations, and responsibilities. Each estate, mindful of how God has circumscribed it, stays within its own boundaries while respecting the other estates by not intruding in their realms.

2. Because each estate is always under God’s authority and is an instrument of His will, any command from an estate that contradicts God’s will is an illegal order that must be disregarded and disobeyed since one must obey God rather than man.

3. Because each estate is always under God’s authority and is an instrument of His will only within the specific jurisdiction given to such estate, any command from an estate that operates outside such jurisdiction, and indeed, trespasses into the jurisdiction of another estate, even if it does not directly contradict God’s will, is an illegitimate order and can (but perhaps in some circumstances, for the sake of love, should not) be safely disregarded.³³

4. Therefore, an estate can have both legal and legitimate authority and jurisdiction. Still, it can be recognized in particular cases to cease to act with such legitimacy if it operates outside its proper jurisdiction or to have neither legality nor legitimacy for a specific act if it operates in contradiction to God’s will, and recognizing such about them in specific cases can be done while continuing to acknowledge the basic lawful legitimacy which they still do have and which is due them when they act legally and legitimately.³⁴ In other words, a conservative, restrained, and prudent approach means that when an estate or ruler issues an illegitimate or illegal command that must be disobeyed, it does not follow one should instantly disavow their authority or pursue insurrection against them, but rather one seeks to retain a posture of peaceful respect and obedience towards them.³⁵

5. Virtually all people will naturally and ordinarily live simultaneously within the estates of both the family and the state, with Christians also within the church,³⁶ so that every person, and especially Christians, must consider their proper role in various situations in their lives according to their place and vocation before God within each estate. Because God institutes each estate, they are carefully designed by Him to operate according to their institution and, under His rule, they harmoniously complement and support each other.

6. However, such responsibilities called for by estates can sometimes seem to contradict each other or tug a person in opposite directions, and one must look carefully at the situation to see how each estate must be obeyed (or not!)

7. In extraordinary circumstances, even when a superior within an estate acts with scrupulous legality and legitimacy, there might be an exception where emergency circumstances within another estate must override the ordinary obedience normally expected from one’s station within the adjacent estates. In such a case, the person is not guilty of wilful disobedience but prioritizes his God-given responsibilities in the other estate. It is not cold philosophical abstractions expecting pitiless compliance which shapes the Christian principles that govern life under an estate. ³⁷ Rather, life within these estates is governed by one’s loving consideration of their individual real life actual vocations within their personal relations and situations with their neighbour, ruled by love, the fulfillment of the law, and under God, which such estates are designed and intended by God to protect and cultivate.

A) The Church’s vocation to Family and Government.

1. To the Family: The church icons the Family of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, and His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit; in the perfect marriage of Christ and His Bride the Church, and in the family of the people of God who are children of God the Father, and Holy Mother Church through His Bridegroom, Jesus Christ. Christ, through His bride, the church, bestows fullness of Life through God’s grace upon husband, wife, and children through the Gospel. Thereby, in the blessed institution of marriage and family, husband/father, wife/mother, and children may serve one another in love within the vocations which they have been called towards one another, that is, with faithfulness between husband and wife, obedience and respect from children to parents, and their life in the church together. All confess their sins and speak forgiveness to one another since they are the beneficiaries of the same from God in the church. The church is to diligently teach the faithful the proper roles and vocations of family members towards each other, and work to reconcile family members who have been divided and alienated from one another. She works to defend families from being corrupted, desecrated, and deformed by satan and sin. That includes being on guard against alien political agendas (transgenderism, feminism, etc.) and when the faithful have been corrupted and harmed by practices that undermine the family, to lead them to repentance, forgiveness, and faith and reconciliation with God and with one another within their holy family, the church. The church is to pray for families continually.

2. To the Government: The church holds up government as instituted by God and rulers as “masks” through which God works. Therefore, the government is a good work of God to be reverenced, respected, and obeyed, and Christians are to do so willingly, cheerfully, and peacefully, even towards unjust rulers as far as conscience, informed by the Word of God, can permit. She renders to Caesar what is his (Matt. 22:21), and gives support and respect to leaders as sent from God, (Rom 13:5) even when they seem undeserving of such respect. The Church is to lead and teach Christians to live peacefully in the state in which they live and to concede to the state interest, jurisdiction, and competence over aspects of the church’s earthly and temporal life, which they are to oversee and regulate, as long as such does not interfere with the free course of her ministry. She gives the state what is owed them (such as in taxes) (Rom. 13:7). Nevertheless, she speaks prophetically, clearly, and boldly to the government and its leaders on issues that the Word of God warrants with Scripture, reason, and natural law. She supports the use of the sword against wrongdoers. Indeed, Christian leaders, and even lay people supporting them, each according to their proper vocations, have the right and duty to rebuke the government when they are unfaithful to their calls and duties before God.³⁸ Christians should feel free to faithfully and diligently serve as rulers, in civil positions, and even in the military if given such vocation from God. (AC XVI, Ap. XVI). In a democratic society, such as Canada, where citizens are granted the privilege to choose their leaders by voting in elections, Christians must regard it as a vocation given to them by God to take up such privilege and vote in an informed and conscientious way. Finally, the church continually prays for state leaders. (I Tim. 2:1-3)

B) The Family’s vocation to Church and Government

1. To the Church: Parents (especially fathers, but whoever is “head of the house”) catechize children in the faith (LC:V. 87), bring them to Divine Services, and raise them through the loving discipline of Law and Gospel. They lead family devotions and prayer and show respect for church leaders, praying for them. They model Christian lives to their children.

2. To the Government: Fathers and mothers raise and nurture children to be faithful and obedient Christian citizens who serve their neighbour in love in society, developing their talents and aptitudes for future vocations through godly education and schooling. Families must be model “cells” and training grounds for a healthy society. They are to encourage peaceful, willing, cheerful, but also Christian respect and obedience to governing authorities with clear discernment of right and wrong, and prepare children for future participation, per one’s vocation, in civil life through voting in elections, participation in civil matters, etc. The family prays for the leaders of the state.

3. Since state authority is derived from the father of the family, the only authority that government rulers have is that which God has given to all fathers who collectively “lend” them such authority, and therefore, rulers abuse such authority when they engage in unwarranted overreach into families, especially when such contradicts Biblical norms and principles. Communism and the more subtle yet dangerous versions of it, like Canadian social Marxism, seek to replace the father’s authority with their own, and such obliges faithful fathers to protect their families by resisting, or at the very least, speaking out against, all such overreach. The father (with the mother assisting him) has solemn final authority and responsibility over the child’s physical, social, and especially religious development. Though he very well will seek and welcome helpful assistance in his vocation as the father from other outside services and institutions in society, he will never cede to them ultimate jurisdiction and responsibility over his children³⁹

C) The State’s vocation to Family and Church:

1. To the Family: Protect and defend the integrity and sanctity of the family, including the distinction between male and female, the institution of marriage of husband and wife, the institution of parenthood as married couples care for their children (including the unborn!), and the care for elderly family members. Restrain the rampart extreme individualism of viewing society as a collection of autonomous footloose individuals, but rather develop and encourage public policies which assume society as a community of structured and interdependent relationships and vocations, the chief and central, which is the family. Oppose philosophies and agendas that undermine family and erode the complimentary distinction and roles of men and women or interfere with the sacred marriage bond of husband and wife and parents and children and the destruction of the unborn, elderly, and vulnerable. Specifically, the state has the intrinsic mandate from her institution from God and solemn responsibility for the health and welfare of the family perfectly evident from reason and common sense to oppose and legislate against abortion, same-sex “marriage,” MAID, transgender ideologies, and it is negligent of its responsibilities when it fails to do so.

2. To the church: The Government, state, and civil authorities have a solemn mandate from God (and imperative from natural law) to protect and defend the church’s freedom and liberty to preach the fullness of the Gospel in all its articles and to teach and confess the full doctrine of the faith, engage in the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and allow her members freely to confess their faith. It is to refrain from any attempts to limit and interfere with the church’s exercise and oversight of internal spiritual matters. Evident from nature, reason, natural law, and conscience is that there is a God under Whose authority the governor exists, from Whom they receive their power, and to Whom they are subject, which civil law and its authorities are at least implicitly to affirm and in practice and not to deny nor contradict.

VI. ORDER WITHIN EACH OF THE THREE ESTATES

A. Each estate has a certain divinely appointed order and hierarchy consisting of an office of authority ruling over those placed under him and who are in submission to him. In direct contradiction to the way authority is put into practice by the fallen secular world, where those in power “lord it over” those under the authority and force them into submission and service, in the divinely ordained Christian practice, those with authority serve those under them, who in turn voluntarily and joyfully submit to those over them, just as Christ has come not to be served but to serve (Matt. 20:28). Indeed, the one in authority is a “mask” worn by God through which He acts to serve His people through the one in authority.

1. Church - the Pastor is placed in authority over the people of God, serving them as a shepherd over His sheep, feeding them with God’s Word, and protecting them from the false doctrine of wolves through the teaching of God’s Word. The people receive the blessings, nourishment, and protection of the pastor’s ministry by obeying him in hearing God’s Word when he faithfully teaches it to them. (Heb. 13:17). The pastor has authority only to preach the full counsel of God’s Word without addition or subtraction, and the faithful must have the discernment to hear, follow, and obey only pastors that faithfully do so and to close their ears and reject as wolves those who do not. The pastor must be trained and qualified for and called to his office (I Tim. 3:1-2).

2. Family - the Father is placed in authority over his family (with his wife, as Mother, a subordinate assisting authority), to serve, protect and provide for them, and indeed, to be willing in a Christ-like way to give up his life for them. The Father is to rule his family with firmness, yet gentleness, patience and love (Eph. 6:4). The family receives the blessings of his service by obeying and respecting him. (Eph. 6:1-3)

3. The government is in authority over the people, the former serving the latter by protecting their earthly welfare, punishing those who do wrong, and the latter receiving this service with blessing by obeying them (Rom. 13).

B. Not only is there a certain divinely instituted hierarchy of authority and order within each estate, but also a particular divinely instituted order between the estates with one another: an order of the orders, a priority of the hierarchies.

1. The church is the supreme arena and agency of God’s full, perfect and magnificent will for man. It takes precedence in one’s life over Family and State, for through her is exercised God’s “proper work” of salvation and the restoration of the fullness of Life to man through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, and is the eternal Kingdom of glory. The Church and each Christian, as does Christ, sacrifices everything of her earthly life for the sake of family and state to give them the treasures of the Gospel, but for that reason, will neither sacrifice, give up, nor compromise anything of these treasures, her doctrine and ministry of Word and Sacrament for the sake of any earthly agenda of family or state.

2. The family has precedence over the government, being the original arena of God's left-hand kingdom, the family being instituted before the fall and the government as such existing and in need only after the fall. The earthly family is not eternal, nor is it free to define or order itself and its purposes in any way it chooses (or which the state chooses), but finds its true purpose, life, and the fullness of its true vocations only according to its institution from God and within the context of the church’s ministry of word and sacrament.

3. The government must concede precedence to church and family and allow its agendas to fit with and never contradict nor undermine theirs since it is an interim institution ordained after the fall into sin, and cannot provide fro man's ultimate needs of life from and communion with God. . When government seeks precedence over family, it becomes totalitarian. When it seeks precedence over the church, it becomes a party to the kingdom of the Antichrist, in contradiction to God’s will (Matt.22:21, Acts 5:29, AC XVI, 7).

A just government and its leaders must allow fathers the most expansive freedom and with the least interference possible to rule their families as they see fit. The state and church can presume to interfere into the private affairs of a family only when fathers or mothers are obviously and flagrantly neglecting their responsibilities and family members are at risk of neglect or harm. Fathers must defend and protect their families to the best of their ability against tyrannical and oppressive governments.

The church must faithfully carry out the ministry of word and sacrament, preach the pure Gospel in all its articles without compromise, and resist any foreign agenda, pressure, or laws from the state, family (or indeed heterodox within the church) to do otherwise. The church must defend the hallowed sanctity of the family and support, teach, and encourage the vocations of fathers and mothers who rule over them and defend them from the tyranny of intrusive totalitarian state actions or secular anti-family philosophies and beliefs. Finally, the church must defend and support the government in its lawful duties under God against unlawful abuse and intrusion from the outward church stepping into the state’s proper domain.⁴⁰

VII) SUBVERSIONS OF THE ESTATES FROM WITHIN

Each estate, though instituted and ordered by God with divinely established duties, which is their vocation given by God to accomplish, can be subverted and misused from within by sinful men within such estates who, for evil purposes, seek to work apart from God’s authority and His intended vocation for them, and work in a rebellious and autonomous way. Each estate is subverted from within when the properly and divinely instituted authority under which they are put is not recognized or is contradicted.

A. The Church is subverted from within when the full authority of Scripture alone is contradicted and false doctrine is taught, when the Gospel and the Ministry of Word and Sacrament do not have free course, and when various agendas contrary to the faith are accommodated. The church is also subverted from within when the proper headship of the pastor and the congregation's obedience to him are disregarded. Similarly, the pastor is subverting the estate when he uses his authority in a tyrannical and abusive way rather than exercising his office in a fatherly serving and shepherding manner. The divinely ordained ministry of the church is instituted by God to be reserved for men alone, and it is not only against the divine mandate of the Office of the Holy Ministry but also against the natural order and vocation of men and women in their creation by God and a subversion of the church from within when women exercise the Office of the Holy Ministry or the essential functions of this office. (I Tim. 2:12-14)

B. The Family is subverted from within when the divinely ordered relationships of husband and wife and father and mother and child are disregarded, contradicted, and undermined, when authority of the father while he is faithfully leading his family as he should (and also by extension, the mother as she assists him as his helpmate) is undermined or unsupported by his wife or children, or when the father will not graciously receive the helpful advice of his helpmate, his wife, the mother, and when the relationships of the family are not infused with love.

C. The government is undermined from within when rulers view themselves as autonomous from God and any higher law, when they are subject to no one and when they pursue public policy which disregards the sound conclusions of Reason and Natural Law and enact policies drawn from the irrational nonsense of politically correct and “woke” agendas. Also, the government is undermined from within when the people under them do not respect and obey their governing authorities as instruments of God, or when they interfere or obstruct the government’s exercise of their lawful authority in society in all matters other than those things which contradict God’s word when one “must obey God rather than man.”

VIII) SUBVERSION OF THE ESTATES FROM WITHOUT

Whenever the integrity of any of the estates is distorted from within, it will often lead to such estate intruding into the other estates, thereby undermining them from without. The rule of God in any of the three estates is undermined from without when any estate attempts to intrude upon the vocation of another estate.

A. The church unlawfully intrudes upon the other estates when she makes it her work and ministry using the coercion of the law to “reform the world and society” or to force those around them by the compulsion of the law to align outward behaviour with “Christian morality” or advance the kingdom of God as was done in the medieval Roman papacy and is the temptation of Calvinist “Dominion theology” and elements of “Christian Nationalism,”⁴¹ and Social Gospel agendas whether of the left or the right. The New Testament offers no blueprint for the reconstruction of earthly society and has no pattern of polity for the government.⁴²

The Church intrudes specifically against:

1. Family, when she belittles, interferes with, and usurps the divinely ordained relationships of husband, wife, children, and family members towards each other through whose vocations God has ordained to work to their blessing, or when she attempts to bypass parents (and especially the father) in ministry to children (baptizing children without parental consent, etc.).

2. Government, when she attempts to advance the kingdom of God, the interests of the church, “Christianize” society⁴³, dominate civil institutions and governments through the powers of the Law or the state, occupy herself with earthly, secular agendas, interferes with the state’s lawfully ordained work to govern society, or intimidates members of the church for the interests of such agendas.⁴⁴

B. The family unlawfully intrudes upon the other estates when it seeks to bend them to their private sectarian interests at the expense of the corporate welfare of the whole community and when they have contempt for or isolate themselves from the vocations of those in the state and church and become a “law unto themselves.”

The family intrudes specifically upon:

1. Church, when the family expects the church to conform to their private interests, when parents do not raise their children in the faith, when it forms sectarian conventicles where its devotion and piety (or lack of it!) leads the family away from or in contempt of the orthodox church’s ministry and teaching of Word and Sacrament, life and faith, or when family leaders countenance or neglect to protect children from the errors of a heterodox church.

2. Governing authorities, when just laws, government rulers and their proper work are ignored, disobeyed, belittled, or disrespected.

C. The government intrudes on other estates when it presumes to extend its jurisdiction beyond the outward matters of the temporal affairs of human life in this world and seeks to distort the natural inner life of the family or the spiritual life of the church, primarily when it does so to impose a secular agenda upon them, redefining marriage, family or the church according to earthly agendas contrary to God’s institution (sodomy “marriages,” redefining roles of husband, wife, parent, children, transgender agendas, etc.). The structures of the church and the family are neither derived from nor are dependent upon the state nor by any man or any human group or institution but are permanently set by their institution and blessing from God and so are not to be altered or distorted. When the state attempts to do so, they are illegally intruding outside their proper estate and illegally contradicting God's mandates.

The government intrudes specifically upon:

1. Family, when it interferes with, controls, and undermines the vocations of husband and wife with each other, or father and mother with their children and to train them as they see fit in the Christian faith, or when they do not respect the primary authority of parents over their children in important matters and decisions, such as schools and teachers which encourage refusing to inform parents of the gender decisions of their children).

2. The church, when they interfere and undermine the free course of the Ministry of Word and Sacrament, and the liberty of the church to preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), such as during the recent COVID lock-downs when it forbade churches to remain open or attempted to regulate her Ministry of Word and Sacrament.⁴⁵

Because God has authority over each estate—they are always agencies of His rule. No estate can be independent of God’s sovereignty, nor can they disregard the authority of God through which He rules each estate and His purposes for them, nor lawfully act contrary to God’s will and the purposes for which He instituted such estate.

IX) ONE’S LIFE IN EACH ESTATE

When considering one’s place concerning Church, Family, and State, Christians might profitably ask such questions as these:

1. Does an estate have jurisdiction and, therefore, authority from God to exercise a certain act?

2. Has an estate contradicted its mandate or been negligent in carrying out a responsibility God has mandated it to have?

3. Has an estate trespassed into the jurisdiction of another estate?

4. Is an estate being trespassed upon by another estate?

5. Do I have a call from God and an obligation within a certain vocation and within a particular estate where He has placed me to actively protest or resist the abuse of another placed in the same estate over me for myself to remain faithful to God within that estate?

X) EXCURSUS ON THE MAGDEBURG CONFESSION OF 1550

The Church and each Christian need to confess the faith and live faithful lives amid the urgent challenges of our present world, which would seek to distort and undermine our faith. To do so, the church and each ordinary Christian must cultivate a Christ-like mind, shaped by a sound understanding of the theological matters and confession of faith involved in a simple, concise, easily comprehended “rule of faith” catechism way as a basic framework of life. Furthermore, Christians must cultivate wisdom in accurately perceiving the issues and situations confronting them and to know how best to apply Scripture in responding to them. Beneficial are examples of how the church in her past has done so, and perhaps the most helpful is the struggle between church and state during mid-16th century Lutheranism, which led to the formation of the Magdeburg Confession of 1550.

