C. OPEN QUESTIONS AND THEOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Open questions must not be defined as points of doctrine on which men cannot agree or which the Church has left undecided in the Symbols, but as questions which Scripture leaves open, unanswered.

The principle that no doctrine can be universally binding until it has gained universal consent deposes Scripture as the source and norm of Christian doctrine. That principle changes Christ’s instruction: “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” to read: “Teach them to observe those things for which you can obtain common consent.” This anti-Scriptural idea is responsible for the numerous attempts to bring about church union without unity in the Christian doctrine.132

In our day some Lutheran theologians have set up the strange principle that any article may be treated as an open question, binding no one, so long as the Church has not decided the matter in the Symbols. That is in reality the same Romish error which Luther rejects in the familiar statement: “The Christian Church [therefore also the Lutheran Church] has no power to set up a single article of faith, has never done so, and nevermore will do it” (St. L. XIX:958). It is practically the position taken by the Dorpat Opinion of 1866. It is a plain disavowal of the Scripture principle.133

Correctly defined, open questions are such questions as inevitably arise in our study of the Scripture doctrines but are not answered by Scripture at all or at least not clearly. And Scripture enjoins us to let them remain open questions. If we presume to answer them and ask men to accept our opinion as divine truth, we would be rejecting those Scripture passages which forbid us to add anything to God’s Word (Deut.4:2; 12:32; 1 Pet.4:11). Every true theologian must learn not only to speak, but also to keep silence. He should speak where and as far as God’s Word speaks; he should hold his tongue where God’s Word is silent. He who has not learned this art of silence and dares to speak where God’s Word is silent is condemned by Jer. 23:16: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you; they make you vain; they speak a vision of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord.” He should also study 1 Tim. 6:3 ff.

Open questions may also be called “theological problems” if such problems are meant as cannot be solved on earth because God has not given us the solution in Scripture. A theologian may with a good conscience reply to many questions with an “I do not know” — nescio.

We cannot, for instance, answer the question how sin could originate, seeing that all creatures, including all the angels, were originally created “very good.”134 Another open question: Is the soul of each individual created by God immediately (creationism) or mediately through the parents (traducianism)?135 In the list of problems which cannot be solved in this life the Cur alii, alii non question occupies a prominent place. How shall we account for the fact that, as the Formula of Concord puts it, “one is hardened, blinded, given over to a reprobate mind, while another, who is indeed in the same guilt (in eadem culpa), is converted again”? (Trigl. 1081, 57.) The Formula of Concord warns against any attempt to solve this question, the crux theologorum, in this life; the life to come will bring the answer.136

In short, all theologians who attempt to answer the real “open questions” in theology or to solve real theological problems (a) disagree with Scripture, because they refuse to abide by 1 Pet. 4:11: “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God,” and (b) are unscholarly, because they pretend to know what they cannot know. The knowledge of Christian truth is obtained only by continuing in the Word of Christ (John 8:31-32). Whatever is palmed off as Christian knowledge alongside the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ is nothing but conceit and ignorance (, 1 Tim. 6:3).

Now, since Scripture furnishes no information on these open questions and theological problems, it is foolish to spend much time and energy on them.137 We surely have enough to do if we study and teach what is clearly revealed in Holy Writ. If we do not make that our sole business, but take time to discuss useless questions, we are, as Luther points out, “hindering the Gospel.” The great matters which should be man’s sole concern are pushed into the background. And experience shows that the interest of the crowd is too easily won for human speculations; it will have its curiosity satisfied. Luther adduces the example of the Jews, who bothered about the genealogies, and of the Papists, among whom there was endless wrangling about useless fables and empty trifles, and everyone wanted to be in the right. (See St. L. IX:863 f. on 1 Tim. 1:3-4.) Let us heed Luther’s warning: “There are two hindrances to the Gospel: the first is teaching false doctrine, driving the consciences into the Law and works. And the second is this trick of the devil: when he finds that he cannot subvert the faith by directly denying the Gospel, he sneaks in from the rear; raises useless questions and gets men to contend about them and meanwhile to forget the chief thing; and gets them to contend about dead saints and departed souls, where they abide, whether they sleep, and the like.138 One question follows the other in endless succession. Wretched curiosity busies itself about unnecessary and useless things that are neither commanded nor serve any purpose. Thus Satan comes in the back way, people gape with wide-open mouth at these things and lose the chief things. A man does not need much wit to gain the popular applause; let him but preach new and strange things, and people will say that he is more learned than others; they come in droves, with eyes and ears and mouth widely opened. They do not care to have faith and love preached to them; that is too common; they heard and know enough about that; it irks them always to hear the same thing.”139