# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1941_S280
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

280 Intersynodical and Doctrinal Matters

d) The apparent approach between the American Lutheran
Church and the United Lutheran Church of America, inasmuch as
the American Lutheran Church would make it impossible for us:
to enter into fellowship with it if it established fellowship with
the United Lutheran Church of America, which as a body does
not share our common doctrinal position;

e) The matter of church practice, inasmuch as there does not
seem to exist at present sufficient uniformity in this respect to
assure wholesome relations if we should acknowledge each other
as brethren.

Detroit Convention of the American Lutheran Church
October, 1940

10, We must now report on the action taken by the American
Lutheran Church Convention held in Detroit October 11—17, 1940,
By resolution of our committee two of its members visited this
meeting for the purpose of explaining more fully our formal state-
ment on the question what obstacles in our view still hinder the
establishment of fellowship between the American Lutheran Church
and the Missouri Synod. The action taken by the American Lu-
theran Church on the basis of the report of its Fellowship Com-
mission and the recommendations of its Convention Committee
can be summarized as follows:

a) As to the sentence in the Declaration pertaining to justifica-
tion, the Detroit Convention Report states:

“Concerning the first point, we are surprised that the sentence
‘God purposes to justify those that have come to faith’ could be
SO wrongly construed as ‘implying an assumption of an interval
between the creation of faith and the justifying act of God’
Concerning the so-called objective, or universal, justification we
state that we adhere to this doctrine without excluding, however,
the declarative nature of the individual justification in the moment
of faith of which the Scriptures speak so often.” :

On this action of the Detroit Convention we wish to say that
we regret that the statement does not include a definition of
objective justification such as was before the joint meeting of the
two commissions and found mutually acceptable, “That God has
already in Christ absolved all the world of its sins.” Furthermore,
we cannot understand the purpose of referring in this connection
to subjective justification, which was never a matter of controversy
between our bodies.

b) With respect to the Sandusky Resolutions pertaining to
non-fundamental doctrines the Detroit Convention Report says:

“Concerning the second point ... we declare: Recent events
prove that in the interest of a correct understanding of the St. Louis