As the Lutheran Church and her confession of faith increasingly confronted not only theological opposition from differing confessions of faith but also political opposition and persecution from the powers of the state, it became urgent to clarify if and how one should respond to such political forces and if there was a theologically justifiable place for political resistance in some way to political forces opposing the gospel. Luther staunchly held that Romans 13 demanded a basic posture of obedience to the governing authorities by Christians and the Church. For instance, Luther strongly condemned the Peasant Revolt of 1525 and the use of any violence to oppose or overthrow even unjust governing authorities.

It would at first seem that Romans 13 would allow no exceptions to the obedience that must be offered to ruling authorities, even when they are abusive and tyrannical, and that there is never any place for resistance to them of any kind. However, throughout the 1530s, Luther began to appreciate that such obedience, referred to in Romans 13 to all governing authorities, cannot be absolute and unconditional. Already in his 1522 German Bible translation, Luther rendered Romans 13:4 as “Denn sie [referring to die Obrigkeit, vv. 1–2] ist Gottes Dienerin dir zu gut,” that is, “For it [the constituted order; not “he,” the king] is God’s maidservant for you, for good.” From this translation, it follows that Romans 13 requires obedience not to the person of any specific individual ruler but to the lawfully constituted authority (to which even the highest earthly authority is himself subject!), which opens up the possibility, in line with Romans 13 and not in contradiction to it, peaceful, orderly, and lawful disobedience and resistance to individual rulers. Precisely because God institutes such authority, it follows that they are subject to God’s authority above them and cannot contradict them, and when they do, “we must obey God rather than man.” (Acts 5:29)

In 1530, a group of Lutheran lawyers and theologians met in Torgau to think this through more carefully. The result was the Torgau Declaration, which recognized that the authority of the Holy Roman Empire as it was legally constituted and structured, invested powers not in the Emperor exclusively nor absolutely but that he shared authority with certain lesser magistrates—especially those electors who elected him to the office and can therefore hold him to account, and indeed, depose him—and that this complex of shared authority are together those “governing authorities” to which Romans 13 refers. In the framework of such an understanding, it can become possible for Rom. 13 to allow and even call for lesser magistrates to “interpose” or place themselves between a tyrannical higher magistrate and the people to protect them from injustice and tyranny. Such is precisely what Luther’s prince, Frederick the Wise, had already done years before when he “kidnapped” Luther and spirited him away to protective custody in the Wartburg Castle. It was an act of interposition countermanding the emperor’s declaration of Luther as an outlaw, which declaration had the purpose of stifling the preaching of the Gospel and Lutheran doctrine. Prince Frederick was careful to make clear that this act of interposition against the Emperor and Pope was not based on mere personal disagreements with them or Machiavellian political opportunism. Instead, it was grounded upon an objective legal basis to which both emperor and pope were subject under God and which specifically demonstrated that the emperor’s actions lacked necessary due process, rendering the emperor’s decision legally unconstitutional since, as R. W. Scribner observes,

It had been drafted by Imperial councillors as early as 8 May, but its presentation was delayed until so many princes had departed from Worms that it was passed only by a rump Diet. Some of the most powerful princes of the empire challenged its legality and held themselves not to be bound by its terms. From 1521, there was an energetic campaign to rescind it. ⁴⁶

In this way, Prince Frederick engaged in at least passive—and indeed, arguably peacefully active⁴⁷—disobedience against his superior, the emperor, but the wise prince regarded it as obedience to God per his responsibilities as a lesser magistrate as mandated by God in Romans 13.

With the increasing political pressure put upon Lutheran states and their practice of Lutheranism by Emperor Charles, the Lutheran princes, upon the basis of the principles of the Torgau Declaration, and with Luther not disapproving, established formal structures for such interposition with the formation of the Schmalkalden League in 1531. After Luther died in 1546, the emperor inflicted a stinging defeat on Lutheran forces at the battle of Muhlburg, and in an attempt to force them back into the Roman Catholic fold, imposed upon them the Augsburg interim and later the Leipzig interim, which under the threat of force allowed Lutherans to continue to exist only if they compromised their beliefs and readopted certain Roman Catholic practices.

Against this threat, staunch Lutherans refused to compromise true Lutheran doctrine. When they were met by Catholic military force, faithful Lutheran princes interposed to defend them, most notably in Magdeburg, which endured a 400-day siege. In theological support of their interposing Lutheran princes, the theologians of Magdeburg composed the Magdeburg Confession, which provided guidelines for addressing, in a Christian and Biblically faithful way, these urgent and timeless questions which can constantly arise on matters of church and state.

The confessors of Magdeburg, following Luther and the confessors of Augsburg, recognized, according to Romans 13, that governing authorities are mandated by God and are a good gift from Him. Such governing authorities are mandated to maintain justice and peace, protect men against injustice, and, with the power of the sword given to them, punish the evildoer.

That authority must be rendered before God by a Christian towards a state’s chief magistrates makes it necessary for it to be clear who that magistrate is, a question all the more urgent when it is unclear who it might be or if there is doubtful legitimacy about one claiming to be one. The Augsburg Confession seems to shy away from, and even contradict, construing Romans 13 to mean that any and every political power that “has authority over us” is always to be viewed as a “governing authority.” Augustana XVI 1 speaks of the concept of the legitimae ordinationes, implying that there is such a thing to be distinguished from it as a governing authority that has unordered or illegitimate powers. What, then, would be the distinguishing marks of legitimae ordinationes, the “legal orders”—which, according to Article XVI must be acknowledged as “good gifts of God?” without which one has “unordered/illegitimate powers” which are not?

At first, it seems that the Confessions give no clear answer. Perhaps the reason for that would be that they are taking great care to avoid giving characteristics that are too closely tied to specific forms of political order present in 16^th Century Germany, which are not universally true of all political orders and which would have significant dissimilarity to any possible future political structures (such as those of present 21^st Century Western forms, like those in Canada). This would be consistent with the Lutheran insistence that God ordains no particular form of government.

But a mark of legitimae ordinationes can be detected in the Augustana’s understanding of the universal purpose of governing authorities as it was originally instituted by God—to “punish those who do wrong and commend those who do right” (I Peter 2:13-14). The criteria for a governing authority’s legitimacy is simply that it faithfully carries out the duties that God mandated. When it does, it remains an instrument of God and has legitimacy (even if such governing authorities are completely non-Christian themselves), and when they flagrantly and relentlessly do not, they have become instruments of the kingdom of Satan and may have lost the marks of legitimae ordinationes.

Notice here that legitimae ordinationes is not simply dependent upon any legal formal external criteria, whether a long venerable tradition, lawful succession of a ruler, or even necessarily a proper constitutional sound election by the people. To be sure, soundly forbidden and condemned by Lutheran teaching, following Romans 13, is any revolt against legally constituted authority, and even though God may use and act through such revolts as instruments of His divine wrath, such rebellion remains sinful. Nevertheless, even if a governing authority seizes power by sinful and illegitimate means, if it then governs by its divinely mandated purpose, it is to be regarded by Christians as legitimae ordinationes. Conversely, a government with impeccably constitutional external credentials of legitimacy which, however, completely abandons and crassly attacks that which it is mandated from God to do can lose the criteria of legitimae ordinationes.⁴⁸

Shaped by such a theological framework and foundation, the Magdeburg Confession developed the following points and principles:

A. The Scriptures cite numerous times when interposition and/or passive disobedience is made before the law of a superior magistrate, such as the midwives’ refusal to obey Pharaoh's order to kill the male infants (Exodus 1:17), the parents of Moses hiding their child for three months (Ex. 2:1-2), and commended as “models of faith” for it in Hebrews 13:23, Elijah resisting King Ahab (I Kings 18), Mordecai “transgressing the king’s (Ahasuerus) command” by not bowing towards Haman (Esther 3:1-6), Esther, who goes to the king to protest his command and that of Haman to kill the Jews, “even though it is against the law” (Esther 4), Jeremiah who defied Jewish authorities by telling Israelites (even the soldiers!) to leave Jerusalem and not resist the invading Babylonians, for which he was arrested and thrown into a pit with the approval of King Zedekiah (Jer. 38:1-6), Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refusing to engage in idolatry or to give up the practice of their faith, for which they were threatened with death, (Daniel 3,6),⁴⁹ the wise men visiting Jesus who did not return to King Herod as he had ordered, (Matt. 2:1-12), Peter and John preaching the Gospel when they were ordered by the Jerusalem council not to do so (Acts 4:1-22), Peter obeying God rather than man (Acts 5:29), Paul and Silas imprisoned for preaching the Gospel which were “customs that are not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice.” (Acts 16:16-40). One could also include Nathan rebuking King David for his sin (II Sam. 12) and John the Baptist rebuking King Herod (Mark 6:17-18)

B. This confession confirmed the position of the Torgau Declaration that Romans 13 does not require unconditional obedience to all authority nor any particular ruler but rather to all lawful authority (AC XVI). The confession points out that the “authorities … appointed by God” cited by Romans 13:1 and “every ordinance of man” (1 Peter 2:13) to whom people were subject refers not so much to individuals who held an office but instead to the office itself as it is constitutionally established in that particular place.

C. “Lawful” refers to what is ordained by God, Who instituted the State, from Whom government receives the lawful right to authority, and the jurisdiction and parameters in which to exercise that power.

D. Such jurisdiction and parameters of the governing authorities are to 1) protect the innocent and 2) punish the evildoer (Rom. 13:3-4)

E. Romans 13:3–4, therefore, defines the positive duties that civil government has toward its subjects; a government failing to uphold these God-given duties, that is, when it punishes the innocent and protects the evildoer, such governor is in contradiction to his mandate for office from God according to Rom. 13 and thereby violates God’s establishment.

F. Crucial here is Luther’s understating of vocation (as, for instance, seen in the Catechism’s Table of Duties) —all governing authority must be considered within the context of the calling and vocation for which God has instituted such office, and through which God works His First Article good towards mankind. The office can never be disconnected from the vocation for which it was instituted and by which God works through it.

G. In line with this, it follows that lesser magistrates and all people have distinctive vocations in their office, which would include appropriate responses which may and often must be made to the unlawful and unjust acts of a ruler who contradicts his mandate from God. Protesting against unjust laws must proceed with appeals to the established higher authorities, with God as the ultimate authority, to Whom all are subject and Who has the final say. When the highest earthly authorities defend unjust laws, the lesser magistrates under them have redress with careful and measured levels of protest.

H. Such “measured response” operates within a balance between two extremes. On the one hand, is what might be characterized as the “Nazi interpretation of Romans 13,” where the governing authority demands (with the supposed support of God Himself!) absolute and unquestioning obedience. On the other is what might might be referred to as the “Marxist/Communist response,” encouraging popular revolt and violent overthrow (such as in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1525) against a lawful authority. The Magdeburg Confession absolutely forbids both extremes which must never be permitted or countenanced.

I. Further, a “measured response” must always be done respecting the established constitutional order in which the vocations and their responsibilities through which God works. This means that any such response or resistance to the unjust actions of a higher magistrate must be led by those lesser magistrates who are recognized to be among “the powers that be” who have the vocation to do so. Secondly, any such interposition is to be done with conservative restraint, reluctance, and reserve—lesser magistrates, much less the people, should never be “chomping at the bit” looking for excuses to rebel, rage against, and overreact to the higher magistrates. So, Magdeburg outlines four levels of injustice possible for a higher magistrate, with the proper response appropriate from lesser magistrates and the people, always seeking to be as restrained as possible.

J. The Magdeburg Confession’s four levels of response.

1. “Not extremely atrocious injustice” When a ruler, as a result of natural weakness, falls into occasional vice, and misuses his office:

   1. Response of Lesser Magistrates: may intervene by reminding the ruler of the proper limits of his office.

   2. Response of the People: they should quietly bear up in patience.

2. “Atrocious and notorious injuries.” When a ruler more systematically acts “contrary to his oath and the laws.”

   1. General Response: “Christian charity calls upon both the people and their lesser magistrates to consider bearing patiently.”

   2. Response of Lesser Magistrates: should feel free to “make the necessary defence against the wayward ruler on behalf of the people.”

   3. Response of the People: “No one is compelled by the command of God to submit to the usurpation of his own right,” and they should bear up patiently, letting the lesser magistrates consider the matter on their behalf.

3. When “forced to certain sin.” When a lesser magistrate cannot comply with the dictates of a higher magistrate except by sinning against God.

   1. Response of Lesser Magistrate: Not only may he resist, but indeed, now he must resist the unjust actions of the higher magistrate. However, one should not rashly conclude that the injustice has progressed from level 2 to level 3. One must instead seek “an accurate and true judgment,” lest premature resistance weaken, rather than restore, God’s established secular order.

   2. Response of the People: They should continue to rely on their local magistrates to discern the difference between Levels 2 and 3 and to act for the people’s benefit. They should continue to bear up patiently as much as their conscience would allow, but simultaneously, they must resist doing evil.

4. “More than tyrannical” When a ruler persecutes not merely persons here and there but systematically persecutes “their right itself,” and thereby “persecutes God, the author of right in persons,” then the ruler has become (now quoting Luther) a “bear-wolf,” and “is the very devil himself.”

   1. Response of both the Lesser Magistrates and the People: At this point, not only the lesser magistrates but also the people themselves must resist such as an antichrist, each as is proper according to their station and vocation, and following Romans 13, for “when he [a tyrannical magistrate] begins to be a terror to good works and honour to evil, there is no longer in him, because he does thus, the ordinance of God, but the ordinance of the devil.”

K. The Magdeburg Confession mandates that the Christian willingly obeys the government as God’s representative, even if he must suffer inconvenience by unfair laws, and can only refuse to do so when such would place him in contradiction to the highest authority of God Himself to Whom, of course, all owe the highest obedience. The clearest and most incontrovertible example of an unjust and unlawful act from a governing authority where one then “must obey God rather than man” is precisely what prompted this very statement of St. Peter—obstructing the church's preaching of the pure Gospel and the free course of the ministry of Word and Sacrament.⁵⁰ However less clear it might be to warrant interposition and resistance for other disputable situations, if the abolishing of Word and Sacrament ministry does not warrant it, then it seems nothing would, and Acts 5 has been rendered an empty dead letter. Nevertheless, it seems compelling arguments can be made for interposition for even lesser, yet still vital matters, such as moral issues regarding abortion, transgenderism, sodomy marriage, medically assisted suicide, and the like.

L. Many of the assumptions and axioms of the Magdeburg Confession were formally enshrined into the Formula of Concord (seen most clearly in Article 10) and are, therefore, matters of confessional integrity for the Lutheran Church.

1. An indifferent matter can no longer be regarded as indifferent in the context of controversy and scandal, mainly when the purity of the Gospel is at stake, the church’s free course of Ministry of Word and Sacrament, and the clear distinction of the two realms, church and state.

2. An adiaphoron (for example, a particular liturgical rite or practice) which ordinarily is permissible for the church becomes intolerable as soon as a corrupt leader of church or state attempts to compel it to be done or not done, and when such an abusive authority binds Christian consciences and obscures the Gospel. Resistance to such a pseudo-authority is not merely permissible but necessary.

3. Compromising on an adiaphoron under such time of confession is a failure to confess the truth and constitutes denying it.

XI) EXCURSES ON THE BETHEL CONFESSION (1933)

One of the most critical times of confession faced by the Lutheran church in the 20^th Century towards an intrusive and tyrannical state was during the persecution of the church under Nazi Germany. Soon after taking power as Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, Adolf Hitler swiftly began to consolidate his power, eliminating all opposition to his regime. In doing so, he also enforced a totalitarian Gleichschaltung, co-ordination of all public activities of life and society that was to be brought into harmony with the will and agenda of the Nazi party and the state. No aspect of German life, including the church, could exist outside and remain independent of the Nazi agenda. Such intentions the Nazi party itself pointed out with crystal clarity in the notorious Article 24 of its party platform, which dictated that “we demand liberty for all religious confessions in the State, in so far as they do not in any way endanger the existence or do not offend the customs and moral feelings of the Germanic race. The party, as such, represents the standpoint of “positive Christianity” without binding itself to any particular faith.”⁵¹

What is found here advocated by the Nazis is both an illegal abuse of the state’s power to mandate things against which God has given it to do and also an illegitimate intrusion into the life of the church which undermines that which God has given her to do.

First, in direct opposition to and in contempt of its mandate to bear the sword to punish wrongdoers and protect the temporal welfare of its citizens, the Nazi state used its sword to bring persecution and terror to the people of Germany (and to the people of many other invaded and conquered countries of Europe) in a way almost unprecedented in world history. The horrors of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald—and the philosophical framework espoused by the Nazis to justify such genocide--gives ample and incontestable evidence of fulfilling the Magdeburg Confessions’ definition of a “more than tyrannical” fourth level of an unjust ruler. As such action is treason against God’s Table of Duties mandate for the state, the church, which must always openly speak God’s Word without compromise, had an obligation to speak specifically against the Nazi state as they would against the devil himself. The Nazi regime, and specifically Hitler himself, indicated in Article 24 and in the actions of their public rule that they believed themselves to be beyond all criticism and subject to no one, and the church must make clear to them that they were indeed subject to God and under His sovereignty and mandates.⁵²

Secondly, the Nazi regime, in line with Article 24 and their program of Gleichschaltung, illegitimately intruded into the life of the estate of the church by attempting to bend them to the Nazi agenda. In July 1933, Hitler concluded a concordat with the Vatican, which quarantined the Roman Catholic church in Germany from public life and allowed them to exist only if they relinquished all involvement in politics, even though the Nazis closed down Catholic schools and hospitals. At the same time, the Nazi regime pressed German Protestantism to form a unified Reich church subservient to a German theology that clothed wolfish Nazi beliefs in the sheep’s clothing of religious verbiage. Such a German theology would reject the Old Testament and all things Jewish (including banning all Jews from the church and especially from pastoral positions), picture Christ as an Aryan,” the heroic son of a German soldier,” espouse German heroic folk myths in lessons and the importance of blood and race as God-given orders. In May 1933, under pressure from Hitler, the Protestant Church Council adopted the constitution for the united Deutsche Evangelishe Kirche, which, in July 1933, went into effect with German Christians winning 70% of the vote to congregational council offices in church-wide elections.

