# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1965_S274 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) | 274 SUPPLEMENT TO CTCR REPORT ship are, however, among the outstanding manifestations of church fellowship. During the early centuries of her existence the Chris- tian church sought for sound principles to guide her in the practice of church fellowship. In the following we seek to set forth the understanding and practice of church fellowship which guided the church during three periods of her history: A. during the first four centuries of the Christian era; B. during the century following the Reformation; C. during the time of the Lutheran Church in America. A. CHURCH FELLOWSHIP DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA The first four centuries of the Christian era, extend- ing to the time of St. Augustine, are of particular im- portance for an understanding of the subject of church fellowship. During these centuries which were marked by the rise of numerous heresies and schisms, the church was obliged to think earnestly about her true nature in the light of Scripture. As she did so, she developed principles to guide her in the practice of church fellow- ship, and fashioned the instruments which would enable her to carry the accepted principles into practice. 1. Church Fellowship During the Lifetime of the Apostles So long as the apostles lived and personally super- vised the churches, which were still few in number, the matter was relatively simple. Under the guidance of the apostles wicked persons were put out of the congrega- tion (Acts 5:4-10; 1 Cor. 5:13); heretics were unmasked (Gal. 1:6-9; 1 Tim. 1:19, 20); and the activities of po- tential schismatics were restrained (1Cor.1:10ff.). However, as the church grew, the best efforts of the apostles no longer sufficed to exclude all gross sinners and heretics from the churches, as St. John’s letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor show (Rev. 2 and 3). 2. Church Fellowship After the Death of the Apostles If the last decades of the apostolic age already indi- cate that the practice of church fellowship was beset by great difficulties from wicked men and from heretical teachers within Christian congregations, these difficul- ties increased greatly after the death of the apostles. The return of the Lord to judgment, which He Himself had foretold (Matt. 24:3 ff.), and which the church ap- pears to have expected as imminent (Phil. 4:5; 2 Thess. 2:1-3), was delayed. This was used by some as an excuse for a slackening of Christian living (2 Peter 3:3, 4). Moreover, the church, even under persecution, experienced a phenomenal growth, penetrating ever more deeply into the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire and beyond. The church found it increasingly difficult to keep herself free of manifestly impenitent sinners. Also the problem of the so-called “lapsi,” peo- ple who had denied their Lord during persecution but later repented and desired to be readmitted to the church, troubled the church throughout the period of the persecutions and beyond. While the church wrestled with these problems, she was constantly engaged in the struggle against heresy and schism. Of one thing the church was certain: no heretic and no schismatic could be a member of the church.! However, the definition of heresy and heretic, and of schism and schismatic was not simple. So long as the heretics were men like the Gnostics, who held fanciful and often revolting concepts of God, or Doce- tists, who taught that the Son of God had not really come in the flesh (1 John 4:2, 3), they could easily be identified and branded heretics. When, however, more subtle errors arose, or when heretics used language which appeared to differ but little from that employed by orthodox teachers of the church, it became possible for an Arius to mislead even bishops and emperor, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that this man was finally identified as a heretic and excommunicated. It is not possible to gain an unequivocal definition of heresy and heretic from the church fathers. The father who spoke most specifically on this question is Saint Augustine. 3. St. Augustine’s Definition of Heresy and Schism St. Augustine admitted that the definition of heresy and heretic was anything but simple. When a deacon by the name of Quodvultdeus asked him “to write a com- pendium of all heresies which have spawned against the teaching of the Lord our Saviour since the time of His coming,” Augustine responded that two learned bishops had compiled such lists, but that one had listed 128 heresies, the other 80. He concludes: This would surely not have happened if what appeared heresy to one of them had also appeared heresy to the other. ... Undoubtedly, when there was a question of deciding what constitutes a heresy they did not see it in the same way. As a matter of fact, this is an ex- tremely difficult definition to formulate, and when we try to enumerate all of them we have to be on our guard, not to pass over some which are really heresies or to include some which are not.? Though St. Augustine admits that the definition of heresy and heretic is difficult, he clearly operates with a definition, and it is possible to show from his writings what that definition was. Augustine recognized in heresy an objective element which is common to all heresy, and he also recognized in heretics a number of subjective elements. a. The Objective Element of Heresy The objective element which all heresies and heretics have in common is error in doctrine; that is, a departure from some phase of the rule of faith as it gradually took form amid the labors and struggles of the church, first in the so-called Baptismal Confession, and in time in the Apostles’ Creed. In his interpretation of the tares among the wheat, Augustine says: . . it may also be said, that the children of the evil one (mali) are heretics, who, though begotten out of the same seed of the Gospel and name of Christ, have been turned to wicked opinions and false dogmas.4 In this understanding of the objective element of heresy Augustine is at one with the understanding of the church both before and after him.