SLC & CTCR Correspondence

Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) Sanctity of Human Life Committee (SHLC) Correspondence with the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR)

Letter to the Editor, LCMS “Reporter,” posted 2/23/06, regarding the CTCR Report:

As Chair of the LCMS Sanctity of Human Life Committee, I am pleased to see your recent coverage (December 2005) of the newly released document from the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) titled Christian Faith and Human Beginnings, which chiefly addresses the ethical problem of human embryonic stem-cell research.

Members of the Sanctity of Human Life Committee (SHLC) applaud the CTCR for tackling this critical topic in a time when laity and clergy need a Biblically based understanding of the issues. This document says some helpful things and does a good job of explaining the more complex medical issues. This is a noble pursuit, and Christian Faith and Human Beginnings indeed applies to embryonic stem-cell research the same guiding moral principle as did the previously published CTCR document “Christian Care at Life’s End”—that we always should care for, never kill, human life.

However, I and many of my peers on the Life Committee are concerned that Christian Faith and Human Beginnings may be an incomplete resource for use in the parish. I believe our church body would benefit from a fuller understanding of the Biblical concepts involved, and a line of reasoning that asserts Biblical truths instead of basing the main thrust of its argument on a philosophical/legal approach more appropriate for a secular audience.

You can read the SHLC’s response to the CTCR regarding Christian Faith and Human Beginnings at the Lutherans For Life web site.

To this end, the SHLC will be working diligently over the next few months with some of our Synod’s best Biblical scholars to develop companion resources to the new CTCR document. Our goal is to expose our laity and clergy to a line of reasoning about early human life that is grounded in the incarnation of our Lord and which affirms very strongly the essential reality that at the moment of conception a “person” comes into existence.

I encourage members of our church body to make use of these helpful and lay-friendly study materials that will be produced by midsummer under the cooperation of LCMS Life Ministries, Lutherans For Life, and the Concordia Bioethics Institute at Concordia University of Wisconsin. This is such an important and defining issue in the church and in contemporary society. Now is the time for our Synod to make a real and lasting contribution to the Biblical understanding of God's love for all life.

Maggie Karner, Chair

LCMS Sanctity of Human Life Committee
Muncie, Indiana
http://www.lcms.org/pages/internal.asp?NavID=9589

Additional Commentary:

Christian Faith and Human Beginnings – A Response by Rev. Terry Forke