The urgent question was then how the church should respond to such intrusion. On the one hand, some church leaders enthusiastically supported this Gleichschaltung of the church into the Nazi agenda, even acclaiming Hitler as a Christian ally in the fight against Marxism, Judaism, and liberalism.⁵³ Other pastors (most likely the majority) attempted to keep a low profile by carrying out their ministries with as much outward compliance and as little opposition towards the regime as possible. Often, it was the overriding goal and purpose of church leaders to “save the structure of the church at all costs so that it could at least continue to function as the church.”⁵⁴

However, it soon became clear that the overwhelming totalitarian demands on conscience demanded by the Nazi regime made such a neutral stand impossible to sustain with integrity. The state began to engage in massive interference in the church’s life, and it became dangerous to speak out against the party line on Church issues.⁵⁵ “Compromises and concessions had to be made so that church leaders might retain their positions, church property might not be confiscated, worship services might still be held, and pastors might not be imprisoned or sent to the front lines”⁵⁶This way, the church could avoid having to make sacrifices.⁵⁷

Other pastors recognized that the church could not be faithful to her call and mission unless she spoke out against this state intrusion into the church and confessed the truth of the Gospel. Already in 1932 before the Nazis came to power, the prescient and great confessional Lutheran theologian Herman Sasse became the “first important German theologian to raise his voice against Nazism”⁵⁸by identifying in Nazi ideology six threats to the church: 1) idolatry of the old Germanic heathen religions, 2) glorifying the Volk,⁵⁹ 3) glorifying the concept of the divinely-given leader, 4) rejecting the Old Testament as Jewish propaganda, 5) unionistically establishing one national Protestant church, and especially, 6) controlling the administration, ethics and theology of the church.⁶⁰ In this way, Sasse saw that at the heart of the Nazi program for the church was a first commandment issue--an entirely pagan theology, idolatry of worship to a false god, with the ultimate goal being to “destroy the churches completely.” ⁶¹ Within mere months after Hitler came to power, each of these threats to the church became apparent.

Throughout 1933, broad opposition within the church against her Nazification began to take shape. Bishop Meisner (among those warned personally by Hitler at the meeting referred to above) nevertheless courageously protested against Nazi interference in the church in September and November 1933, the latter at the 450th celebration of Luther’s birth, with no less than 1,200 Bavarian pastors announcing solidarity with him. Soon, all Protestant youth organizations by order of the Reich Bishop were incorporated into the Hitler Youth. By 1934, Bishops Meisner and Wurm (from Wurttemberg) severed their ties with the national office of the official Nazified state church under Muller. They were promptly summoned to another meeting with Hitler, who issued them a stern warning.⁶² Throughout 1933 and 1934, numerous declarations and confessions of faith against “German-Christian theology” were issued by various district assemblies, pastoral conferences, and other pastoral groups.⁶³

The most prominent attempt among Lutherans to fashion an official confession took place in 1933 at the Bethel Institute, where Sasse and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were prominently involved. Bonhoeffer was most especially disturbed by the enactment of the Aryan paragraph into Nazi Law in April 1933 and, within a week, was already lecturing against it.⁶⁴ Bonhoeffer flatly stated that “the Aryan Law is heresy about the church and destroys her substance”⁶⁵ Early in August, Bonhoeffer took the initiative to contact the esteemed and respected Friedrich von Bodelschwingh,⁶⁶ director of the Bethel Institute, and his associate Georg Merz. Sasse was invited to join the project, and by mid-August, he, with Bonhoeffer, together with other pastors such as Merz and Gerhard Startenwerth, ⁶⁷met together and proceeded to craft a statement. Input was received from other pastors from the Tecklenburg area of Westphalia who were already working on their own document.⁶⁸

The hope of Sasse and Bonhoeffer for a quick, decisive statement was undermined and stalled by the further input and adjustments of others with very different political and theological agendas. Bodelschwingh, interested in pulling in acceptance from as many groups together as possible, sent a draft of the statement to 20 other theologians without getting the approval of Sasse or Bonhoeffer for the resulting delay nor the choice of the theologians.⁶⁹ The input of these theologians, who had varying degrees of confessional faithfulness--and some who were, in fact, Reformed—led to many alterations and changes to the confession, which eliminated its original purpose. Instead of “a sharp, incisive weapon for the church to defend itself against the deadly danger of sinking into the more of false doctrine”⁷⁰ based upon solid Lutheran teaching and her confessional writings, it morphed into a water-downed inter-church document. Eliminated in the final text was all protest against the totalitarian state and the Aryan Law so that solidarity with Jewish Christians was no longer apparent. Furthermore, Merz and Stratenwerth's input diluted Sasse’s explicit Lutheran emphases and introduced Reformed theological concepts. The final version came with an introduction by Bodelschwingh, styling the document with a weak “for consideration,” falling far short of a robust, bold confession of truth. Bonhoeffer and Sasse were so disgusted by these alterations that they eventually refused to sign the final copy of the Bethel Confession⁷¹ sent out in January 1934. As one commentator of the document said, “The overall effect of the revision process was a disaster for this attempt to speak a timely word of confession based on Biblical and confessional witness.” Indeed, “the German Church of the Reformation” failed to confess the truth “at precisely the time and at the only time when a clear cry of outrage would have had a chance to shape the course of events.”⁷²

Eventually, the Bethel Confession was replaced entirely by the Barmen Theological Declaration, and the former was largely forgotten. The Barmen Confession was almost exclusively the work of Karl Barth and reflected his Reformed perspective and his peculiar theological idiosyncrasies. Thus, it lacked Bethel’s robust Lutheran theology⁷³ and its discussion of many vital points.⁷⁴ Barman would become a rallying cry for those who, following Barth and Martin Niemöller, formed a Confessing Church protesting German-Christian theology. By 1935 the German Protestant landscape became divided into four groups: 1) about 3000 pastors aligning themselves with Muller’s pro-Nazi German-Christian church, 2) about the same number of pastors in the new Confessing Church under Niemöller confessing under the Barman confession against the German-Christian theology, yet also unionistically Protestant, 3) Most--about 12,000--continuing in the mainline Unionistic Protestant Landiskirche keeping their heads down and not openly protesting against German-Christian theology with the Confessing church, but neither identifying themselves with it (which was perhaps, for many, a quiet protest against it by not aligning themselves with it) and then 4) the small independent confessional Lutheran groups, which, as Sasse observed, were not disturbed by the Nazis because they were so “insignificantly small.”⁷⁵

The great insight of Sasse throughout the challenges and struggles of the Third Reich, which is evident in his original version of the Bethel Confession, was the absolute centrality of the Church’s ongoing ministry of Word and Sacrament in all its truth and purity. Nothing could be allowed to compromise or undermine this, for that was man’s only hope. “Everything depends on Christ Who is present in Word and Sacrament. We do not want to know if the party represents Christianity, but whether in the Third Reich, the church may proclaim the Gospel freely and without hindrance.”⁷⁶ Sasse recognized that there was an even more profound evil behind the horrific moral depravities of the Nazi political ideology and holocaust, all which any decent non-Christian with a normal conscience is able to acknowledge and condemn. Behind this were spiritual realities that could only be spiritually discerned by the church and her proclamation of the truth. Nazism was a false faith and religion, fearing, loving, and trusting in counterfeit gods, the holocaust the unholy whole burnt offerings to this demonic false god. Nazism was not just a distorted political ideology but a false demonic religious confession vying for the complete allegiance of the minds, hearts, and souls of man as a substitute and alternative religion. Therefore, it was unalterably opposed to the Christian church and her Gospel and could tolerate her existence only strategically for a time, all the while seeking to marginalize and destroy her. Likewise, Sasse saw that the church must not only condemn and fight against Nazism’s political ideology and abuse in the estate of government and undermining of God’s left-hand work but also its religious ideology and intrusion and attack on the life of the church and undermining of God’s right-hand work. The church is not just another group in the public square that can join in with other groups for a united protest against Nazism, minimizing differences with such other groups and compromising her unique calling for the sake of opposing the common enemy. The pure Gospel of Jesus Christ preached by the church is alone the truth which calls for the allegiance of man against the false gods of Nazism or any other false god.⁷⁷ And the church’s only way to fight against them is through the ministry of Word and Sacrament and wielding the sword of the Word of God. This is why Sasse objected so strenuously when the church’s ministry and her doctrine professed in the Bethel Confession were compromised by the false doctrine of heterodox churches, for “when it comes to giving ground confessionally or doctrinally, there is no bottom line. We must be ready to sacrifice everything else whatsoever for the sake of loyalty to Jesus Christ our Lord. . . it is better to give up everything else in faithfulness to our Lord without retreating an inch, for our faithful Lord will never allow the gates of hell to prevail against” His church (Matt. 16:18)”⁷⁸The Lutheran church cannot compromise her theology for the sake of a mere “effective common front” with other churches, much less with other non-Christian organizations, for the same evil foe is working in both the tyranny of an evil state and the false doctrine of heterodox churches. Such an approach relies upon the earthly weapons of the church as a temporal institution fighting against temporal realities rather than a spiritual reality fighting against forces in the spiritual realm. The church's failure to make such a robust confession at Bethel shows that Sasse’s observations were exactly right—and it would seem in one sense, so was Hitler when he said: “the church has lost its chance.”⁷⁹

XII) EXCURSES ON THE LUTHERAN RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN NAZI-OCCUPIED NORWAY (1940–1945) UNDER ARCHBISHOP BERGGRAV

A fascinating parallel to the experience and issues of Lutherans within Nazi Germany framing the Bethel Confession are those of fellow Lutherans in Norway under Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1945. In April 1940, Nazi forces invaded Norway and occupied it for over five years until its liberation in May 1945. The Nazi government very soon established a puppet National Socialist government in Norway (under Vidkun Quisling), which attempted to impose Nazi ideology on all aspects of Norwegian life, including the church. The Lutheran Church’s primate, the bishop of Oslo, Eivind Berggrav, was forced to consider how the church should properly respond to this serious challenge.

At first, Berggrav urged Norwegian Christians to "refrain from any interference" peacefully and refuse to "mix themselves up in the war by sabotage or in any other way.” However, as it soon became clear that the Nazi government intended to bend the church to compromise her theology and align with Nazi ideology, Berggrav led a resistance against them. He carefully studied Luther and the Magdeburg Confession to understand whether, when, and how Christians may and even must resist tyranny in both the state and the church. He came to the same understanding and interpretation about Romans 13 as did the Magdeburg Confession that what Paul teaches here is not an absolute and unconditional obedience to all governing authorities (which was the Nazi interpretation!) but that this very chapter gives a grounding for legitimate civil disobedience.

Condemning both the “Nazi interpretation” and also the other extreme of violent mass uprisings such as in the Peasant’s Revolt, Berggrav in “When the Driver Is Out of His Mind” (1941), navigated a carefully balanced path along the lines of the Magdeburg Confession, even providing 75 pages of supporting quotes from Luther. Observing that the Augsburg Confession (1530) emphasized “lawful authority,” Berggrav held that the Nazis were, in fact, unlawful so that while citizens should still suffer patiently and not revolt violently, pastors nevertheless should boldly preach God’s Word, teaching the proper limits of state authority. Citizens may petition for reform, and finally, lesser magistrates may have to resort to force to protect people from tyranny.

On 25 Sep, 1941, when the Nazis abolished the administrative council and attempted to put the church under Quisling and other Nazi sympathizers, Berggrav a month later led six fellow bishops to form the Christian Council for Joint Deliberation, and refused to comply with Nazi alterations to the liturgy. On 1 February 1942, when a group of Quisling sympathizers invaded Nidaros Cathedral and forbade its loyal Dean Kjellbu to conduct services, thousands of Norwegians gathered outside to sing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and the following day, all seven Norwegian bishops resigned. Just before Easter 1942, Berggrav was arrested along with four other members of the council and was imprisoned at Bredtvet concentration camp, placed in solitary confinement, and narrowly avoided execution. In protest to this and in support of Berggrav, 93% of the pastors of the church of Norway resigned en masse from the state church and continued to serve their parishes under a new underground church authority, strongly signalling that they would obey God rather than man. Many of these pastors were captured, put under house arrest, or else sent to forced labour camps, and one, Arne Thu, was sent there for refusing to change the liturgy to suit the Nazis and was punished with 5-hours of forced exercise after which he reportedly died of heart failure (but one cannot help but wonder if anything was wrong with his heart). But such resistance was not only from pastors but also faithful rank-and-file laymen of the church: 85% of teachers refused, in writing, to teach the National Socialist curriculum, and tens of thousands of parents flooded the Nazified education department with letters daily. Berggrav won the deep respect not only of his country but also his guards (many of whom very well may have been German Lutherans), who often turned a blind eye, letting Berggrav secretly leave his prison in Asker, wearing disguises such as a policeman's uniform or thick glasses and a fake moustache, to meet with the Norwegian underground church.

Berggrav further developed and defended the proper Lutheran perspective on church and state in his work Man and the State (1945), which he wrote under house arrest and which had to be smuggled out to the public. Here, Berggrav argues that there are only two possible perspectives on the relationship of church and state, both developed in the 16^th Century: that of Martin Luther, a distinction between God’s “Two Kingdoms” (Church and Civil Affairs), and that of Machiavelli—the absolute authority of the state over the church. Those allowing for no civil disobedience against the governing authorities (the Nazi interpretation—but also put into practice by the Marxist/communist approach) are disciples of Machiavelli. At the Diet of Worms, as Luther stood before the emperor, his conscience was bound to the Word of God, as were the confessing princes at Augsburg (lesser magistrates!) also standing before the same Emperor again, and, as Berggrav argues, present Lutheran Christians need boldly to do the same against tyrannical authorities. And always, such was done for the sake of the Gospel and the free course and integrity of the Church’s Ministry of Word and Sacrament. Indeed, after the liberation of Norway, Bishop Berggrav personally met with Norway’s Nazi puppet governor, Quisling, and forgave him.

A close look at both the activity of Sasse during his struggle against Nazism and his efforts in the Bethel Declaration and the efforts of Bishop Berggrav in Norway shows the following principles to guide future faithful efforts of the church in similar circumstances:

1. The church is to confess her teaching, practice her doctrine fully, ultimately, and without compromise, and state it unequivocally and clearly to the world in the face of any pressure from the outside to do otherwise.

2. Since the roles of the state are mandated by God, taught in Scripture, and, therefore, Christian doctrine, the church's teachers and pastors must teach them not only to the faithful but also to the state and its leaders.

3. When the state flagrantly acts contrary to God's mandate to use the sword to punish evildoers and protect the temporal welfare of the people, the church and her leaders are mandated to be the instrument through which God speaks His word of disapproval and condemnation against them.

4. When the state intrudes into the estate of the church by attempting to restrict or regulate her divine services, theological confession, or the Christian life of the faithful in the public domain in a way contrary to the Scriptures and sound Christian doctrine, the church and each Christian—and especially the pastors-- must resist such intrusion and continue to freely practice what she is called to believe, teach, confess, and practice, and to endure whatever suffering and sacrifice that may come in doing so rather than sacrificing Christian teaching and its practice.

5. All Lutheran practice, both in the life of her divine services and the life of her members living in their public vocations within the world, must flow out from a full, robust Lutheran teaching and confession. Such cannot be neutered, watered down by alien philosophies or theologies uninformed by or contrary to Christian teaching.

6. Lutherans may co-operate and co-ordinate with other non-Lutheran Christians in a public confession together against a grievous abuse, tyranny, or attack on Christian teaching and practice by civil magistrates or public society, which they hold together in common as Christians, as long as doing so does not involve unionism or compromise of Lutheran doctrine in any way to do so. Such coordination with other Christians on matters of Christian belief, which they have in common against anti-Christian threats and pressures to the church and her faith by the state or forces in society, should be considered as matters of cooperation in externals rather than communion in sacred things.⁸⁰

7. However, to compromise a full Lutheran confession of the faith to forge a broader, seemingly more potent, more effective coalition with other Christian groups against a public threat to the faith is itself to allow an even more dangerous attack on the Christian church and her confession. Lutheran and other churches may co-ordinate public confessions against public threats to the faith where they can. Still, they must do so separately and divided where they must (as when it would involve a communion in sacred things. )

8. The church’s only hope and weapon in all demonic challenges to the faith, both from within an outward unfaithful church and without from a tyrannical state, is her ongoing faithful ministry of Word and Sacrament and a full confession of this faith. Such must not be compromised, and in this, the faithful must rest confident, for the church has already won the victory against them.

XIII) SPECIFIC ISSUES CONFRONTING CONTEMPORARY CANADA

A) PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

1. The constitutional framework of Canada, which constitutes its “governing authorities” to which Romans 13 would be applied, is structured around His Majesty, the King of Canada as Head of State (represented in Canada by Her Excellency, the Governor-General), under which is His Majesty's government, the Parliament, with the Prime Minister as Head of Government, a division of power between nation, provinces, and localities, all under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

2. The structure of Canadian parliamentary government provides the tradition of not only the rule of the majority party (or coalition of parties) which are able to hold the confidence of parliament, but also the role of an Official Opposition and shadow cabinet of the next largest party. In this way, ordered, peaceful and even mandated debate and accountability of the government's policies are structured into the framework of parliamentary rule. Such debate works to ensure continued appeal to common reason, natural law and conscience which God has provided for the basis of right and just rule. Such a structure also engenders healthy limited government, guards against totalitarian tendencies, protects freedom of speech, reminding authorities that they are subject to an Authority higher then themselves, and such intends to guarantee liberties for critical debate and peaceful disagreement and opposition from not only members of parliament but also from ordinary citizens who elect them.

3. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifically notes that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law,” and thereby implicitly affirms Romans 13 (and the principles of the Magdeburg Confession) that government is instituted and appointed by God, also assuming that such is evident from natural law, that from God flows the authority of government and the rule of law, and that governing authorities are accountable to Him.

4. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants all citizens a right to religious liberty (1982 Const. Act, Part I, §2a). Indeed, the Canadian Criminal Code (176,1,2) explicitly states that it is illegal (a) “to obstruct or prevent a clergyman or minister from celebrating divine service or performing any other function in connection with his calling” and that anyone who (b) “knowing that a clergyman or minister is about to perform, is on his way to perform or is returning from the performance of any of the duties or functions mentioned in paragraph (a) arrests him on a civil process, or under the pretense of executing a civil process, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.” Furthermore, the “Federal Emergency Act preamble states clearly that emergency orders cannot, and do not, supersede the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights.”

5. Such a constitutional order of Canada, however, also allows a Charter Right to be counterbalanced and overcome by statutory objectives for public policy (the “notwithstanding” clause, 1982 Const. Act, Part I, §33). In practice, recent court decisions have used this to trim away basic religious liberty and freedom in Canada (such as Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada (2018 SCC 33).

6. Assuming and in agreement with the premise of the Torgau Declaration and Magdeburg Confession that electors, as Lesser Magistrates, have the power to hold accountable Higher Magistrates whom they elect to office and even to depose them, it follows that since the constitutional structure of Canada grants all citizens of legal age the power and privilege to vote, they also collectively have as a mandate from God a certain vocation and power of a lesser magistrate to hold higher magistrates (and indeed, lesser ones also) to an account and the constitutional and legally established power to remove them from office is in the peaceful and orderly process known as a federal, provincial or local election.

