The Seminex Controversy
Concordia Seminary became a focus of national media attention in 1974 when 45 of its 50 faculty members, together with the vast majority of students, walked out to form a rival institution known as Seminex, or Concordia Seminary in Exile. The Seminex walk-out protested the suspension of the seminary's president, John Tietjen, who faced charges from the conservative Synodical president, Jacob Preus, of allowing the teaching of false doctrine. More specifically, the charges alleged that Tietjen had permitted the teaching of historical-critical methods of scriptural interpretation, rather than upon exegetical principles that consider scripture to be the inerrant word of God (see Biblical inerrancy). Seminex was never very successful, due mostly to its difficulties placing graduates in ministerial positions. Seminex suffered a gradually declining enrollment over the course of the late 1970s. The last St. Louis commencement was held in May 1983. Seminex continued to exist as an educational institution at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago campus through the end of 1987.
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“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)