# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2001_S394 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) 394 ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT us. When human “order” is put on a par with divine “faith,” the latter is lost. The Lima paper Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry is a good illustration. The section on the ministry, with its episcopal “sign,” takes up more space than do the sacraments put together— and their treatment waffles on all dogmatic issues. If it is true, for instance, as Loyola University Philosophy Pro- fessor Thomas Sheehan wrote in the 14 June 1984 New York Re- view of Books, that the dominant “liberal consensus” in Roman Catholic seminaries is that “Jesus of Nazareth did not assert any of the messianic claims that the Gospels attribute to him and that he died without believing that he was Christ or the Son of God”— then what is the point of discussing the niceties of episcopal forms and structures? In this time of unparalleled dogmatic dissolution, can we afford the luxury of wasting time on trivia? Why bother about a “sign” when it is the substance that needs recovering? Global Confessional Implications THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PORVOO LIES NOT in its novelty—its ap- proach is not new—but in the scope and clarity with which it ex- emplifies the ruling “ecumenical” paradigm. Most of the Nordic and Baltic Lutheran churches already had various arrangements for intercommunion and even intercelebra- tion with Anglican and other churches. This piecemeal clutter is now being replaced by a tidy and elegant uniformity. Purely as a historical development the Porvoo pact makes per- fect sense. Its member-churches have similar histories as Refor- mationally transformed remnants in northern Europe of the Con- stantinian establishment. As ecclesiastical appendages of modern secularized societies and states, their very existence is anomalous (see John Kent, End of the Line ?). The church is undoubtedly hid- den also under these bureaucratic structures (“spiritual police-dis- tricts” Sasse called them), but the structures as such have for the most part long ceased to be or to behave as confessional churches. Why should they not join together, as the British Study Guide puts it, “at a time when Europe is growing together socially, politically and economically”? (p. 9). What is simply taken for granted is that “visible unity” is para- mount. The symptom, “the scandal of division among Christians (1 Cor. 1:11-13, 1 John 2:18-19)” (Porvoo Common Statement, p. 15), is taken to be the ultimate evil, while the real trouble—apos- tasy or heresy—is blithely ignored. Texts like Rom. 16:17 or Gal. 1 are beyond the document’s horizon. There is only the steady drumbeat for union: “Christians can never tolerate disunity” (ibid.). Very well, but can they tolerate falsehood and doctrinal compro- mise and pretense? The question of truth is addressed, or rather evaded, in terms of “unity” and “diversity,” in other words, precisely according to the Lutheran World Federation’s (1977) ecumenical recipe of “Recon- ciled Diversity.” That means that everyone keeps his confession, only the differences are no longer considered divisive. The Porvoo application is that there will be unity in externals, above all in “The Historic Episcopal Succession as Sign” (p. 27), while differences over doctrinal substance can be accommodated as legitimate “diver- sity.” In this way the purity of the Gospel and sacraments is made to trade places with adiaphora. The essential has become the periph- eral, and vice versa. Total confessional relativism rules if it is true that “all existing denominational traditions are provisional” (p. 13). Already looming directly ahead is the next step: a dramatic ges- ture—now delayed—originally planned to coincide with the 450th anniversary of the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification (1547). The Lutheran World Federation hoped, at its assembly in Hong Kong in 1997, to adopt a joint declaration with the Vatican regarding justification, which would have mutually withdrawn the 16th century condemnations as no longer applicable (Lutheran World Information, 17/96). There was, however, the awkward pos- sibility of a one-handed handshake, if the expected official Vati- 2001 Convention Workbook can confirmation were withheld. Again, the clear and unambigu- ous confession of the Gospel would be set aside in favor of com- promise formulas for the sake of a semblance of unity. With justi- fication out of the way as a stumbling-block to reunion with Rome, and the sacramental presence re-negotiated with Canterbury and then Geneva, the way will be clear for “full communion” every- where, and whatever anyone may choose to make of the Gospel and sacraments, it will all be fully warranted as apostolic by the “sign” of a joint episcopate. Where what the Book of Concord confesses about the church as an article of faith is heeded, there the glass beads of illusions and counterfeits will not be allowed to pass for the real treasures of the church. That is the ecumenical stand Lutherans are called upon to take humbly, soberly, and globally. The life-giving truth of Christ must take precedence over everything else—and the very gates of hell shall not prevail against it. On the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord, 1997 Dr. David P. 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