7. As observed by an article in the Canadian Lutheran: “Let’s call a spade a spade. Our nation has already secularized. ... The Church in Canada finds itself in exile.”⁸¹ There are matters and particular issues upon which the Scriptures speak so clearly and directly that it is possible and may even be necessary for the church to take a corporate stance. This is the case concerning such problems as abortion, MAID/euthanasia and transgenderism, marriage and homosexuality, etc. In some cases, it may only be possible for the church to speak to the morality of a given issue without coming out with any particular position in favour or opposition to specific legislation. In still other cases, sensitive questions may arise for public debate concerning which God’s Word provides even less specific guidance. However, these issues may have important implications for the church as an institution or may deprive individuals of religious rights or liberties. In these cases, it may be helpful for the Synod, while recognizing that Lutheran Christians equally committed to following God’s will as revealed in Holy Scripture, may come to different conclusions, to keep its members informed and offer guidance to them as they determine their positions.

B) ABORTION; EUTHANASIA AND MEDICAL ASSISTANCE IN DYING (MAID)

God in Christ, as the author of Life, sanctifies human life and bestows upon it His blessing, filling it with purpose and meaning. All human life, from conception to natural death, is created in the image of God and has intrinsic sacredness and value regardless of its perceived quality. The devil is the author of death and seeks to tear it down, desecrate it, spread death, and rob life of its meaning and purpose.

ABORTION

Canada remains one of the only countries in the world with no criminal restrictions on abortion and where unborn children have no legal protection whatsoever. Throughout most of her history, the unborn in Canada enjoyed the full legal protection of life. In 1969, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968–69 legalized therapeutic abortions only in the severely restricted instance when the continuation of the pregnancy would likely endanger the woman's life or health, and such abortions were only granted upon recommendation of a committee of three doctors, leaving abortions in all other occasions still illegal and the life of the unborn firmly protected. However, with the decision of R. v. Morgentaler in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the 1969 act, ruling that it violated a woman's right to "life, liberty and security of the person" guaranteed under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms established in 1982.

However, this decision, contrary to popular opinion, did not in any way establish any right in Canada legalizing abortion. ⁸² The High Court only voided the previous 1969 law in Canada which regulated abortion, without however replacing it with any alternative law, but rather explicitly directing Parliament to do so, which it has never done. Also, though the Supreme Court ruled in its opinion that the 1969 law violated the Charter of Rights, nowhere did the court say that there was within the Charter itself any right to an abortion. And furthermore, the complex decision of the court showed three different sets of reasons among the justices for reaching their majority opinion, which opinion ruled no more than that it was essentially the lack of equal and timely access to a criminal defence in those cases where continuation of the pregnancy would endanger a woman’s life or health that in their opinion made the 1969 law unconstitutional. Note that the Court did not even go as far as to say that unequal access to abortion itself was unconstitutional, but rather left open as perfectly constitutional that regulations against abortion access when the mother’s life is not in danger and where she had access to a criminal defence could be legal as far as the Charter is concerned. The majority opinion of the court did find that abortion provisions of the Criminal Code (section 251 at the time, currently section 287) violated Charter 7 right to security of the person,” which says. “7.Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice,” which of course, flagrantly begs and indeed ignores the question whether an unborn child should be included within the “everyone” so protected. Nevertheless, it is crucial to note that the court was unanimous in finding that the state still legally retains a legitimate interest in the protection of the unborn fetes. ⁸³

The result of all of this is that since there is now no federal law regarding abortion in Canada whatsoever, abortion is left to take place completely without regulation, and indeed with public funding, up to the the day the child is born. In 2020, 74,000 unborn children—about 20% of all pregnancies-- were reported to have been murdered through abortion in Canada, and it is estimated that one third of all women in Canada have had an abortion.

Finally, the recent COVID “vaccines”’ undoubted and troubling connection with aborted children and the abortion industry, and the now widely recognized misleading and inaccurate “official” information about their safety and efficacy, along with much of the duplicitous narrative surrounding the use of such “vaccines,” calls the church and each ordinary Christian to think through these matters with careful critical discernment and confess concerning them to the world. Speaking the truth in love, Christians cannot fail to do so.

EUTHANASIA AND MAID

On 16 June 2016, Bill C-14 was passed by the Canadian Parliament, and the following day it was then passed by the Senate and received Royal Assent. This bill overturned previous existing law in the Canadian Criminal Code which prohibited euthanasia and assisted suicide and legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) for those chronically ill and whose death was reasonably foreseeable. In March 2021, the legislation was amended by Bill C-7 to include as eligible for MAID those with grievous and irremediable suffering even if death was not reasonably foreseeable. Since then, there have been strong moves to expand eligibility to those depressed and unhappy with life, and the mentally ill, many of whom would be unable to give reasonable, conscious, informed consent. The Canadian MAID program has received widespread international criticism not only from the church but also from secular human rights groups⁸⁴ for its intensity, breadth, lack of safeguards, prejudice against the disabled, poor, and marginalized, its temptation and tendency for physicians and health workers to suggest and encourage MAID to those who would not themselves consider it, and the lack of conscience rights protection for doctors, nurses, and hospitals (and potentially pastors and churches) who disagree with such practice of MAID.

Vocation of the Estate of Family

1. The Family is instituted by God for the creation and procreation of life through the blessing of marriage. Within the family life is preserved and nurtured, not only at its beginning with children during their weakness and vulnerability amid their growth to adulthood but also at the end of life for the elderly when they enter into the vulnerability and weakness of age, chronic disease, isolation, and mental depression so that in families they are not neglected and discarded as financial and practical burdens but rather by those who most love them are protected, cared for and cherished. I Tim 5:8 instructs Christians to provide for their relatives, and especially for members of their household, and that neglecting to do so is tantamount to “denying the faith and acting worse than an unbeliever.”

2. The family is the inner sanctuary and ultimate temporal refuge where vulnerable people find care, protection, love, and a sense of worth and value from those closest to them, who love and sacrifice for them.

3. The legalization and practice of the murder of unborn children through abortion perniciously intrudes upon the wholesome care and nurture that families, especially mothers, are to give to their children and gives justification and incentive for parents to kill unborn children. Mothers and Fathers are to resist the temptations of abortion and reject the temporary and deceptively empty “easy fixes” that it claims to provide to avoid childbirth.

4. The legislation of MAID perniciously intrudes upon the natural, wholesome care that family members provide for their relatives and members of their household by tempting such family members with incentives to find an advantage in not caring for each other. Family members are to resist and oppose the temptations of abortion and MAID and the world views behind it by continuing to give love and value to family members and to be willing to sacrifice their time and treasure to do so. Such is all the more urgent in view of the current move to include eligibility for MAID for the handicapped, mentally ill, and depressed, and young children (even without informing the parents).

5. Family members must lovingly stand on guard for their frail and vulnerable relatives and prevent them from being coerced and mislead by misguided relatives or impersonal government officials who may find value or gain in pressuring or influencing their relatives to consider MAID. The responsibilities of parenthood make it necessary for fathers and mothers to teach and engender in their children a wholesome reverence for the sanctity of life, and impress upon, the evil of both abortion and the policies of MAID, and the blessings that God brings through suffering and a theology of the cross.

Vocation of the Estate of Government

1. God instituted the state to protect and preserve earthly life, especially the lives of the weak and vulnerable.

2. God mandates the State to provide legal hedges around the vulnerable that protect them, their lives, and their value, especially those who are too weak to defend themselves from those who would find advantage to end their lives.

3. The estate of government and their rulers, acting as God’s servants, are at certain specific times given the authority to take life through capital punishment and in just wars. Still, such is done to preserve and protect life when it is threatened.

4. The government has the solemn obligation to guard and protect the life of those over whom they rule with laws that forbid the taking of innocent human life and the punishment of those who do, including, without discrimination, unborn children, the frail, the vulnerable and the elderly. Therefore, the government has the solemn obligation to outlaw and criminalize the act of abortion and the practice of MAID and it is negligent of its duties when it fails to do so.

5. Through their present policies concerning abortion, and the recent legislation of MAID, the government of Canada has advocated and put into practice a worldview and philosophical perspective that desecrates life and strips it of its intrinsic sanctity and value. The undoubted fact that the life of a human being begins at the point of their conception necessarily leads to the conclusion that the principle of fundamental justice of the right to life, liberty, and the security of the person guaranteed by the Charter of Rights to “everyone” is also due to the unborn from the time of their conception, and that the act of abortion deprives them of such in contradiction to the plain words and meaning of the Charter. A government which allows such also directly contradicts its mandate from God, which is evident not just from Christian revelation but also from natural moral law and reason, and such government sets in motion an inevitable trivialization of such reverence for life in ever more expanding groups within society, already today in the elderly, sickly and frail through MAID, and potentially at the state’s pleasure towards any and everyone.

6. Therefore, the government of Canada is not only derelict in its responsibilities to protect life but also advocates for such negligence and marginalizes those who advocate for and defend the state’s divinely ordained responsibilities and purposes.

7. The government of Canada intrudes upon the estate of the family by undermining and obstructing the natural call of family members, especially the Father, to provide for and protect the lives of fellow family members, especially the elderly and vulnerable (who are usually the very fathers and mothers who first provided for them and are to be honoured by their children; I Tim. 5:8, 4^th Commandment).

8. Canada's government intrudes upon the church's estate by undermining her ministry for the Life of the World. It also directly and actively opposes and subverts such ministry when it marginalizes the church and its members for seeking to protect the temporal life of those threatened by abortion and/or MAID.

9. In a democracy such as Canada, where Canadian citizens of legal age are granted the privilege to vote, such citizens also have to a limited extent responsibilities of the governing authority. Therefore, all voting citizens should seek to be well informed of candidates for office and to use such voting privileges to choose candidates which reverence life, have public pro-life positions against abortion, who oppose MAID, and seek to respect and restore the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.

Vocation of the Estate of Church

1. In the beginning, God created life, and through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, restored life to the fallen world and instituted the Church and the ministry of Word and Sacrament to bestow that life to the world. In Holy Baptism, we die with Christ and are raised to new life with Him. In the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the faithful receive into their dying bodies the true and so far only Resurrected human Body, that of Jesus Christ, given for them so that they also may rise to new life in Him on the last day.

2. Mindful of Man’s creation in God’s image and in anticipation of the Resurrection, the Church proclaims the intrinsic sacredness and value of all human life, from conception to natural death, regardless of its quality or perceived worth. Life begins at conception, and from the moment of conception, the life of a unique individual, a fully human child, has already started, created in the image of God.

3. The church seeks to encourage the preservation of earthy life, ensuring that man is not to decide when to take his own life (suicide) nor to choose to take another (murder) but entrusts his whole life--even when it is unpleasant and full of pain, sorrow, affliction, and crosses--and death into the hands of God Who alone appoints the time of one’s last day when and where He pleases.

4. The church recognizes that when one is near death, specific treatments may only prolong suffering, which does not enable either recovery or physical well-being, and in such cases, death may be allowed to occur as the moment that God has now chosen to take a Christian home, and this is to be distinguished from causing death, which is never to be done, such as in MAID, by either injecting them with a substance which ends their life or failing to support him with every physical need, such as medicine, food, nourishment, and water.

5. The church’s estate is intruded upon and attacked by every act of abortion and by the state's failure to protect the unborn by permitting abortion and in the legislation of MAID. Such acts constitute a direct attack upon her ministry of Life, upon the faith of Christians, and promote philosophies and ideologies that desecrate and cheapen life. In any act of abortion, a child is robbed not only of being born with physical life but also of the normal means of being born again to spiritual life in the church's ministry of the sacrament of Holy Baptism. In any act of MAID, a person has robbed himself of not only physical life but of dying at a time and place of God's choosing in communion with the church and her ministry. Such an act is a violation of the First Commandment—making oneself one's own god by taking into his own hands his manner and time of death, and is an act of idolatry and unbelief.

6. Intrinsic to the philosophy under-girding the practice of MAID is that it becomes a “fig leaf” used to hide over and avoid the guilt of the sin of which death is the wage and a “theology of glory” which sees the purpose, goal, meaning and value in life only within a perceived outward glory, leaving life with no value when such empty glory is gone. Since all die, all theologies of glory are an illusion and an idol and leave one living a life of denial of sin and death, with the act of MAID being the final resolute lie of a life of lies and unbelief.

7. The church has the solemn responsibility to diligently warn against and condemn not only the practice of MAID but also these false and subtle underlying philosophies and theologies that under-gird and animate it and, above all, to prepare the faithful to guard themselves against the temptations of MAID by the actual life of faith in Christ, living a “theology of the cross” in one's life.

8. The church has the solemn responsibility to continue to proclaim the truth of the sacredness of life to the state when it supports abortion and MAID and that it is in contradiction with responsibilities given to it by God, evident not only from Christian revelation but also in natural moral law and reason.

9. The Church’s supreme response to abortion and MAID must always be centred on her unique mission--in love to call to repentance those deceived by the philosophies and secular agenda behind abortion and MAID, which cheapens life, and to bring to those practising and advocating abortion and MAID, or those who are threatened by it, a call to repentance, and the forgiveness and renewal of life through the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ministry of Word and Sacrament. The church and her faithful are to keep in their prayers and ministry at all times those affected, deceived, threatened or victimized by and those guilty of abortion and MAID and its demonic cult of death and to bring to them the Life and salvation of Jesus Christ.⁸⁵

C) HOMOSEXUALITY, TRANSGENDERISM, AND CONVERSION THERAPY

Since God created humanity as male and female and blessed them through the divine institution of marriage, it follows that homosexuality and transgenderism are sins against God and violations of natural law and undermine and pervert the institutions of marriage and the family. Such is explicitly taught in the Holy Scriptures (Rom. 1:24, 26-27; Lev. 8:22; I Tim. 1:8-11) and affirmed by the Lord Jesus Christ. (Mark 10:6)

The Civil Marriage Act, which legalized same-sex marriages throughout Canada, received Royal Assent on 25 July 2005. In June 2017, Bill C-16 passed Parliament and received Royal Assent, which added to the Canadian Human Rights Act "gender identity and expression" as prohibited grounds for discrimination, criminalizing “hate speech” against such persons. Increasingly, any public profession of homosexuality and transgenderism as wrong has been construed as de facto “hate speech” (disregarding any possibility that such can be expressed out of love), making a faithful public confession of Christian and Biblical positions on these matters in Canada close to illegal.

CENTRAL THEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS

1. THE HUMAN PERSON AS BODY AND SOUL

   1. God creates the human person as a unity of body and soul. Neither the body nor the soul can be set in opposition with or divorced from the other, embodiment being a necessary and essential component of the human person and its identity, and biological sex/gender being a fundamental aspect of such embodiment. Honouring, cultivating, and preserving the integrity of body and soul together in the human person, along with the personal male or female identity evident in the body as God has created it with the soul in harmony with it, is necessary for the spiritual, psychological and emotional health of each human person.

   2. The separation of body and soul is precisely the very definition of death and is a direct contradiction and dissolution of the unity of body and soul, a feature of God’s gift of human life. The alienation of body and soul implicit in and encouraged by transgender theory is an attack upon God-given life and is a demonic anticipation of and hastening toward death.

   3. In His holy incarnation, the Son of God became fully human in the man Jesus Christ by assuming a complete and whole humanity consisting of a biologically male human body and human soul united together as a whole and complete human nature.

   4. The gnostic postmodern tendency to define one’s human existence concerning one's soul, spirit, feelings, or internal identity disconnected from the body contradicts the Christian teaching of human person-hood as found in Scripture and as witnessed by the ancient church's Christological confessions of Christ's full humanity and her condemnation of Docetism and Apollinarianism.

2. THE HUMAN PERSON AS MALE AND FEMALE AND TRANSGENDERISM

   1. God created humanity in two, and only two, distinct and complementary sexes, male and female, created in His image. This distinction between men and women was designed and ordained by God when He created Adam first from the dust from the ground and then Eve from Adam’s rib. God Himself has pronounced the distinct sexes of men and women with their divinely ordained complementary differences to be “very good.” (Gen. 1:26-31; 2: 4-25)

   2. God has created each person as a unity of body and soul which has “hardwired” within them a particular specific gender, exclusively either male or female, which permeates every aspect of their being, made evident by the outside male/female characteristics of one’s body, and from the DNA in each cell of the innermost part of the body. The empirical reality of one’s visible body marks as evident the whole person’s sex, body, and soul, which God intends for them to have and by which they are to be identified. Therefore the “self-identification” of one's “gender” can never differ from, but must always line up with, the sex God “identifies” us to be. To identify ourselves to be a “gender” that can be distinguished from a “sex assigned at birth” (as if such were only a provisional judgment of one’s true self which can be altered and corrected by some later self-identification) is not only a complete flight from reality, but also an act of unbelief and rebellion towards God our Creator.

   3. Therefore, it is impossible for one to change, alter, or have a gender or sex other than the specific male or female sex which each person has been created to be. So-called “sex-change surgery” may leave one physically (and indeed, psychologically and emotionally) mutilated, but one’s immutably created sex is always unaltered. Human beings do not have the power or capability to change or alter the sex of one’s body and soul as given by God from conception to death (and indeed, which one will have in the resurrection for all eternity).

   4. One's inward gender identity must always conform to the outward sex that God has designed it to have at conception, as evidenced by the reality of the sex of one's body, and such indicates that it is God’s will for one to live and “self identify” inwardly following the reality of one's biological sex. Male and female distinctions are to be embraced and upheld as good in the lives of men and women, respectively, and expressed in appropriate ways that accord with Scripture.

   5. The gender pronouns used to refer to oneself and others need to be in accord with the true sex given to them by God at their conception and birth, whether male or female, as evidenced by the respective characteristics of their body.

   6. It is to be recognized that there are those born with physical disorders of sex development or who are “intersex” with ambiguous gender identity but who nevertheless have full dignity and worth that comes with being created in the image of God. Such is not to be considered as evidence of some supposed “third” gender, but rather intersex persons are to be considered only one of the two sexes, male or female, and they should embrace their actual biological sex insofar as it may be known. Finally, such “intersex” persons are to be fully welcomed with love and compassion into the full life and fellowship of the church through Holy Baptism and encouraged with penitent faith in Christ and to receive the church’s Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

   7. Therefore, the church rejects the following:

      1. Downplaying or ignoring the differences created between men and women in their bodies and God-given roles in their relationships with one another.

      2. That the divinely ordained differences between male and female can render one sex to be less than the other in dignity, worth, or fully having God's image.

      3. The myriad of various terms used to refer to so-called “non-binary” genders other than male and female, words which refer to nothing whatsoever actually existing in the real world and which are, therefore, complete nonsense.

      4. That there exist sexes or genders other than male or female.

      5. The false distinction between a self-identified “gender” and “sex-assigned at birth” and that the former can determine one’s true gender when considered to be at variance with the latter.

