About this episode

Pastor Ben Hayter joins the show to discuss the CTCR's document on unity in doctrine and practice, exploring its implications and unresolved questions.

Pastor Ben Hayter of Imanuel Lutheran Church in Waterloo, IL, joins the show to work through the CTCR's 2025 document, Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice. The document came from a 2019 synodical resolution asking the CTCR to define what Article III.7 of the LCMS Constitution actually means by "unity in doctrine and uniformity and variety in practice." The CTCR responds with six historical case studies — the Jerusalem Council, the Quartodeciman controversy, Luther's Invocavit Sermons, the adiaphoristic controversy behind Formula of Concord Article X, and two episodes from LCMS history: the Synod's founding and the debate over lay electors and women's suffrage. Hayter raises three unresolved questions the document leaves on the table. First: the difference between how to use adiaphora and whether something actually is adiaphora in the first place — a hermeneutical question of whether church practice requires an explicit command or whether necessary inference is sufficient warrant. Second: definitional looseness around key terms like "responsible," "required," "insist," and "retain" — words that carry very different weight depending on who's doing the requiring…

People in this episode

Host: Jason Braaten

Guest: Ben Hayter

Topics covered

• unity in doctrine
• church practice
• adiaphora
• historical case studies
• LCMS history
• hermeneutics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Imanuel Lutheran Church, CTCR, LCMS

Books & works: Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice

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