In listening to the debate at my Synod assembly in Virginia, an old insight returned to me with fresh clarity. Listening to the debate on a memorial to become a “Reconciling in Christ” Synod, I realized that the dispute before us is not an otherwise manageable disagreement about the interpretation of a few Bible passages within the framework of a common faith and confession. What the debate about accepting homosexuality reveals is that, in fact, we in the ELCA are conflicted about what the gospel is and what it means for us today.

As I listened, I heard two contending, if not conflicting, theologies of reconciliation sounding out. According to the first, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. The reconciliation pertains first of all to the Holy God and sinful humanity in preparation for the coming of His Reign and is thus truly but as yet imperfectly realized in the fellowship of penitent but believing sinners in the church militant. Here, all who are contrite, confessing rather than protesting their sins, are welcomed and included, until the Kingdom comes in fullness and power from above to make us whole. In the interim, by the grace of the Spirit, we master sin and are no longer mastered by it, living by the forgiveness of sins.

According to the second, God is progressively realizing through human history more and more inclusive forms of fellowship, overturning the prejudices, bigotries, and stereotypes of the past. Here, all who have been stigmatized are welcomed and included with the good news that they are accepted just as they are, since as such they have been created by God. In this theology of reconciliation, the historical Jesus is the prophet of radical welcome, and accordingly the authentic church of Jesus is the vanguard of progressive history, leading secular society on to its divinely intended destiny. So it is imperative that the church itself manifest such perfect welcome in its own ranks, to show society the way forward, by the full inclusion of gay and lesbian persons.

Version One, which is classical Lutheran and Augustinian theology, can include aspects of Version Two, but Version Two, if taken as normative, excludes Version One. Version Two is classical Liberal Protestantism. Let me explain.

At its best, Version One also strives for inclusion according to the movement of history. It is not stand-pat conservativism, since its Trinitarian conviction is that this here-and-now-of-history is our Father’s world. Therefore faith itself requires us critically to receive the insights and discoveries of our own age as the ongoing creative work of the Father of Jesus Christ. We have to think of creation, not as a static stage once erected in the dim past and now to be preserved at all costs against any change, but rather that creation itself groans for fulfillment in “the glorious liberty of the sons of God,” and that in the course of events (also outside the Church!), God our heavenly Father is active to move the wayward creation onward to its divinely intended destiny.

Thinking this way, we can critically receive innovations like the democratic revolution, post-Copernican cosmology, or the emancipation of women as works of our heavenly Father. Thus, the Church is ever free to modernize: obedience to temporal authority under our conditions means political participation in the democratic process, creation faith now contemplates the Big Bang and the evolution of species, ordination in the Church includes otherwise competent women presenting themselves for service to Word and Sacrament. Likewise we can receive the scientific insight today that much homosexuality is experienced as a spontaneous and incorrigible orientation. For many it is not a choice but a condition. We can thus, under carefully considered conditions, recognize though not bless with the blessing of Genesis 1:26-28 (cf. Mark 10:2-12) same-sex couples. We can modernize in such ways because, according to faith, this is our Father’s world.

But Version Two, carefully thought out and rigorously taken, excludes Version One. It regards the separated existence of the Holy Church with its exclusive claims (Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone from the Scriptures alone) and distinctive moral standards (the one-flesh union of male and female as sign of the unity of Christ and His body) as part of the problem of human division rather than its solution. Here, the very idea that the church should exist to call people out (ek-klesia) of a fallen world into the fellowship of penitent but believing sinners as a sign of the Kingdom which comes from above is found to be divisive and exclusive. People who adopt this Liberal Protestant theology of reconciliation in turn sooner or later find that they have to reject the faith of the Church by which it exists as a separated, i.e. holy, society. Christianity too must be overcome.

If this analysis has purchase, what the ELCA should do is draw back from the precipice, realizing that it is fully immersed in a life-and-death theological controversy not about homosexuality as such but about its normative theology of reconciliation. But that won’t happen unless the reckless and polarizing recommendations of the Task Force are defeated, and the people of the ELCA, in genuine contrition, face up instead to the real and deep theological disagreements that are tearing them apart.

As if to confirm this analysis, a local pastor on the other side of this debate, responding to an earlier draft of this blog post, sent me the new statement signed by Lutheran School of Theology (Chicago) faculty. You can read it for yourself to see a sad attempt at alleging Lutheran fidelity to the Confessions, these faculty members do without the Cross of Christ or the doctrine of sin, turning grace into acceptance of others rather than mercy for sinners. In a series of coming posts, I will dissect this sad but also revealing statement, because it demonstrates both that we are conflicted about the gospel itself and that theologians on the side of the Task Force Recommendations cannot with intellectual honesty call their theology of reconciliation recognizably Lutheran any longer. In preparation for the forthcoming analysis, take some time to read Article XXIII of both the Augsburg Confession and the Apology.

Paul R. Hinlicky is the Tice Professor in Lutheran Studies at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. See also his contribution to the online Journal of Lutheran Ethics.