      6. That gender can be “fluid,” or that there can be a “spectrum” between male and female

      7. That it is possible to change or to be other than the sex with which one has been born with and been given to by God.

      8. That one’s true gender identity can be determined by, considered apart from, or be other than the distinguishing characteristics of one’s male or female body.

      9. The use of “preferred gender pronouns” designed to identify one’s

         gender contrary to the actual sex of one’s body and soul.

3. HOMOSEXUALITY

   1. The Holy Scriptures unambiguously teaches that homosexual attraction and practice are a distortion of God’s intended purpose for sex and are, therefore, a sin.

   2. God has created human beings to be intrinsically heterosexual, as indicated by the complimentary design that the bodies of men and women have with each other. Persons will only be whole when they also have heterosexual desires and practices that are harmonious with the heterosexual bodies and persons that God has created, designed, and intended them to have and to be. There is no such thing as a “homosexual person,” since every person has a body which is designed for heterosexuality which is intrinsic to who they are; instead, it is more accurate to speak of persons with homosexual desires or who practice homosexual acts in contradiction with the heterosexual person which God has created them to be.

   3. Therefore, the church rejects and condemns:

      1. That God so instituted marriage to allow for homosexual unions or that such unions can in any proper way be considered marriages, much less blessed as such by God, the state, or the church.

      2. The notion that homosexuality can be natural and normal for persons identifying as homosexual, or worse, that God created them to be this way and that those who experience sexual attractions for the same sex can accept it and regard it as normal for them and have no need for repentance for it.

4. THE DIVINE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE

   1. God has designed and instituted marriage to be an ordered, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife. Through physical, emotional, and spiritual union and love, marriage icons the love between Christ and his Holy Bride, the Church.

   2. God’s will for all people following the Sixth Commandment is that they “should not commit adultery,” which means that all, whether single or married, should lead a chaste and decent life in word and deed, that sexual union is reserved within the marriage union of husband and wife alone, and that husband and wife love, honour and remain faithful to each other in accord with their God-given roles as long as they both shall live.

   3. God has instituted marriage to be between men and women alone and has designed the body of each person to “fit together” with the person of the opposite sex, with the design that, thereby, life is created. All human beings are intrinsically created and intended by God to be heterosexual, and the institution of marriage is intrinsically and essentially heterosexual, a union of man and woman.

   4. The church, therefore, rejects and condemns:

      1. Marriage is a humanly devised institution or contract that can be revised in any way desired by the church, state, or society rather than an institution ordained by God.

      2. Definitions of marriage which which allow for polygamous, poly-amorous, homosexual/sodomite unions, which distort the design and institution of God, which God can bless in the church or the civil state.

5. REFERENCES TO GOD

   1. In the Scriptures, the one true God reveals Himself to be three Persons (the Holy Trinity), namely, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that such are not humanly devised metaphors attached to God by man but names by which God reveals Himself to man.

   2. References to God and/or the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity are to be made with the exclusively male pronouns which God has revealed and “self-identified” Himself to have, such as “He,” “Him,” “His,” etc.

   3. The church, therefore, rejects and condemns:

      1. The replacement of God’s holy name, or the names of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, by non-gender or feminine names such as “Mother,” etc.

      2. References to God with feminine pronouns, such as “she” or “her.” Such are not just improper references to the true God but references to a false God other than the true God and, therefore, involve an idolatrous breaking of the First Commandment.

Vocation of the Estate of the Church

1. The Church embodies the true marriage of Christ, the Bridegroom, and His bride, the Church, the pattern that exemplifies all valid earthly marriages God instituted and blessed in the beginning. In the church is also the Family of God, which patterns the institution of earthly families.

2. The church teaches the truths of God’s institution of marriage and family in her teaching and preaching and cultivates its health and God’s blessing upon them not only for her members but also for the world, and must condemn that which contradicts this teaching.

3. All contradictions and distortions of God’s created order, such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and gender theory, as well as all contradictions to the gender of one’s whole person as male or female as evidenced by the empirical reality of one’s body, are results of the Fall and are themselves sin. The church is to condemn these sins as distortions of God’s created order, not as an end in itself, but to lead sinners to repentance and faith in Christ through the Gospel, where true forgiveness, healing, renewal, and fullness of life can be found. Pastoral practice in the church with homosexual, transgender, and gender-confused persons always proceeds with sensitivity, speaking the truth in love, seeking to bring them the redemption and salvation of the whole person through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a renewal of life.

4. The Church needs deeply to regret and repent of times in the past when those struggling with sexual sins such as homosexuality, transgenderism, and gender confusion have been approached by the church with a lack of love and compassion. The Church is to be a place where all people, including those who experience gender identity sins and struggles, are welcomed, loved, supported with sensitivity and respect, and helped to live in faith and obedience to Christ, always speaking the truth to all in love. Furthermore, the Lord Jesus Christ, always and at all times, has complete and perfect love towards all people and all sinners, and if the church herself called to reflect this love to others has failed to do so (all members of the church are sinners also!) nevertheless the fullness of Christ's love and forgiveness is still given out amid the church in full measure through the Church's ministry of Word and Sacrament.

5. The church, therefore, condemns all bullying, ridicule, mistreatment, or persecution of the homosexual and gender-confused, rather than the love and compassion which it is the duty of every Christian to show towards them and which Christ shows through them.

6. At the same time, such does not mean that to show true love to homosexuals and the gender-confused means that one must affirm their erring views or that condemning homosexuals, transgender, or others contradicting the Christian faith necessarily means that one is unloving and intolerant towards them.

7. Christian ministry must remember that speaking in love must always involve confessing and speaking the truth, as the scriptures teach. The Church's ministry is that Christ Jesus has come into the world to save sinners and that through Christ’s death and resurrection, forgiveness of sins and eternal life are given to every person who repents of sin and trusts in Christ alone as Lord and Savior.

Vocation of the Estate of Family

1. The family is instituted to cultivate love in the marriage bond in which children are raised in the Christian faith within the church, to have healthy marriages and families of their own, and be trained in productive vocations by which they serve their neighbour in society. Fathers and Mothers should be models not only of Christian faith and life in general towards their children but also specifically fathers should be models towards their children of true self-sacrificing and loving masculinity in their vocations as husband and father, and mothers as models of true self-sacrificing and loving femininity in their vocations of wife and mother.

2. Parents, especially the father, are to protect the family from any assault on its life and health by teaching and exemplifying the faith in their lives and in the lives of the church in every peaceful and loving way possible.

Vocation of the Estate of Government

1. The government has jurisdiction and a mandate from God to protect and defend the marriages of men and women and the family and to cultivate their flourishing within society.

2. The state has no authority from God, Reason, or Natural Law to normalize homosexuality or transgenderism, let alone to legalize non-heterosexual “marriage,” and in fact, has a mandate from God to discourage homosexuality and transgenderism within society. Therefore, by legalizing homosexual “marriage” and promoting and defending transgenderism, the government of Canada is in direct opposition to God, reason, and common sense and is grossly negligent of its duties.

3. Legislation that normalizes homosexuality, transgenderism, and the like encourages the state to trespass into both the estate of the family and undermine the mandate of fathers and mothers to raise their children in the faith, and also the church by attempting to restrict her mandate to embody and teach what God has mandated these institutions of marriage and family to be and frustrates God’s blessing upon them both.

4. The state has an interest and mandate from God to guard the natural rights which those suffering from homosexuality and transgenderism have in common with all citizens and to protect them from violence, persecution, or injustice, and also specifically from harmful force and coercion. However, the state’s mandate to preserve marriage also requires it to encourage, support, and protect welcome and loving therapy, counselling, and pastoral care for the sexually confused, which seeks to heal them of or help them cope with homosexual or transgender temptations. The state, therefore, has a mandate from God to allow and give free rein to the church in her loving ministry to the gender-confused in calling them to repentance and faith in Christ and bring them Biblical teaching, guidance, and healing. When the state discourages or obstructs such loving ministry and service to the sexually confused, it is in contradiction to its mandate from God and is, therefore, undermining the family and the church and indeed, are actually hurting and harming the sexually confused.

D) THE COVID LOCKDOWNS AND RESTRICTIONS OF PUBLIC WORSHIP

During the COVID epidemic, the government promoted and enacted lock downs with varying degrees of severity, which have “stifled Word and Sacrament ministry and other Christian and LCC faith practices, traditions, and rituals” and “resulted in restrictions and limitations that conflict with Christian expression”⁸⁶

Vocation of the Estate of Government

1. The estate of government has a mandate from God to protect the life, common good, and welfare of the people under their care, and in certain times of emergency (such as during war), may—and even in some cases must—do so with a certain degree of temporary increased regulation of the lives of the people and society. Such temporary restrictions on individual liberties are always done to protect life and freedom in the long-term.

2. The estate of government, by its nature and institution from God, rules using law, coercion, threats, and force, and in times of emergency, cannot necessarily be faulted for doing so in more severe and restricted ways for the common good.

3. Nevertheless, governing authorities must be mindful of the dangerous instinct towards totalitarianism that rulers naturally have and seek to restrain and hold such in check. They do not have and should not presume to assume complete control and responsibility over every aspect of an emergency, such as the COVID pandemic, at the expense of the jurisdiction, competency, and roles of other estates, such as family and church.⁸⁷

4. Governing authorities must not and cannot govern in complete disregard and run roughshod over the natural, timeless, and unchanging realities of created human nature and structured human estates and relationships in society, nor of the realities of human fallen sin and selfishness. Instead, wise and practical rulers must establish policies that honour and work within the framework of the three estates ordained by God. Wise and prudent government policies assume, align, and “flow with” the realities of basic needs of the created human nature and order and seek not to solve, reform, or improve man’s evil nature for the better but structure laws that will direct his evil to productive and beneficial ends.⁸⁸

Vocation of the Estate of Family

1. The Father, as head of the family, has a primary responsibility to protect his family members' physical, social, and spiritual welfare.

2. Parents, especially the Father promote, provide, and protect the family’s members' “daily bread” of the “support and needs of their body” and physical welfare (food and nutrition) and the daily bread of health through preventive protection from disease and medical care when ill and the social needs with the healthy natural social relations of family, “good friends,” and “faithful neighbours.”

3. The Father, with the Mother assisting, promotes, provides, and protects the family’s member’s spiritual needs by leading them to the church's Ministry of Word and Sacrament in the Divine Service and catechesis.

4. The Father has responsibility during pandemics (and, of course, other threatening/emergencies) to protect his family and provide them with medical care when needed, and also to defend his family against any unlawful totalitarian intrusion by the state into the estate of the family. After all, the father is ultimately responsible and accountable to God for their well-being.

Vocation of the Estate of the Church

1. The Church faithfully proclaims the Truth to the world, which can only be found in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The truth is found in the proclamation of the Law, where the diagnosis of the true basic underlying mortal sickness of sin in man is revealed, and in the Gospel Ministry of Word and Sacrament, where the true solution and medicine are given.

2. Outside of Christian revelation, only the symptoms of sin can be perceived by natural law and reason, which misdiagnoses such symptoms as the actual disease. Such is the case with, among other things, COVID-19 and the pandemic: while such can be addressed apart from divine revelation, and health issues met with earthly cures for the body and medical care (which are blessings from God and very good and salutary in and of themselves), such is viewed by the church as a kind of “palliative care”: it can never get to the root of the real problem afflicting man, which is sin. Sin can only be cured with the true medicine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the ministry of the Word and Sacrament. And, of course, palliative care, which does not cure, must never be allowed to replace effective medicine, which alone does cure.

3. While the church’s response to the pandemic indeed will include the godly love of one’s neighbour, which seeks to provide healing, prevention, protection, and medical care for the body from the effects of the pandemic, the church in her proclamation will always correctly refer to the pandemic as symptoms of sin and therefore always involves a call to repentance. In Scripture, pandemics are often a chastisement from God and demand a call to such repentance. (10 Plagues before the Exodus, Deut. 28:59, Amos 4:10, Luke 21:11, Rev.15:6, 16:9, 22:18). The church’s proclamation is not just to heal the mortal body from the temporal consequences of an actual life-threatening pandemic but to provide for that which gives the faithful the risen and glorified body in eternal life through the resurrected Body of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and ministry of Word and Sacrament.

4. The Church’s supreme response to the pandemic is her ongoing ministry of Word and Sacrament, and nothing can be allowed to restrict the free course of such ministry. When the state mandates a complete lock down of churches forbidding, or a severe restriction of, the gathering of worship services, as has been seen in various provinces in Canada from time to time during the years of the COVID pandemic, it does so by asserting that such worship services involve health and safety issues of the public at large, over which they have interest and jurisdiction. Whether or not there are health dangers or not in worship services is beside the point. Even if it is conceded that there are health concerns with gathering for worship services and that the government has jurisdiction and interest in such things, nevertheless, the Divine Services of the church also at the same time involve spiritual health and life, which are more important than the earthly concerns and over which the state lacks jurisdiction and competency in assessing. Such matters must be decided by the church herself, led by Scripture, which, after all, alone must decide all things done in the church.

5. Only the church, and not the state, has jurisdiction from God over matters of the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and only she, when she exercises such jurisdiction faithfully led by Scripture, has competency from God to decide things which concern such ministry.⁸⁹ The central question for the church to consider in any situation must be what gives the most full, free, faithful, and unobstructed course to such ministry of the Word preached and the Sacraments administered to God’s people. As rightly noted by LRCI, “we rigorously defend the premise that God’s Word must have free course even in these days.”⁹⁰

6. All people have this greatest need at all times, but especially during a pandemic when life may be threatened and faith challenged, and what must be paramount during such a pandemic is the free course and unobstructed Ministry of Word and Sacrament. The church's only response to such obstructions to her ministry is simply to continue that ministry despite all arguments to the contrary. The church has a mandate from the Lord to preach the Gospel and administer the Sacraments. Indeed, the ongoing practice of this constitutes the liturgical definition of what she is, and she has no direction from the Lord for any situation to suspend such mandate or to do otherwise.⁹¹ So, if and when the state forbids the church to gather for services, no matter what the reason or pretense, the church remains subordinate to the Lord Whose servant she is and to His mandate for the Church, and the government remains servant of the same Lord, Who does not give such state jurisdiction and competency to decide on such matters, and the church is to respectfully yet firmly regard such orders to be unlawful and illegal and to continue offering services to those who wish to have them, no matter what the consequences may be, doing so as a catacomb church under the cross like those in ancient Rome, if necessary.

7. However, it is more subtle and perhaps more dangerously deceptive when the state refrains from a complete lock down and prohibition of church services, but only allows them to continue with numerous regulations and restrictions in public ceremonies and practices. So, for instance, were innumerable examples of the state restricting attendance to a certain percentage of capacity--or even to a maximum of 10, restrictions or outright prohibitions of singing, prohibition of the use of the chalice, or even of the administration of the precious blood of Christ altogether in the Blessed Sacrament, or that only the “fully vaccinated” can attend. It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the state formulates such regulations with little or no consideration nor interest whatsoever in spiritual matters, theological principles, references to Scripture, or what would be spiritually edifying for the people of God, but rather upon the basis of temporal considerations, political agendas, shaped by whatever opinion (which is not to be questioned!) is currently the fad in the constantly mutating narrative about the COVID situation, (which are often later proven to be mistaken) motivated by keeping political interest groups happy and winning the next election. The church must be highly wary of restrictions to her worship shaped by such forces and to see in such not only an illegitimate and illegal intrusion into her estate but also the sinister deception, mischief, and danger that Satan can work through policies accepted by the church with no theological reflection, simply because the state has told them to do this or that. The proper response to such restrictions, and what is most edifying to the people of God, pleasing to our Lord, and spiritually safe, is to hold on to practices shaped by the certainty of Scripture rather than uncertain political considerations. As is in the example of Daniel, pastors in such situations must simply faithfully continue “as he had done previously” (Dan. 6:10), patiently relying upon God amid any lions that may come his way. ⁹²

8. Christians must exercise a basic posture of profound reluctance to offer any civil disobedience to the government. Luther notes that “we must bear the power of the prince. If he misuses his power, I should, for this reason, not bear him ill will or avenge the misuse on him or punish it. One must obey him for God’s sake, for he stands in the place of God. No matter how intolerably they may tax, they are to be obeyed, and everything is to be borne for God’s sake. Whether they are doing right or wrong will appear in due time. Therefore, if the government takes your possessions, your life and limb, and whatever you have, say: I gladly give it to you. I recognize you as my master. I shall gladly obey you.”⁹³

9. Reflected here is a marvellous display of the posture of genuine Christian faith—not living and grasping for things of this world, but instead holding firmly to the treasures of Christ, living under the cross, finding quiet contentment in present circumstances, and trusting in Christ in the midst of it all, faithfully fulfilling one's vocation under the authority of the estates in which one lives, as far as conscience can permit. Indeed, as Christians see the hardships, losses, and crosses of daily life as a “practice” or “trial run” for one’s last day when he will lose everything on this earth (and gain everything in heaven!), he can recognize God working through such tyrannical government and its bad policies to help him learn how to suffer, carry his cross, and die well in the faith.

10. However, Luther asks, “what are we to do if they [the governing authorities] want to take the Gospel from us or forbid its preaching?” Then, the Reformer indicates, “you should say: the Gospel and Word of God I will not give you. Nor do you have any power over it: for your rule is temporal rule over worldly possessions. But the Gospel is a spiritual, heavenly possession. Therefore, your power does not extend to the Word of God. We recognize the emperor as a lord over temporal possessions and not over God’s Word. This we shall not permit to be torn from us.”⁹⁴

11. And further along such lines, Luther proclaims in a sermon in 1533 on Matthew 22:
    “Above all things, God demands of us that we hear His word and follow it at all times and in every instance. If the government makes this impossible, subjects should know that they are not obliged to obey its commands; for it is written, we ought to obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29). And in the passage before us, to give to “Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”, so if temporal government wants to be angry because of this attitude and wants to punish its subjects by putting them under lock and key, or even by taking their lives because of it, matters must be permitted to take their course and people must hold to the comfort of the thought: the Emperor or temporal government is our master, that is true, but nevertheless he is not our only master. For we have an additional Lord, Who is greater, namely, our Lord God in heaven. Now, if one of these two Lords must be incensed by our becoming disobedient to either God or the Emperor, it is better to anger the emperor with our disobedience than to anger God.”⁹⁵

12. Even if Christians are compelled to offer such civil disobedience against the governing authorities for the sake of the Gospel, it is to be done always with reluctance, always wishing to comply with the government even to suffer inconvenience to do so as long as and when conscience permits, and the church’s ministry is not compromised, and showing Caesar continued utmost respect, forbearance and reverence. Furthermore, any resistance is always a passive act that never involves active, aggressive, and provocative actions against such authorities or the police force. However, it can involve firm and appropriate demonstrations and petitions towards them. The basic obedience and voluntary heartfelt deference to the state by Christians should be such a routine characteristic of them that the governing authorities will find it to be a startling, shocking, and “out of character” state of affairs to witness the spectacle of Christians engaged in civil disobedience, so much so that they will be intrigued enough to want to find out what possibly could be the reason for it, which is, of course, the Gospel!

