Now that “the process” to remove false teaching (which is being exported around the globe and used as required reading in our seminaries), or at least have a chance to make the case for same, was followed to its ultimate end…

Now that “the process” was shut down from the podium because it might trigger certain unnamed snowflakes (LCACA authors? Editors? Foreword writers?)…

Now that the conventional delegates (with over 100 abstaining/glitching) have declined to take up the matter and thus allow for debate…

Now that the collected works of false teachers, race agitators, Marxists, and women are established beyond the ability of “the process” to question as one of the greatest treasures ever produced by American Lutheranism (with the only qualification, not included in the volume, that some things might have been worded better/more clearly)…

I anticipate a waxing comprehension by faithful pastors that dissent from Synod will come at great cost. Many will go underground and feign assent, while privately catechising their flocks against the Synod they claim fellowship within. Many will for the first time apprehend the validity, nay, necessity of pseudonymity when the times call for it.

What none but the most extreme cases of cognitive dissonance can any longer countenance is the idea that the Synod is walking in anything like unity. The divide is not now, as in past times, over the Nature of God qua God. All sides confess the Triune God and the Deity of Christ. Rather, the present struggle is over the Nature of Man (which includes the Nature of Nations) and the Nature of the Law.

For contending with Synod and within Synod over these two matters, men have been doxxed, brought before tribunals with secret proceedings, removed from elected positions, table barred, excommunicated against clearly written bylaws, and handed over to Antifa and secular authorities for torment.

Many objectors to Synod’s new doctrines rest comfortably, content that life-altering actions have only been taken against “the fringe.” They fail to understand that, with the removal of the old fringe, they are now the new fringe. A resurrected Walther himself would be required to update his views on anthropology and the Law, or be denied a call by those who sit in his seat in Missouri.

This is a moment to be shaken awake. To put aside comforting notions of “Aww shucks, it’s just St. Louis being St. Louis.” Despite the cries of “peace, peace” from convention this past week, battle is upon us. Not the Battle for the Bible this time, but the battle for the Nature of Man and the Law. These are very much matters of confession, as you will see if you compare the language of “the Image of God” in the resolutions on race with the same phrase in the Lutheran Confessions — they are at odds (see Ap II.19, 20ff; FC SD I.11ff).

The question of fellowship is one to consider very strongly this Autumn. With the LCMS declaring its broken fellowship with Japan, we go into a season of reflection and, if needed, repentance for bearing too long with bodies who spit in the face of God. And maybe we repent of hypocrisy for declaring broken fellowship with some egregious offenders, but not others more close to home.

May God grant that His will be done.