Lutheran Heresy

Judged from the scene as the board met, it might have been a good-fellowship meeting. In the recreation basement of Milwaukee's Pentecost Lutheran Church last week, seven men sat around a quadrangle of folding banquet tables beneath a large sign that read "Jesus Lives." Gaily colored paper plates dangled from the ceiling. In walked a smiling, stocky young man with crew-cut black hair, coatless and carrying a briefcase. One of the men rose and shook his hand.

The man with the briefcase, the Rev. George Crist Jr., 31-year-old pastor of LUTHERAN HERESY TRIBUNAL & PASTOR CRIST Where is up? Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Durham, Wis., was on trial for heresy. The seven men at the table were Lutheran ministers chosen to carry out the first formal trial for heresy ever held in the 60-year history of the Northwest Synod of the United Lutheran Church in America, largest (membership: 2,061,004) group of Lutheran synods in the U.S. The charge: "Holding, teaching and preaching doctrines in convict with the Lutheran faith."

Naturalistic Miracles. Pastor Crist (rhymes with mist), an aviation radioman in World War II, and the father of three children, got into trouble after the synod heard reports of "doctrinal deviations" by him and two other synod pastors who were his former schoolmates at Northwestern Lutheran Theological Seminary in Minneapolis. After examining a series of sermons by Pastor Crist, a fiveman investigating committee ordered him to trial on 14 counts of deviation, centering in his "use and interpretation of the Scriptures, and in his teaching concerning the person and work of Christ."

Pastor Crist openly denied the virgin birth of Christ, expressed doubt about the Resurrection and Ascension, developed naturalistic explanations for Christ's Biblical miracles, e.g., he said of the miracle of the loaves and fishes (Matthew 14:15-21}: "Perhaps He prevailed on those who had brought lunch to share it with those who had not." The synod also accused him of denying the Lutheran doctrines of original sin, the efficacy of prayer and Christ's real presence in the Lord's Supper.* Pastor Crist, the synod charged, has abandoned the fundamental principles of Scripture interpretation which guided Luther in the Reformation.

Semantic Denials. Unabashed, Pastor Crist tried to justify many of his denials by semantics (on the Ascension: "Ascend means to go up ... Where is up?"), insisted that all his teachings constituted "a permissible point of view within the Lutheran Church." Some Lutheran synods permit liberal interpretations of the Augsburg Confession, the 16th century work embodying basic Lutheran beliefs. But the Northwest Synod, although one of the more liberal U,S: Lutheran groups, clearly faced in Crist's teaching a threat to its basic tenets.

The Rev. John Gerberding, one of the two other pastors who may later face trial for heresy, was Pastor Crist's aide at the trial. The tribunal launched into vigorous questioning of Crist's views, even stood around after sessions debating theological points with him. In a sense, the scene was a strange re-enactment of Martin Luther's famed debate at Leipzig (1519) with Roman Catholic Theologian Dr. John Maier of Eck, who clearly demonstrated that Luther was at variance with basic Catholic doctrines.

After two days of examination, it was obvious that, try as it might, the committee could not reconcile its views with Pastor Crist's. Its verdict: guilty of nine of the 14 charges. Recommendation: immediate suspension from the ministry.

Unheeded Pleas. The Rev. Paul Wagner Roth, 77-year-old committee chairman, pleaded with Crist: "We all would be most happy if you could make the supreme sacrifice of your intellectual doubts and differences as a bearer of the Cross and a follower of Christ."

But Pastor Crist would not recant, instead announced that he was determined to continue voicing his views as a teacher. Then, his status as pastor uncertain until the general synod meets in Milwaukee next May to take final action on his case, he took off with his family for a vacation in northern Wisconsin.

* Luther rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e., that the substance of bread and wine is' changed into the body and blood of Christ while the appearance remains the same, but believed in the real presence through consubstantiation, i.e., that the body and blood of Christ coexist with the substance of bread and wine. Some followers held that he later rejected consubstantiation as well. Today Lutherans generally believe that Christ is present in the Lord's Supper "sacramentally and supernaturally."

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