13. Furthermore, much research has shown how damaging the lock downs imposed during the COVID pandemic have been on the social well-being of persons at large, especially the most lonely and vulnerable (such as the aged in nursing homes). God creates human beings to be social creatures (it is not good for man to be alone! Gen.2:18), with relationships instituted by God, and it is an aspect of the image of God that they have communion with God together with their koinonia with others, which forms the essential structure for vocation. Furthermore, such a social web of interactions and relationships in one's life, beginning with the family and extending into various situations and stations in public life, is the arena in which Christian vocations are lived out. The severe lock downs during the COVID pandemic were a massive disruption and unwarranted intrusion from the state into the natural healthy structures and relationships of family, society, and the church and the ongoing vocations within which God's will and work were taking place. The lock downs mandated by the government demonstrated a complete disregard and shocking ignorance of this essential aspect and need of human nature. Misguided policies purporting to protect physical health directly caused harm to the emotional health of many, which will have negative consequences on physical health. The church has unique theological insights and wisdom on the reality of true human nature, which is quite absent from secular dehumanizing perspectives. Therefore, the church can and should speak with a prophetic voice to the state’s socially destructive lock down policies.

14. Moreover, the church should press relentlessly for the continued gathering of a community of people in public worship not only for the spiritual benefits of grace and forgiveness—man’s foremost need, which the world will not understand nor appreciate—but also for the simple healthy social needs of the community and social interaction which the world ought to understand and which will aid people in their social and physical health during a pandemic. Also, since it is through the natural social contacts within one’s regular vocation where confessions of the faith and mission best take place, the church notes how the lock downs interfere with the church’s—and each Christian's—natural life of vocation and mission outreach and confession of faith to the world. Against the argument that the church should not expect “special privileges” to remain open when Tim Hortons and ordinary stores must close (although liquor stores did often stay open when the church was expected to close!), the church should respond by saying the comparison of the church should be made not with ordinary shops but with hospitals. One expects hospitals to gather many sick people together and would never think to close them to keep sick people apart and protect them, for such places are vitally needed to remain open for the sake of the healing of the ill—how much more vital is it for the church and her even more vital medicine of immortality to remain open and active to cure the spiritually sick and prevent eternal death!

15. Finally, identifying people’s livelihoods and occupations as “essential” and “non-essential” was demeaning and arrogant. Here the church can provide a refreshingly different perspective in her confession of vocation—that regardless of how lowly and “unessential” one’s place may seem by the world, from the Christian perspective, all lawful and wholesome occupations are noble and honourable “holy orders” through which God is at work. In God’s eyes, no one is unessential in what he does as he serves his neighbour in love, for God has put him in such vocation and blesses him, and he works there as a royal priest of God.

XIV) ESCHATOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSION

The church, the Kingdom of God, is always infinitely so much more than any of the various political agendas of the kingdoms of this world, which always involves tinkering around with the things of this world which moth and rust destroy and which will pass away. Such work is always merely palliative care for a dying terminally ill patient by those who have no cure nor medicine for him but only painkillers. Such palliative care is an immensely important and loving work to be supported and cherished—however, never is it to replace nor draw away from the dispensing of the true healing and curing medicine. The Ministry of the church IS that true medicine from the Great Physician, Whose kingdom is not of this world, and the medicine He dispenses is Himself, His Body and Blood broken and shed for us, which has already cured us completely of the terminal disease of sin and has utterly defeated death. Therefore, the church will always be distorted and neutered when she is forced into any narrow partisan political agenda. One remembers a communist regime which thought it could neutralize Christian influence in society by forbidding the church from any activity in society and quarantining them to their Divine Services, but what actually happened is that this resulted in keeping them strong and alive, intently focused upon the “one thing needful,” (Luke 10:39,42) and more effective in their mission to the world. So, the church combats anti-Christian political agendas not with “Christian” political agendas in the public square, through seeking influence and control of the levers of the government, but by proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom that is not of this world, and to be faithful to the ministry of Word and Sacrament for the life of the world, and each Christian dutifully faithful to their vocations in the world.

When the state presses, restricts and persecutes the church, it very well may be its intention, and the intention of the devil behind it, to press the church into an alien secular image and mould, to force her to lose her confession of the truth so that Christians would abandon the faith. But with a faithful church, precisely the opposite will happen—what Satan and the world intend for evil, God uses for good. The church, as she lives under the cross, will be shaped and pressed by such persecution ever more firmly through such suffering into the mould and image of the cross of Christ. She becomes ever more resolutely faithful in everything she is called to be. Persecution is meant for evil, but God uses it for good; through it, the church is kept strong and faithful, pressed into having nothing but the one thing needful. And here, such ungodly rulers are still unwittingly God’s servants doing His will, exercising His rule over His domain for the good of His people. And that is why the church still honours and pray for evil rulers for the sake of the good that God is doing through them despite what they intend.

Indeed, it is only the Gospel of which Christians can ever be sure and upon which they can depend. All temporal states will pass away when sin is finally over, and we have just the Kingdom of God in heaven under Christ, the true King. Since there is no marrying nor giving into marriage in heaven, all the blessings of earthly families will be eclipsed and outshone by the splendour of the eternal marriage of Christ and His bride and by the family of God the Father and His children. There is no guarantee that God will give us structures in this world that will respect the church and her mission so that it will be comfortable for Christians to worship and live faithful lives as much as we long, pray, and work for such to be the case. So it should never be the church’s ultimate goal and priority to seek such a state of affairs, much less to expect and depend for such, and least of all to trust for such to be the case. Indeed, at one time, it was God’s will to destroy Jerusalem, flatten the Temple, and haul His people off to captivity in Babylon—for their good! It may be God’s will to do the same to us. After all, God promises for the church in this world only the cross under which to live, and in the last days, promises such increasing persecution and deception that the question is prompted, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8).⁹⁶ Nevertheless, the mission of the church is not affected by the outward response of the world towards her, whether support, indifference, or persecution,⁹⁷ for in any and every circumstance she always continues to do the same thing, proclaim to the world the full truth of God's word, calling them to repentance, and in their midst continue the ministry of Word and Sacrament, showing forth Christ, and living faithful and loving lives through their vocations.

And so, we must always be prepared and fortified as the church militant to be faithful, to stand and remain steadfast. Our ultimate goal is not to make the kingdoms of this world and temporal society as righteous and good as they should be in this world but to hold on to the righteousness of Christ, not of this world which we have been given because we are in Him, to be steadfast in our most holy faith, to weather the storm of the world becoming worse than we can ever imagine when all outward structures of the state and an apostate church under an Antichrist will be utterly united against the Gospel and will seem to have utterly defeated the church and swept it away. But the church is always triumphant because Christ already has been. Christ’s true and faithful Holy Church does not coast along on the relentless flow of the fallen world's “wave of the future” followed by an apostate false church over the cliff and down the waterfall into the pit of sin, decay, and death, but rather as the Ark of Salvation, flying the flag of the cross, the Church Militant sails with Christ against this flow, navigating faithfully through the stormy seas to the safe harbour of heaven on the rising tide and wave of eternity singing the joyous song of faith as she waits to join the victorious Church Triumphant.

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1LRCI expressed in its Introduction that: “Biblical values are being uniquely challenged. COVID-19 and its impact on Christians and Churches confront from one corner—secularized social agendas attack from another corner, where formal bills before Parliament threaten foundational Christian beliefs. A lack of healthy fellowship and brazen individualism erodes the foundation of concord and unity in local congregations, circuits, and regions. Depression, disagreement, and division are spurred on by unfiltered communicants on the one hand and extreme isolation on the other. Discordant threads and harsh comments have become more common within our circles, increasing polarization rather than prolonging civil discussion and charitable and fraternal understanding of others’ perspectives.” LCRI, p. 1

2“We recognize Luther’s articulation and emphasis on the two realms (kingdoms) but point out that Luther’s theology encourages us to consider not just two. Still, the three estates (or three hierarchies), in addition to ecclesia (Church) and politia (State), also have oeconomia (the family structure).” LCRI, p. 3

3The CTCR document expresses it as “conflicting authority between State and Church: Christian obedience to Christ, including practices of worship,” which is “held in tension with the work of civil authorities to protect citizens, at times through restrictions and limitations that conflict with Christian expression.” LCRI, p. 1

4LCRI, p. 1

5SC, Table of Duties, Concordia, The Lutheran Confessions, p. 346-7

6FC, Ep., XII, p. 500-2

7Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Churches. Luther’s Works 41:176

8AC, VIII, 1, p. 34

9LC, II, III, 51, p. 404

10SA; III, XII, p. 283

11“the command to eat is the primal institution (cf Matt. 26:26), in which Luther says the Lord is preaching the Word to Adam. Had Adam remained in paradise, Luther argues, this preaching would have served as a Bible and as the sum of wisdom for Adam and for all who followed after him. In addressing this word to humans, God provides humans with the concrete possibility for worshipping the Creator.” “Luther offers that Psalms 148 and 149 would have provided worship in the garden.” Michael Richard Laffin, The Promise of Luther's Political Theology, p. 178, including footnote 129. Laffin here cites Luther's Lectures in Genesis, Chapters. 1-5 (1535-36), LW 1:105

12The distinction between the common and the holy is spelled out in great detail in the book of Leviticus and is central to the divinely instituted structure of the temple, priesthood, and sacrifices. With man’s life and relationship with God and his neighbour, such Levitical distinctions are already anticipated and “hardwired” from the beginning into the created order and are essential to a basic understanding of Christianity, God and Man and their relationship with each other, the redemptive work of Christ, and the Ministry of Word and Sacrament.

13In this way, there is at the beginning of creation an institution from God of both a “Right Hand” and “Left Hand” kingdom or realm. Still, both are so inseparable and joined together before the fall that they are two perspectives of one indivisible two-dimensional realm. What ties such two realms together as one is God as the common ruler of both realms and the image of God created in man through which he is the instrument of God's rule over both. The right-hand realm is the domain of God's perfect communion with man created in His image, which allows him to participate in such communion and reflect God to his neighbour in the work of his vocation in the temporal world, which is God's left-hand realm. Before the fall, God was not “one-handed,” ruling with only a “right hand” realm and no left, but instead works with two hands which are both folded together into a unity (like a Christian in prayer!) in one seamless common purpose, work, and rule, having the two distinct yet inseparable dimensions of man's life of faith toward God and loving service to his neighbour both under the rule of God. Before the fall, Adam exercised the right-hand rule of God as a high priest by leading worship and proclaiming and teaching God's word to his hearer (Eve) and God's left-hand rule as a husband by leading and serving Eve in their temporal life together. After the fall, when man's image is lost in sin, the two hands of God's rule are “unfolded” into two distinct yet coordinated works. However, they are still the hands of one God, both outstretched towards man (like the pastor giving the Aaronic benediction), each bestowing a blessing in two distinct ways. Still, the left-hand kingdom needs to deploy the new and different instrument of the sword in the midst of sin as the government exercises it. But before and after the fall, it is for the same eternal purpose of the left-hand realm, to bring and maintain justice and peace and encourage the flourishing of all people in their temporal life together in the world, which without sin, would have existed without the sword, flowing from the perfect love which they would have towards one another, and will again on the last day, when God's two hands are eternally folded together again. As noted by Biermann, “both realms operate within and according to God's overall plan for the reclamation and final restoration of His creation. On the last day, when that plan is fully consummated, the left-hand realm will not be obliterated, and the right-hand realm acknowledged as the only true realm of God, after all; on that day, the state will not be wrapped into the church nor will the church be folded into the state. Rather, on that day, both state and church, and both temporal and spiritual realms with them, will be swept up together and fused again in the everlasting unity of Christ's unending glorious kingdom.” Joel Biermann, Wholly Citizens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), p. 112-113

14AC VII, 1, p. 34

15Fundamental to the Lutheran understanding of the role and ministry of the church is that it does not include any use of the Law to force outward compliance and morality in persons, society, or the state. The Law has a role in preparing for the preaching of the Gospel, which shows sin and the need for the Gospel, but it is only the Life-giving Gospel and the giving of its gifts that creates and builds up the church and constitutes her ministry to the world.

16“the union of male and female belongs to a natural right. Natural Rights are unchangeable. Therefore, the right to contract marriage must always remain. Where nature does not change, that ordinance which God gave nature does not change. It cannot be removed by human laws.” Apology, XXIII (XI): 9. Found here already in the 16^th Century Confessions is an effective condemnation of modern transgenderism!

17“ It is right for Christians to hold public office, to serve as judges, to judge matters by imperial laws and other existing laws, to impose just punishments, to engage in just wars, to serve as soldiers, to make legal contracts, to hold property, to take oaths when required by the magistrates, for a man to marry a wife, or a women to be given in marriage.” (AC XVI: 2) “The governing authority protects the body and external possessions against open injustice and rules men with the sword and with corporal punishment in order to guard civil righteousness and peace.” (AC XXVIII 11).

18Apology XVI ,55. P. 195

19Therefore, the reason that such things as the killing of unborn children and sodomy “marriage,” transgenderism, and MAID have now become so accepted in Canadian society is not simply because Canadian culture has lost its Christian moorings—it is because society has lost its ability to think; it has become sub-rational, even irrational. It cannot believe and see reality anymore, which sin will tend to do to us as it drives us behind the fig leaves, into the darkness, into blindness so that we will hide from God and not see Him, and therefore not see His created nature which bears witness all too clearly to His existence and sovereignty over our lives. It is that self-evident existence of God that the Canadian Charter of Rights still recognizes to under-gird the reason and common sense that form the basis of the government’s rule. The Christian faith doesn’t just save us; it helps us to keep our reason and sanity so that we can think clearly again and serve the world in our callings and vocations all the more effectively.

20Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann, American Edition, 56 vols. (St. Louis and Philadelphia House and Fortress press, 1958-1986), 13:50. These observations are referred to and developed by Joel D. Biermann, Wholly Citizens, and The Star Spangled Luther, Concordia Journal; Vol. 50 ( Summer 2024). Num. 3, pp. 13-23. The author of this paper confesses that he was tempted to subtitle this present paper,“The Maple-Leafed Luther!”

21. Luther, following the Scriptures, understands the rule of God’s left hand (the state) to be working according to His eternal purposes at all times in service to the rule of His right hand (the church), His left hand always knowing what His right hand is doing even if the human instruments through which He works do not. Therefore, all earthly rulers, whether they know it or not, are constantly being used in their temporal work by God’s Left hand not just in its instituted work to preserve godly peace and justice in the temporal realm but also to further God’s ultimate purposes of His eternal rule and work of His Right-hand kingdom. (for instance, Caesar Augustus, the instrument of God's left-hand rule, may have had his temporal reasons and agenda for calling a census throughout the whole Roman world—specifically, to enact a tax—but he was the instrument of God with His deeper right-hand agenda in the work of salvation for the world to fulfill Micah's prophecy by bringing Jesus the Saviour to Bethlehem to be born)

The true significance and full blossom of the temporal blessings in the lives of people that God brings to all through His left-hand rule can only be found in the context and light of the blessings of God's right-hand kingdom work of the church in their lives. The state receives temporal blessings from such respect for the church and her work. God created and designed human beings to live lives most profitably for others and the benefit of society at large, not when they live for this life and its temporal and transitory treasures but when they live by faith in Christ and His eternal treasures. Likewise, the church benefits society most not when she makes such earthly matters her goal but only as a by-product of remaining faithful to her true spiritual goals which are not of this world. It is, therefore, God’s will that the state, for her own good, and even if only for its own temporal blessing, respect the church’s work and seek not to restrict nor obstruct her ministry.

It is to be noted that such an understanding of the state’s proper posture towards the church as seen by the Scriptures and Luther is quite different from the Enlightenment ideal of “freedom of religion” with its deliberate indifference and neutrality towards the church as merely one religion among many. Indeed, as noted by Biermann, it was the understanding of Luther that “when things are working as they should work, false teaching should not be permitted by the government.” (Joel Biermann, The Star Spangled Luther, p. 17) Luther’s understanding of the God-given duties of governing authorities does not include modern Enlightenment and Western ideals such as “personal autonomy, free speech, religious liberty, or even inherent human rights. For Luther, these are not the ideals. For Luther, what matters, the best thing for all people, is the clear proclamation of, and the living out of, God's Law and Gospel.” (Biermann, The Star Spangled Luther, p. 17) The considerable concern which Luther did have for “freedom of conscience” in a society was for the sake of the church and her confession and ministry, because such ministry could only bring true faith from the preaching of the Word, and be freely received, and could not come from coercion, threats and persecution of unbelievers. And indeed, it is largely from the effects of the Christian church, and specifically where it has been influenced by the Reformation, where human liberty, limited government, democracy, and freedom of religion, speech and conscience has thrived throughout the world—for the benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike!

In other words, what is best for any society, whether such society knows it or not, and whether such society supports it or opposes it, is the Church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament and Christians living out their lives in virtuous living and in their vocations within such a society, not what gives license to that which opposes this—and therefore all the better for such society and its interests when it does support the church and is not just neutrally indifferent to her. Indeed, indifference to religion and all specific theological positions is itself an impossible illusion since this itself is a definite theological conviction and religious position. Just as it is impossible for any one person, even an atheist, to cease worshipping something as a god, and to therefore have a religion of some kind which they practice in their life pursuing such worship, so also is it impossible for a society of persons collectively to avoid having some kind of assumed religious beliefs so deeply held that such society structures its life around them and seeks through law to enforce them. The more the state seeks to practice a so called “freedom of religion” with such convictions, the more will be the temptation to practice a “freedom from” all convictions of confessional churches by isolating, marginalizing, quarantining them from the public square, and perhaps persecuting such churches and the faithful within them as much as would an atheistic state when they do not fall in line with such secularist assumptions and its agendas.(for instance, see the increasing marginalization and persecution of those who vocally oppose abortion, same sex “marriage,” MAID, homosexuality, characterizing such to be guilty of “hate crimes”) Luther, following Scripture, would not hold the Enlightenment ideal that, at its best, the realms of church and state should be so separated from each other that, as a matter of highest principle, the state must practice a complete separation, isolation, indifference, and neutrality towards the church. The prince always rules as a representative of God. Specifically, this means the true Triune God Who exists as is confessed by the Christian faith and is the One exercising authority of over all. While non-Christians cannot know these specific truths about God revealed outside of divine revelation, they can know and sense through reason that there is a God Who exists, that they are subject to His authority, the First Article aspects of Him and works which He does, and many aspects of right and wrong. Still, this God actually existing is precisely only the Triune God of the Christian faith, and a prince, Christian or not, can only rule well when he follows and falls in line with the will and purposes of the true, Triune God, even if he only does so through what he can perceive through the light of reason without knowing or believing the Christian faith at all. And, of course, Christian pastors who do know all this clearly through divine revelation can and should teach this all to the governing authorities about God's will for rulers for the good of the realms and people they rule!

