Strangers to Sisters - Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library: Essays

historic Lutheran position and had it published in the June 1951 edition of the
Confessional Lutheran. It was entitled, oddly enough, “A Friendly Word to our Brethren
in the Wisconsin Synod.”
In the article, Buenger accused the Wisconsin Synod of revising and developing
truth that had been laid out clearly in the Confessions. 265
He further accused the
Wisconsin Synod of teaching that gathering together in congregation is a matter of
Christian liberty, that the Wisconsin Synod gave any chance gathering of Christians the
right to excommunicate, and that the Synod had power over the local congregation. 266 He
asserted, among other things, that all the truth of Scripture is clearly expounded upon by
the Lutheran fathers, that the Lutheran Confessions taught only the pastor of a local
congregation is divinely ordained and that synods are merely man-made institutions. 267
The article caused such uproar in the ELS that a resolution was passed by the
General Pastoral Conference to not only publish Buenger’s essay in the Clergy Bulletin,
but also publish George Lillegard’s rebuttal. This brief reply by Lillegard not only clearly
and evangelically corrects the false caricatures of the Wisconsin Synod positions on
church and ministry, but defends the hermeneutical methods that were used in the
formulation of the Wisconsin Synod positions. Lillegard clearly sides with the
Wauwatosa methodology in approaching the Scriptures against the Vatertheologie
advocated by Buenger,
Under “Quoting the Fathers in Controversy,” the writer
[Buenger] tries to make out that professors Koehler and
Pieper followed a wrong principle when they warned
against basing doctrine on statements of “the fathers” rather
than on Scripture alone. The fact remains, however, that
265 George Lillegard, “Church and Ministry” Clergy Bulletin 11, no. 1 (September 1951), 3-6.
266 Ibid.
267 Ibid.
144