# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S501
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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INTERSYNODICAL AND DOCTRINAL MATTERS 501

Concerning The Common Confession

We respectfully request Synod not merely to set aside The
Common Confession for practical or other considerations, an action
which would fail to Satisfy the conscientious objections raised in
our Synod and in sister synods against it, but to reject this docu-~
ment because it fails to meet, and leaves unsettled, the doctrinal
differences between our Synod and the American Lutheran Church.

Our Lutheran Confessions say under the general heading “Of
Articles in Controversy with Respect to the Antithesis, or Opposite
Doctrine”: “For the preservation of pure doctrine and for thorough,
permanent, godly unity in the church, it is necessary, not only that
the pure, wholesome doctrine be rightly presented, but also that
the opponents who teach otherwise be reproved, 1 Tim. 3 (2 Tim.
3:16, Titus 1:9)” (Concordia Triglotta, pp. 855—859).

That co-authors of The Common Confession who belong to
the ALC did not find reproof of their false teachings in this docu-
ment is clearly shown by the fact that in August 1950 Dr. Fendt
of the ALC, a member of the joint subcommittee which drafted
The Common Confession, declared, as quoted in our own Concordia
Theological Monthly, 1950, p. 773: “The underlying motivation [in
drafting The Common Confession, as far as the ALC commissioners
were concerned, for he was speaking for them] was to give expres-
sion to existing doctrinal unity rather than to rehearse past doc-
trinal disagreements or to seek compromises or conversions among
the negotiators.” Dr. Fendt, a member of the ALC Committee, also
stated, among other things, in an article in the Lutheran Quarterly
(ALC) on “The Theology of the Common Confession,” pp. 308—323:
“The careful student will find little cause to say ‘Missouri has
abdicated’ or ‘The American Lutheran Church has receded from
its former doctrinal position.’ ... There was no intimation of get-
ting the other side to recant.”

A few months later, in October 1950, before the ALC adopted
The Common Confession, they were told by one of their own
leaders: “At the very outset it was agreed by the members of the
committee (evidently of the ALC — Ep. Norte) that produced The
Common Confession that they would restrict the document to
those matters on which they found themselves in agreement with
Missouri. Any matters which were found to be in disagreement
were not to be included in The Common Confession.” Lutheran
Loyalty, January 1951, p. 13.

_ These assertions on the part of ALC men who helped write
The Common Confession, and on the part of informed leading men
in the ALC, are sufficient to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt
that the ALC neither found nor accepted reproof for their false