Of course, when considering how to translate and wisely put into practice Luther's timeless insights on the relationship between church and state, true for all times and all places, one must remember how vastly different the modern secular context is from that of Luther's day. Even after fully affirming Luther's theology on such things, one may not be able to follow precisely his practice in 16^th Century Germany, where the church and its teaching were honoured with a central role in public society. The 21^st Century Church in the secular post-modernist, even “Post-Christian” West, where her confession is disdained, marginalized and even subtly persecuted may find herself more contemporary with the experience and context of the 2^nd and 3^rd Century early church under Roman persecution than with the reformers of the 16^th century—and where she thrived!--see the opportunities for the church in her modern milieu in Edward Veith's Post-Christian, A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture.

22Such would be consistent with the state’s divinely instituted duty to protect the temporal welfare of man in his life in this world. However, the Scriptures give no specific divinely mandated polity or laws to enact to pursue such things, which therefore must be left to temporal common sense and reason, the judgment of which can vary in different contexts and situations, on which reasonable men may disagree, and about which those in the church can have different opinions and judgments. However, what the church can and must proclaim is that such varying laws pursuing social justice and the temporal welfare and relief of the poor must never undermine nor work against but rather presume and work within the basic divinely instituted structures of society, especially marriage and family, distinction of the two sexes, male and female, and individual vocations, nor should the state presume secular perspectives of human nature which deny the reality of sin, greed, selfishness and the sanctity of the life of all human beings. For example, the church can rightly teach that Marxist socialism tends unavoidably to work against II Thess. 3:10 “If a man is not willing to work, let him not eat,” the seventh commandment by “seeking to take our neighbour’s money or possessions, or get them in a dishonest way,” the ninth commandment by “scheming to get our neighbour’s inheritance or house, or get it in a way that only appears right,” and to undermine vocation by turning a person away from connections with (and therefore service towards) his neighbour and towards an unhealthy dependence upon the state —observations which all can also to some extent be perceived by human reason. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the church completely aligns her mission with the political and economic agendas formed to oppose such Marxism, such as in “free market capitalism,” for the simple reason that the church’s mission is not a political or economic agenda concerned with the most efficient accumulation of treasures of a temporal kingdom which moth and rust destroy. She has an infinitely higher mission of a spiritual kingdom which concerns treasures not of this world. All earthly economic and political models assume the excitement and indulging of sinful, selfish, materialistic passions--socialism in a way that undermines God-given orders and vocation, free market capitalism in a way that can (although oftentimes may not) operate within such orders by channelling such selfish passions to productive ends. Still, neither can solve the basic problem of sinful selfishness itself. For this reason, the church can never really align herself with the agenda of either, for her agenda and mission is to call socialists and capitalists, indeed all men, to repentance for the sinful selfishness that animates the lives in either model, and to proclaim the forgiveness and new life from faith in Christ which is lived out in a vocation that lives not for the treasures of this world but for the treasures of Christ's eternal kingdom, and to live now in their present life in loving service to their neighbour through their vocations.

23Of each of these three goals of the state, Joel Biermann correctly notes that: “. . . while [Luther] provided clear counsel to rulers in the form of the three princely virtues, he was hardly naive about the chances of a prince honouring or practising any of them” (Biermann, The Star-Spangled Luther, p. 19) Biermann quotes the Reformer: “These are the virtues that they ought to have in practice, but how do things go? The very opposite! Among the gods, three devilish vices work against these divine virtues. The world is perverse and perverts all of God’s gifts and blessings. This is what it does with these divine offices, too. For it is the princes and lords, who ought to be advancing God’s Word, who do the most to suppress, forbid, and persecute it.” (Luther, p. 59, quoted by Biermann, The Star-Spangled Luther, p. 19)

24Implicit in this are also vastly differing understandings of “freedom.” Much of modern Western democracy is crafted to protect “freedom,” understood as the libertarian license for anyone to do whatever he desires to do (or at least as long as it does not infringe upon the license of others to do as they please) with as little interference from the state or others in society as possible. Directly contrary to this is the Biblical Christian understanding of “freedom,” which is to live one's life in perfect conformity to God's will with free access to His grace and blessing and within and subject to the institutions and estates which God has created for the ideal ordering of such life. From a Christian perspective, since “if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed,” (John 8:36) and “it is for freedom, that Christ has set us free,” (Gal. 5:1), it follows that the Christian is free not because it has been granted to him by the state or society, nor is contingent upon any outward circumstance, but is granted to him by Christ which cannot be taken away from him. A sinner who has free reign to indulge in his sin is a slave and is not free, and a Christian slave with little or no civil rights is perfectly free in Christ. “The Christian is,” as Luther beautifully expressed, “ the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to every one. (Freedom of the Christian Man) He exercises that freedom by voluntarily becoming bound to the duties and obligations of his vocations in which he serves his neighbour. While the Enlightenment framework values “individualism,” personal independence, and autonomy from ties, responsibilities, and obligations to others (which one can find most fulfilled in hell!), the Christian framework stresses being bound in ties of community with others, found most fulfilled in perfect measure in heaven.

Parallel to this is how foreign the pervasive post-Enlightenment concept of “rights”--so central to the ethos of modern Western democracy—is for the church and the Christian understanding of living one's vocation. While civil rights can be a laudable legal construct and framework for the left-hand realm in sustaining a just society, the church and Christians, in particular, can never claim nor see anything in their life as a “right” for the simple reason that all things which they have can only be received as a gift from God which they do not deserve nor have a right to. With such an understanding, the Church and individual Christians are freed for self-giving service to the world, free to trust in God for all things given to him, rather than depending upon abstract “rights” which he must consider owed to him and which he must press and demand for himself, and to which the Christian will only appeal if it will be of benefit to his neighbour (as did Paul appealing to his rights as a Roman citizen only to further the cause of the Gospel)

25WA 51. 239, 22-25.

26Luther notes: “What would result from an attempt to rule the world by the Gospel and the abolition of earthly law and force? It would be losing savage beasts from their chains. The wicked, under cover of the Christian name, would make unjust use of their Christian freedom . . . To try to rule a nation or the world by the Gospel would be like putting wolves, lions, eagles, and sheep all together in the fold and saying to them, ‘Now graze, and live a godly and peaceful life together, the door is open and there is pasture enough, and no sheepdog around that you need to fear. The sheep would keep the peace, but they would not live very long.” Temporal Authority (1523) AE:45:91-2

27“These ideals are not peculiarly Lutheran, that is to say, Luther did not imagine them, craft them, or even discover them. The truths of the two realms are simply facts about the reality of creation that are at work as ground and guide for the world in which we live. They have always been true for people of all places whether all people know it or not. With his typical insight and grasp of the significance of things and uncanny gift of expression, Luther was able to articulate these truths in a concise and compelling way. It provides a tremendous service to the church and to the world even when it is not appreciated.” Biermann, The Star-Spangled Luther , p. 15

28”The church, which is truly the kingdom of Christ, is, precisely speaking, the congregation of the saints” (Ap. VII/VIII.16). “The Kingdom of Grace is synonymous with the Church of God in earth (ecclesia militans).” F. Pieper, Christian Dogmatics II: 385. Therefore one finds a grievous misunderstanding of this crucial meaning of Kingdom of God in the Reformed theologian L. Berkhof when he says that “Christian labour unions and Christian political organizations” can be “manifestations of the Kingdom of God in which groups of Christians seek to apply the principles of the Kingdom to every domain of life” and that “the kingdom may be said to be a broader concept than the church, because it aims at nothing less than the complete control of all the manifestations of life. It represents the domain of God in every sphere of human endeavour.” (L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 409. 569.) In such thinking what is central to God’s Kingdom is not the preaching of the Gospel but rather the keeping of the Law, or as is noted of the tendencies of a Calvinist viewpoint by K. Riecker, “where and only where it [the Law of God] holds sway, there is the Kingdom of Christ on earth.” (K. Riecker, Grundsatze reformierte Kirchenverfassung, 90, cited by K. Marquart, The Church, p. 178). Marquart also quotes the contemporary Reformed theologian R. E. Webber to note such false teaching already present in John Calvin himself: “Calvin believes that whenever order is brought to the world, the kingdom of God is expressed.” (R.E. Webber, the Church in the World, 131, cited by Marquart, p. 178)

29Ap. IV, 15, p. 84

30SC, Creed, p. 329

31SC, Lord’s Prayer,4^th Petition

32SC, Creed, p. 329

33“Now tell me, how much wit must there be in the head of a person who imposes commands in an area where he has no authority whatsoever? Would you not judge a person insane who commanded the moon to shine whenever he wanted it to? How well would it go if the Leipzigers on us Wittenbergers, or if, conversely, we in Wittenberg were to impose laws on the people of Leipzig? They would certainly send a thank-offering of hellebore to purge their brains and cure their sniffles. Yet our emperor and clever prices are doing just that today. They are allowing pope, bishop, and sophists to lead them on – one blind man leading the other – to command their subjects to believe, without God’s word, whatever they believe. And still they would be known as Christian princes, God forbid!” (On Temporal Authority, LW 45, 106)

34Examples in Scripture can be found in the case of Shiphrah and Puah, who while recognizing Pharaoh's authority, did not recognize the legality of his order to kill the Hebrew male firstborn (Ex. 1:15-21), Abigail disobeying her husband Nabal by interceding to David on behalf of their household (I Samuel 25), and the recognition of Saul’s army that their king’s intent to put his son Jonathon to death after his rash vow was an abuse of his authority and power so that they refused to carry out Saul’s orders and stopped him from carrying it out (I Sam 14:43-46). In these cases the ones under authority refused to obey the specific illegal or illegitimate orders given to them by their superior, but did so while still upholding and honouring their superior’s authority over them as legitimate and legal.

35Even when David and others must resist Saul’s unlawful commands and actions, they continue to regard and honour Saul as their king and, indeed, as the Lord’s anointed.

36In this way Luther's understanding of vocation differed significantly from that of the medieval Catholic church understanding of three rigid hierarchies of the clergy, “those who pray,” the nobility “those who rule,” (including, by extension, the knight “those who fight,”) and the common man, “those who labour.,” in which one belonged (and normally remained throughout his life) only to one estate. For Luther, the vocations in one's life had the more richly varied and dynamic--and interesting and challenging!--situation of belonging to many different estates all at the same time.

37Such is precisely the danger of social engineering animating from such overarching totalitarian frameworks as Marxism, fascism, wok-ism, etc.

38Luther notes in his exposition on Psalm 82, that “Pastors are there to help those princes to heed God’s word. . . To rebuke rulers is not seditious provided it is done . . . by the office to which is committed that duty and through God’s word spoken publicly boldly and honestly. To rebuke rulers in this way is, on the contrary, a praise-worthy, noble, and rare virtue and a particularly great service to God.. . . It would be more seditious if a preacher did not rebuke the sins of the rulers for then he makes people angry and sullen, strengthens the wickedness of the tyrant, becomes a partaker in it, and bears responsibility for it.” Noted by Biermann, The Star Spangled Luther, p. 1. Such can be seen in the example of St. John the Baptist's rebuke of King Herod's adultery. It is to be noted that St. John the Baptist was martyred, and so honoured and commemorated by the church not so much for a direct and explicit confession of Christ but because he spoke out against the tyrannical abuse of a state ruler and condemned his immorality, hypocrisy, and abuse of office. This strongly indicates that confessing the Christian faith involves not only the direct confession of the Gospel in one’s life, which all pastors and Christians are to do, but also as “masks” of God in their vocations to be His mouthpieces and instruments to speak to one’s neighbour His truth about things and issues in daily life, especially about matters pertaining to his spiritual and earthly welfare and faithful living of Christian life about which God has something to say. St. John the Baptist, according to his vocation as a prophet called by God, had the vocation from God to call King Herod to repentance.

39In this way, a father must always be free to train his children in parochial church schools or through homeschooling rather than state schools if he determines this to be best for them.

40This is much of the concern of AC XXVIII and its discussion of a bishops' proper role and power.

41One must, however, carefully define this term. “Christian Nationalism,” as described (and condemned) here, refers to the belief (already suggested in Footnote 28 above) that the Kingdom of God and His work is not just to be identified with the Church and her Ministry of Word and Sacrament (Kingdom of Grace) but that it is also the Church's necessary role to build up God's Kingdom of Power through the work of Christian rulers in the estate of the civil government who legislate and impose values, morals and laws that institute a Christian society and nation which brings them under the sway of God’s sovereignty, and that such is the divinely ordained structure of church and state, so that a true church and state exists only where such can be found

However, such an understanding of the church will actually distort both the church and the state and make both, but especially the church, quite alien to what she truly is in a number of ways.

First, such an understanding of the church’s agenda, ministry and priority to bring the world under the sovereignty and rule of God completely disregards the fact that God already is, always has been, always will be, and can never be other than, at all times and in all places the sovereign ruler and King of the universe! To coin another “omni” (along with such things as omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, ect.) God is also “omnisovereign,” always, everywhere, and at all times exercising complete sovereignty and rule over the universe. (Ps. 103:19) God is never in any need of anyone, much less the church, to make Him sovereign; indeed, as the Small Catechism puts it, “Thy kingdom come” means that “the kingdom of God certainty comes by itself without our prayer.” The project and agenda of Christian Nationalism seems to be premised with a lack of faith in the good news of God’s intrinsic sovereignty over all creation.

Of course, one can assume that Christian Nationalists would never actually in fact deny God's intrinsic sovereignty but rather indeed regard that to be the presumption and reason why church and state must work together to enact and realize this everywhere in the public realm. But that is precisely the problem—God’s sovereignty seems to be for the Christian Nationalist always more an agenda which the church/state must enact and realize, rather than an established reality and promise from God which the faithful already have and may rest in and in which they may put their faith and trust. Even if it appears otherwise with earth and state in rebellion against God, the good news is that He is still sovereign working all things according to His gracious will.

One cannot step outside God’s sovereignty Who “rules over all,” (Ps. 103;19) and so all are always within His Kingdom (the Kingdom of Power) However, sinners are always born within this Kingdom as rebels engaged in insurrection against the true King and so are under a judgment and a curse, rather than a blessing. The Kingdom of God brought by the ministry of the true King, Jesus Christ is not for the purpose of bringing us under God’s sovereignty (we already are!), but under His gracious rule, forgiven and pardoned of our insurrection, freeing us from its tyrannical usurper the devil, and bringing us into his court as members of His family and heirs by His astonishing act of grace (the Kingdom of Grace), to live eternally in His Kingdom of Glory in heaven. All are born into God’s Kingdom of Power, and always are, but one can only be born again into God’s Kingdom of Grace, and eventually into God’s eternal Kingdom of Glory, and this only happens through the Church's ministry of Word and Sacrament, (John 3:5) and not the work of the government, which is instituted by God only for matters of God’s Kingdom of Power.

The problem of Christian Nationalism (as defined above) is that the church’s ministry and kingdom is not --and can never be--extended by any work of the left hand kingdom, nor should the church ever depend upon the state and its proper work for any such an end. The purposes of God’s left-hand work through the state are always at its best only towards man’s temporal welfare (“even to all evil people” SC, Lord's Prayer, Fourth Petition), restraining man's actions to some extent from practising outward sin, but never being able even to begin to eliminate sin from man's heart. Christian Nationalism lures the church into seeing her identity in part by what is going on in the state and its work and away from her proper mission of the eternal kingdom, which is not of this world (yet very much active and present in it). The church will most benefit the world with temporal good not by making such her goal, but as a “by-product” of her true higher goal, the one hope in Jesus Christ in Whom the true Kingdom will come and set all things right, which is brought in our midst in the present time through the preaching of the Gospel from which her members will live godly lives in their vocations in the world.

A further problem of Christian Nationalism is that one can only recognize the church to be present within the context of temporal power and influence in a theology of glory, as it exercises power and influence in the present world so that it can be seen and recognized by those who must then “walk by sight,” rather than the church being humbly hidden under suffering in a theology of the cross, which is unseen and known only by those who “walk by faith.” In this way, Christian Nationalism seeks the world’s goal in the world’s kingdom through the world’s means and so loses the gospel, ceasing to be truly church, so that the church loses her unique ministry to the world and erodes her ability to give the world the higher and eternal good.

C. S. Lewis makes a very apt observation in the advice made by a demon to an apprentice demon on how to tempt Christians with turning the church’s mission to a political agenda: “About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly, we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything — even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that ‘only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations’. You see the little rift? ‘Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.’ That’s the game.” (C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, HarperOne, 2001, pp. 123, 126-126).

However, it must also be recognized that the term “Christian Nationalism” can be innocently used in an loosely unguarded and imprecise way by some to simply refer to and encourage the salutary positive effects of the Christian church on society at large, and those using the term “Christian Nationalism” with such an understanding should not be criticized without further ado so as to discourage them of such a positive thing! Furthermore, the term “Christian Nationalism” can also be abused by those advocating a secularist agenda as a term of derision referring to and discouraging any Christian expression and involvement in the public square whatsoever. The church must not only be wary of an improper “Christian Nationalist” agenda but also the sinister use of this term that would seek to quarantine all Christians from their proper vocations in the world and isolate them from involvement in the public square in which they have a solemn vocation from God to engage—that any Christian who would seek the salutary effects of Christianity in society at large is a “Christian Nationalist” who is to be opposed and condemned. As Christians faithfully live out their vocations in the world, in patient faith towards Christ, and love towards their neighbours, their confessions, actions and way of life will increasingly tend to shape and stamp upon society at large a certain Christian ethos and culture (even Cultural Christianity!) to the benefit of all, and such is an immensely positive and beneficial thing not just for Christians but non-Christians as well and which should certainly be encouraged and cultivated to the greatest extent possible. As has been wisely and correctly noted by the Reformed author and theologian Carl Trueman “the term ‘Christian nationalism’ has become a canard used by secular progressives (and some Christians) as a rhetorically pejorative catchall for anyone who holds to any number of traditional conservative views” (Carl Trueman: Protestant Futures and Friendships | VirtueOnline – The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism), of which Dr. John Stephenson rightly observes, “Christians seeking to explore the relationship between Church and Culture or Church and State in the context of the right understanding and application of the teaching concerning the Two Kingdoms or Two Governments (not to mention the interaction of the Three Orders and Estates) should avoid playing to the world by casting aspersions of so-called “Christian Nationalism” on those who appreciate and seek the continuance or restoration of Christendom among us.” (John Stephenson, Aphorisms on Christendom in the shadow of “Christian Nationalism”) In other words, if such is to be called “Christian Nationalism, then such Christian Nationalism, so understood, is a positive thing!

