# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S499
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS 499

proval, support, and membership to the National Lutheran Council,
Lutheran World Federation, and World Council of Churches; and
the Joint Union Committee for the merger of former members
of the AL Conference recommends that the new body take mem-
bership in the World Council of Churches.

7. In August 1950 Dr. Fendt of the ALC, a member of the
joint subcommittee which drafted The Common Confession, de-
clared that The Common Confession sets forth “the doctrine taught
by both synods” and that “the underlying motivation (in drafting
The Common Confession) was to give expression to existing doc-
trinal unity rather than to rehearse past doctrinal disagreements
or to seek compromises or conversions among the negotiators”
(C.T. M., 1950, p. 773).

_8. Teachings of Scripture confessed by the Synodical Confer-
ence have, subsequent to the adoption of The Common Confession,
been denied and attacked in publications of the American Lu-
theran Church (cf. Luth. Standard, October 20, 1952, p. 4, on Crea-
tion; February 21, 1953, p. 15, on Inspiration), without public re-
buke or correction.

9. The statement of the chairman of the Missouri Synod’s Com-
mittee on Doctrinal Unity that the American Lutheran Church
receded from its former position has been challenged in a publi-
cation sponsored by the ALC with the response “That will be
news to the members of the ALC Committee.” (Lutheran Outlook,
August, 1953, p. 230.)

10. As recently as January 28, 1956, an editorial in the Lutheran
Standard, synodical paper of the ALC, has expressed the Opinion
that “Missouri does not have the Scriptural view of what the
‘Gospel of Jesus Christ’ is,”

11. Since these developments have risen and continued in the
face of Part I of The Common Confession, Arts. II, V, and IX and
Part Il, viii, B, 2(7), it is evident that the ALC has not inter-
preted The Common Confession in the sense in which our Synod’s
Committee has told us it intended the documents to be understood.

12. Part II of The Common Confession continues to display
omissions and inadequacies such as appeared in Part I, for example,
on the subjects of Creation, Sabbatarianism, the Antichrist, a fun-
damental reason for faithfulness to all the teachings of Scripture
(viii, B, 2(7), Inspiration, Justification, Conversion, Election. We
note, e. g., that our Unity Committee has not succeeded in securing
from the ALC the unequivocal statement of Scripture’s teaching

‘for which it pleaded: “God has already in Christ absolved all the

world of its sins.” (Proceedings 1941, p. 280.)
13. Parts I and II fail to offer clear and comprehensive defini-