# LCMS Convention Workbook_St. Louis Missouri_2004_S453 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) OTHER PERTINENT DOCUMENTS 453 ditional Christology, from Nicaea and Chalcedon to Art. III of the Augsburg Confession, is unbiblical and untenable in light of mod- em historical-critical scholarship.” 1981 Resolution 3-20 “To Ask LCUSA to Study Implications of Historical Criticism,” Convention Proceedings, 160. Loyola University Professor Thomas Sheehan wrote in The New York Review (June 14, 1984) of a developing “liberal consensus” in Roman Catholic biblical scholarship to the effect that “Jesus of Nazareth did not assert any of the divine or messianic claims the Gospels attributed to him and that he died without believing he was Christ or the Son of God.” Also at the root of the recent Lutheran/Reformed/Episcopal agreements are views that no longer speak of truth but only of opinions. In this en- vironment Scripture is deprived of its authority and the creeds and confessions, which depend on the Scriptures for their authority, are seen as little more than milestones in church history and thus for them the confessions have no binding authority. In 1997 the north- erm European Lutheran churches established altar and pulpit fel- lowship with the Church of England and her sister churches. In 1997 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America [ELCA] entered into altar and pulpit fellowship with three churches that explicitly hold to Reformed teachings, including the denial that Christ’s body and blood are actually received by mouth in the Lord’s Supper. One of these Reformed churches has no binding creed or confes- sion. This action by the ELCA was followed by two more alliances in 1999 that further compromised Lutheran teachings: 1) the estab- lishment of full communion (altar and pulpit fellowship) with the Episcopal Church, with the understanding that in the future its pas- tors would be ordained by bishops who stand in the apostolic suc- cession as it is defined and practiced by the Episcopalians; 2) the signing of the Joint Declaration on Justification by member churches of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church. See the study guides prepared by the Commis- sion on Theology and Church Relations titled The Formula of Agreement in Confessional Lutheran Perspective, The Joint Dec- laration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran Perspective, together with The Porvoo Statement and Declaration in Confessional Lutheran Perspective prepared by the seminary faculties (St. Louis: Office of the President and The Commission on Theology and Church Relations, LCMS, 1999). In an essay titled “The Historical-Critical Method and the Method of the Lutheran Confessions,” Duane A. Priebe noted: “Emst Kasemann argues that denominational diversity is rooted in theological diversity within the [biblical] canon.” The Function of Doctrine and Theology in Light of the Unity of the Church (Lutheran Council in the USA, 1978), 80. In an essay on “Perspec- tives on the Hermeneutics Debate” American Lutheran Church (ALC) theologian Harold H. Ditmanson wrote: “It is compatible with the ALC position to hold that the Confessions contain a true exposition of the Bible, but not the true exposition (Quan- beck)....we affirm the relative character of Scripture, tradition, and experience by seeing in them witnesses to the ultimate authority.” John Reumann, ed., in collaboration with Samuel H. Nafzger and Harold H. Ditmanson, Studies in Lutheran Hermeneutics (Philadel- phia: Fortress Press, 1979), 92, 98. ALC theologian Warren Quan- beck wrote: “The truth of God lies beyond any and all theological statements.... The study of language has removed some of the pre- tensions of theology, taking away its claim to be the truth or to pre- sent truths and showing it to be symbols or signs pointing to the truth which is in Jesus Christ.... The discovery of the different the- ologies of the Bible opened theologians to the possibility of the- ologies which differ but complement each other rather than contra- dict or oppose each other.... The differences that exist between the traditions are no longer seen as divisive.” Search For Understand- ing (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), 48, 54, 64, 66-67. 43. In the early church, says Werner Elert, “[t]here was either complete fellowship or none at all.” Eucharist and Fellowship, 164. “Altar fellowship was possible only where there was confessional unity” (169). “The moder theory that anybody may be admitted ‘as a guest’ to the Sacrament in a church of a differing confession, that people may communicate to and fro in spite of the absence of full church fellowship is unknown in the early church, indeed un- thinkable” (175). 44. Ibid., 182. 45. Quoted in Elert, Eucharist and Fellowship, 2. 46. Ibid., 2-5. What Luther meant by fellowship, then, is dia- metrically opposed to what Schleiermacher meant by the term when he spoke of the church. For Schleiermacher fellowship “is created by the voluntary actions of men.” This is precisely what Luther rejected when he denied that fellowship means “to have something to do with a person.” Unlike Schleiermacher, Luther did not get an idea of fellowship from somewhere and then derive the nature of the church from the nature of fellowship. He first asked what is the church, and what is the Sacrament, and then sought to determine in what way each might be called a communio. 47. “Open Letter to Those in Frankfurt on the Main,” 341. 48. Armin-Emst Buchrucker, Wort, Kirche und AbendmahlbeiLuther (Bremen: Stelten & Co., 1972), 175 (out translation). A footnote adds: “...to accede to the doctrine of the other [party], that is church fellowship. For church fellowship is doctrinal fellowship, which exists for Luther only where same- ness [aequitas] in doctrine obtains.” 49. Luther wrote, “It is quite true that wherever the preacher ad- ministers only bread and wine for the Sacrament, he is not very concerned about to whom he gives it, what they know or believe, or what they receive.... However, because we are concerned about nurturing Christians who will still be here after we are gone, and because it is Christ’s body and blood that are given out in the Sacrament, we will not and cannot give such a Sacrament to any- one unless he is first examined regarding what he has learned from the Catechism and whether he intends to forsake the sins which he has again committed. For we do not want to make Christ’s church into a pig pen [Matthew 7:6], letting each one come unexamined to the Sacrament, as a pig to its trough. Such a church we leave to the Enthusiasts!...And all of this we have received from the begin- ning of Christendom.” “An Open Letter to Those in Frankfurt on the Main,” 343. 50. These errors are: ceremonies of the mass, private confes- sion and absolution, denial of the divine obligation of Sunday, Bap- tismal regeneration, and the real presence of the Lord’s body and blood in the Eucharist. The “Definite Synodical Platform, 1855,” in Richard C. Wolf, Documents of Lutheran Unity in America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 103. 51. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, eds., A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948, 2nd ed. (London: S.P.C.K., 1967), 322. $2. S. E. Ochsenford, Documentary History of the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America (Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1912), 63. 53. “Unionism” referred at first to the Lutheran-Reformed “unions” of the 19th century, but later came to mean inter-confes- sional fellowship generally. 54. Wolf, Documents of Lutheran Unity in America, 171. Some- times the “rule” was worded to provide for exceptions: “The Ex- ceptions to the rule belong to the sphere of privilege, not of right” (170). F. Pieper criticizes this: “When Lutheran synods in America indeed wanted to cling to the rule, ‘Lutheran altars for Lutheran communicants only,’ but then wanted exceptions to the rule granted, they were again making admission to the Lord’s Supper a matter of human caprice and were thus in fact dropping the divine tule.” Christian Dogmatics, 3:386, n. 138. But see C. P. Krauth’s 2004 Convention Workbook