42“The Gospel does not introduce laws about the public state but is the forgiveness of sins and the beginning of a new life in the hearts of believers” (Ap XVI, 58. p. 195), and “neither does the Gospel offer new laws about the public state” and indeed calls Carlstadt “dumb and foolish” for teaching “that one should establish city and territorial government according to the law of Moses” (Ap XVI 55, p. 195]). Indeed, “the spiritual kingdom [the church] does not change the public state.” (Ap XVI. 59, p. 195). As Sasse notes: “There is no Christian order for society, for that would be an attempt to make sin disappear from the world, that love would take the place of law, in other words, that the kingdom of God would have come in glory.” (The Social Doctrine of the Augsburg Confession and its Significance for the Present, from “The Lonely Way 1927-1939, Vol. 1, p. 4)

43Such, of course, is not intended in any way to express any opposition to society being Christianized, but only that it is not the state which God has mandated nor given the means to do so, but rather the church. Therefore, the state will only cause confusion and discord when it does attempt to do what it has not been given, nor has the competence, to do. Even then, while any Christian would of course devoutly welcome any “Christianization” of society, such is not the direct object of the church's ministry, but rather can only come about as the happy by-product of the church's “Christianization,” or rather, conversion, of individuals through the preaching of the Gospel which brings them to faith in Christ, whose effect as they collectively live out their vocations in the world will tend to bring about a “Christianization” of society.

44Nevertheless, the church has every right and duty to instruct and urge governing authorities on their responsibilities under God, which can be demonstrated by natural law and reason. They should not be reluctant to do so simply because such happens to align with Christian agendas! Furthermore, in their vocations as citizens, especially those holding public office, individual Christians have the right to argue for and shape public policy in the public square as much as anyone else. The church must be on guard against totalitarian attempts of the government to construe the separation of church and state to mean that Christians are isolated and quarantined from any say in public policy.

45One must especially be on guard against the often duplicitous tendency of the state ostensibly to claim “neutrality in matters of religion” and therefore to guarantee apparent “freedom of religion” and to concede to the church jurisdiction in matters of religion, but then to “redefine” matters of church practice to be secular or political matters after all, over which the state can claim jurisdiction. One can see this tendency even in one of the great modern political philosophers championing religious liberty, John Locke, who writes in his work Letter Concerning Toleration, “If any people congregated upon account of religion should be desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be prohibited by a law. Meliboeus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and burn any part of it that he thinks fit. For no injury is thereby done to anyone, no prejudice to another man’s goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a religious meeting … But if peradventure such were the state of things that the interest of the commonwealth required all slaughter of beasts should be forborne for some while, in order to the increasing of the stock of cattle that had been destroyed by some extraordinary murrain, who sees not that the magistrate, in such a case, may forbid all his subjects to kill any calves for any use whatsoever? Only it is to be observed that, in this case, the law is not made about a religious, but a political matter.”

46R. W. Scribner, “Politics and the Institutionalization of Reform in Germany,” in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 2, The Reformation 1520–1559, 2nd ed., ed. G. R. Elton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 172–73.

47]It is to be noted that after the Edict of Worms, which threatened his life, Luther nevertheless still advised Prince Frederick not to resist the emperor forcibly (when it would have been very much in his favour for the prince to do so!) This indicates Luther’s deeply held fundamental aversion to active rebellion against government authority and that “Christians do not fight for themselves with sword and musket, but with the cross and with suffering.” Admonition to Peace, LW 46:32.

48These observations are drawn and developed from Herman Sasse, who says “Any political power which has arisen out of anarchy may become a God-given governing authority if it fulfills the tasks of the office of governing authority. This task is the assurance of peace and the maintenance of law through external power, the symbol of which is the sword. The governing authority is a “Servant of God, the avenger for those who do evil.” [Rom 13:4] Legal governing authority is distinguished from religious power in that it not only (as does the latter) possesses power [Macht] but uses its power in the service of law. Both belong to the essence of the state: power and law [Macht und das Recht]. A governing authority that bears the sword in vain, which no longer has the fortitude to punish the law-breaker decisively, is burying itself [gräbt sich selbst das Grab]. A state that removes the concepts “right” and “wrong” from jurisprudence, and replaces them with “useful” and “injurious”, “healthy” and “ill”, “socially valuable” and “socially inferior”, [a state] which in the place of the principal of remuneration places the principal of inoculation [Unschädlichmachung] a state which in its civil law dissolves marriage and family, ceases to be constitutional and thus the governing authority.” The Social Doctrine of the Augsburg Confession and its significance for the present – 1930 - The Lonely Way. Vol. 1

49The book of Daniel provides a rich resource of examples for remaining steadfast in one’s faith amid challenges from a tyrannical state. In both the cases of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in Dan. 3 and Daniel in Dan. 6, there is the risk of one’s life in remaining faithful, but in Dan. 6 the risk is more subtle, and therefore perhaps more deceptive. Here Daniel was not directly commanded to engage in any idolatry but only to refrain from “making petition to any god or man for thirty days.” (Dan. 6:7). Daniel could have found it expedient to “lay low” for thirty days, alter the outward expression of his faith to fit in with the decrees of Darius as a temporary measure (not kneeling while he prays so it isn’t evident that he is doing so—or at least closing the windows so no one can see him! (Dan. 6:10). But Daniel did none of these things, but rather continued to do “as he had done previously.” (Dan. 6:10). “Prayer expresses his communion with God in faith and also is a testimony to others about his trust in God. God’s command and promise to hear and answer compel Daniel to continue his custom of praying. Thus, Daniel understands that refraining from practising his faith is as good as denying his faith in God. Moreover, we are told that after Darius issued his command, the men found Daniel “praying and seeking favour from his God” This implies that Daniel has specifically requested that God look upon him with favour and save him, even if he suffers the consequences of disobeying the king’s command. While Daniel’s enemies rely on Persian law to rid them of Daniel, Daniel relies on God to rid him of all trouble” Andrew E. Steinmann, Daniel, Concordia Commentary, p. 317.

50Even paying taxes to Caesar with his image would not have troubled Christians after Paul’s words about meats offered to idols, having no bearing on Christian conscience unless it involved willing participation in pagan worship through eating those meats. In other words, Christians can put up with a lot of un-Christian behaviour in a secular state, but in such current issues such as child abuse by sex changes, MAID, and abortion, all matters of life and death which are perfectly evident from natural law, all Christians along with all decent non-Christians must make a stand against them.

51John R. Wilch, “Hermann Sasse and Third Reich Threats to the Church,” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times?, edited by John R. Stephenson (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1998), p. 72

52One cannot help but imagine Herr Hitler’s shock and horror when, on the Day of Judgment, he must finally submit to the One Who has unquestioned authority over him, to Whom he is subject and must give an account of his life and all that he has done, and that this One sitting on that High Throne of God will be God incarnate as a Jewish Man!

53For instance, Ludwig Muller who was a Protestant pastor first appointed by Hitler Reichsbischof to the newly formed Deutsche Evangelishe Kirche.

54Wilch, p. 96

55“When church leaders complained loudly, Hitler had an audience with three of them, namely Bishops August Marahans (Hannover), Meisner, and Tilemann. He specifically addressed Meisner: “I warn you against making opposition in matters of faith. It is easy to instigate a revolution, but it is hard – I say this out of experience – to stop a revolution. I see no one in the Protestant church like Dr. Martin Luther who could do so.” Quoted in Wilch, p. 72-3

56Ibid., p 96

57Yet by doing so, the church did unfaithfully make all the wrong sacrifices of things for the sake of earthly peace, namely: “youth work, the church press, theological students to the front, and pastors, theological professors, or church leaders who too loudly opposed the regime, to concentration camps; only those could be appointed to church positions who were obedient to the state; Jews and even Jewish-Christians could lose their jobs, be ostracized from society and the church, and even disappear completely. All this could be sacrificed, but not the church organization nor whatever one regarded as the minimum of church life, especially the Sunday morning divine service.” (Wilch, p. 96)

58Herman Sasse as an Ecumenical churchman, unpublished Ph.D dissertation. Cambridge University, 1991; Ronald Feuerhahn, p. 1, quoted by John R. Wilch, “Hermann Sasse and Third Reich Threats to the Church,” in Hermann Sasse: A Man for Our Times?, edited by John R. Stephenson (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1998), 65.

59Sasse responds to this by saying: “The evangelical doctrine of original sin. . . .does not leave open the possibility that the German, Nordic or any other race is by nature able to fear and love God and to do his will.” Wilch, p. 69

60Noted by Wilch, p. 65

61Wilch, p. 68, concerning Gene Edward Veith, Jr. Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian worldview (ST. Louis; Concordia, 1933), p. 66

62The Fuhrer told them: “Christianity will vanish from Germany as even from Russia. . . the church has lost her chance. . . you elected Muller yourselves, now you have to bear with him. . . the church will have to get used to the doctrine of blood and race. . . if you make opposition, you are Germany’s destroyers!” Wilch, p. 73, quoting Reiger and Strauss, Kirche und Nationalsozialismus, p. 111-13, 115.

63These various proclamations and confessions all had as common themes the upholding of the Old Testament as Scripture, the centrality of the Gospel that Christ died for all people, independence of the church from politics and the state, that Christ is the only Lord of the church, and rejecting such things as so-called heroic piety, the supposed divine origin of such orders as race and blood, the significant cultural character of the church, venerating the people and the state,” Wilch,, p. 75, quoting Carter, Confession at Bethel, p. 19-51

64Bonhoeffer states: “Where the state interferes with the essence of the church in her proclamation, for example, in the forcible exclusion of baptized Jews from our Christian congregations and in outlawing mission among Jews, here the Christian church finds herself in statu confessionis, and here the state finds itself in the act of self-negation. . . the church cannot allow her activity with her members to be determined by the state. . . .Here, where Jew and German stand together under the word of God, is the church; here it is proven whether the church is still Church or not.” Wilch, p. 79, quoting Eberhard Bethge, ed., Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Gasammelte Schriften, vol. 2, Kirchenkampf und Finkenwalde (Munchen: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1959), p. 131

65Wilch, p. 79, quoting Bethge, II, p.62-67

66Bodelschwingh strongly sympathized with the protests against German-Lutheranism and was highly respected by pastors throughout Germany. Indeed, in the first vote of the newly created Reich church, it was none other than Bodelschwingh who was elected as the first Reichs Bishop, humiliating Muller, the Nazi’s choice for that office.

67Bodelschwingh’s secretary

68This Tecklenburg Confession appears to have considerably influenced the eventual text of the Bethel Confession.

69The names of the 20 theologians included Paul Althaus, Hans Asmussen, Karl Barth, Adolf Schlatter, Theodor Schlatter, Wilhelm Trillhaas, and Wilhelm Zoellner, as noted by Wilch, p. 83-4, quoting Carter, Confession of Bethel, p. 90, 92, 269.

70Wilch, p. 78, quoting Carter, Confession at Bethel, 19, 64

71Bonhoeffer, in fact, privately circulated copies of the original version.

72Carter, p, p. 189, 268-69.

73Barth disliked the Bethel Confession, in part because it was too Lutheran.

74The Barmen Confession, for example, almost entirely avoided any discussion of Nazi Racism, Antisemitism, and the persecution of the Jews.

75Letter from Sasse to Michael Reu (29 Dec. 1935), as quoted by Wilch, p. 68

76Die Kirche under die politischen Machte der Zeit, ISC 1:259. 262-63, quoted by Wilch, p, 72

77Indeed, Sasse also observed that much of the Nazi's German-Christian theology was made possible and was a direct result of the erosion of Scriptural authority and Biblical criticism in 19^th Century German Protestant theology and the theological compromise of the Union church. Such things make the church theologically impotent so that it no longer had the discernment to recognize the spiritual realities of the devil’s work in Nazism, nor its errors, nor does she have the theological resources necessary to confess against it.

78Wilch, p. 97

79Wilch, p. 86. Of course, in a more profound sense, the Fuhrer could not be more wrong since the Lord glories in graciously giving His church more chances than she deserves and, in the end, gives her by grace in Christ the certain chance of victory!—that is the church’s solid and sure hope, sustaining the faithful and seen by them in the humble ministry of word and sacrament not of this world, rather than in any outwardly impressive strength of her temporal fortunes or influence in the world.

80Such as is rightly, routinely, and profitably done by confessional Lutherans in pro-life demonstrations and activities with pro-life Roman Catholics and other Evangelical Christians.

81Canadian Lutheran, July/Aug. 2018, p. 5.

82see www.morgentalerdecision.ca/1988-decision/

83For a more detailed discussion of the High Court's decision see: www.morgentalerdecision.ca/what-the-court-decided/ and also what the court did not decide: www.morgentalerdecision.ca/what-the-scc-did-not-decide/

84For instance, from United Nations human rights experts and disability groups in Canada. See: Cheng, Maria (11 August 2022). "'Disturbing': Experts troubled by Canada's euthanasia laws". Associated Press and https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/more-disabled-canadians-are-speaking-out-against-pressure-to-choose-assisted-suicide/?utm_source=featured-news&utm_campaign=canada

85See Harold Ristau, Is Suicide ever the answer? Canadian Lutheran, July 27, 2023

86LCRI, p. 1

87One could argue that such totalitarian tendencies of overreach from the state were recently put on startling display in Canada with the sudden invoking of the Emergency Act on 14 Feb. 2022, resulting in subsequent violence, brutality, freezing of bank accounts, and the like. When later soberly considered, this act was found to be illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada, so such actions proceeding from it were unjustifiable. It could be further argued that ample theological arguments supporting this decision against the Emergency Act are found in the Lutheran understanding of the three realms: the proper role and limitations of the state, a careful wariness and tendency of the state toward abuse of power and tyranny and that there is here an interesting contemporary putting into practice of the principles of the Magdeburg Confession.

88 Such as what free market capitalism does with human greed.

89Of course, much of the early Lutheran Reformation was initiated and overseen by princes and rulers of various states. However, in medieval polity, such princes were entrusted with their specific left-hand kingdom responsibilities and regarded in such capacity as “the chief members of the church,” who should “especially guard the interests of the church. They should see that errors are removed and consciences are rightly instructed. God specifically warns the king, 'Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth' (Ps. 2:10). It should be the first care of kings to advance God's glory.” (Tr 54). Therefore, as lay leaders of the church, such princes rose to the occasion to lead the reform of the church as laymen in their earthly vocations, which happen to be as princes. When bishops and pastors do not lead the church with the reform she needs, the lay leaders must step in and do so with the vocations which they bring to do such.

90LRCI, p. 1

91Of course, such a principle does not deny the possibility of extreme instances arising where the government would have the right and duty in an isolated instance to forbid a particular group from gathering for worship in a particular time and/or place. For instance, if a congregation's building has been found to be structurally unsound and dangerous to be in, or authorities have learned of a terrorist attack planned at the place of meeting, it is the state which would normally have the competency to determine such things when the church most likely would not, and so also who have the authority and responsibility to make the determination to forbid gathering in such circumstances, and the church should cheerfully concede to the state such authority to do so. However, such restriction should remain as retrained as possible--in such instances, for example, the church would still be free to gather at the same time in some other place--the ministry of Word and Sacrament itself has not been interrupted, suspended or unduly regulated, as is the case with the wholesale lock downs everywhere during the COVID pandemic.

92A marvellous and striking example during the COVID lock downs of the church defending her ministry from being stifled by government overreach was the example of the action of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod and the Roman Catholic Church towards Minnesota governor (and later Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate) Tim Walz. During the COVID epidemic, Governor Walz enacted in Minnesota some of the most heavy-handed and repressive restrictions in the USA, including actions sharply restricting the church and her ministry. On 13 May 2020, the Minnesota governor announced a partial reopening of various businesses in the state, allowing retail businesses to open to 50% capacity and “non-critical” businesses to return to work. However, restrictions on gatherings of no more than ten in places of worship remained in place (thereby implicitly stating that churches were not only not essential but something even less important than “non-critical!”). In the face of such actions, on 20 May, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in Minnesota and the Minnesota Catholic Conference publicly stated that on 26 May, they would begin resuming public worship regardless of the governor's proclamations. It is to be noted that the churches took care in this way to avoid proceeding lawlessly. However, they argued that the governor's action was lawless by discriminating against the church, violating state and federal laws, and that their actions were upholding the law. The church appealed to the higher law to which both they and the governor were subject, the former holding the latter accountable. On 23 May, Governor Walz announced that he would permit the opening of all houses of worship in the state starting on 27 May. Supporting and defending these actions, Rev. Matthew Harrison, President of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, noted that “Our government allows legal and other forms of redress” and that “None other than St. Paul, whose rights as a Roman citizen were violated, appealed to Caesar. He used the government process available to him. The Apology to the Augsburg Confession states, ‘The Gospel not only approves outward governments but also subjects us to them (Romans 13)’ (Apology XVI.58).” See: COVID-19 and the church: A different phase and a different response (lcms.org)

93From revised Halle or Walch edition of Luther’s Works, published in St, Louis, 11, 1813f.

94Ibid.

95From revised Halle or Walch edition of Luther’s Works, published in St, Louis, 13a, 968f.

96In fact, as Louis Brighton notes in his commentary on the book of Revelation, the Scriptures teach that “in the plan of God the church will suffer worldly defeat,(Rev. 11:7; 13:7) and victory comes only through death and resurrection in Christ.” (2:10-11; 3:21; 12:11) Louis Brighton, Revelation, Concordia Commentary, (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House: 1999), p. 541

97There can be, for the church, both outward advantages and temptations to unfaithfulness in both situations of when she enjoys society's support and also when she is persecuted. When the church is respected and even supported by her surrounding culture, the result can be, as Marquart observes, that “assured of their temporal well-being,” the church will “not have to bother about the transcendent grounds and aims of their existence.” It will grow “soft, flabby, and compliant. It is as if a vertebrate organism had been strapped into an artificial skeleton for centuries, leaving its backbone to atrophy from disuse. How dearly the churches have had to pay in our time -and are still paying for their soggy backbone!” (Kurt Marquart, The Church and her Fellowship. Ministry and Governance, vol.9 of Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Robert Preus, ed. (Ft. Wayne, IN: The International Foundation for Lutheran Confessional Research, 1990), 2). On the other hand, the church often thrives under persecution and in such time does her most effective mission work-—she learns not to settle in too comfortably in the present world, nor to rely on her temporal success, support from society or the state, or any earthly advantage, but lives by faith upon Christ, the Gospel and the ministry of Word and Sacrament, so that the patient suffering of the faithful living under the cross in their vocations will so startle the world that it will draw them into the church and to faith in Christ! For this reason, as it is often necessary for individual Christians to suffer the cross in their lives, so is it essential for the church collectively to suffer under the cross and be persecuted—for her good and the good of her mission to the world around her. And the church should not be distressed when the Lord, in His wisdom, brings her into such times, but rather, simply continue to remain faithful.