LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1962, Page 22

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22 DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS

doctrines of the adversaries. He finds that the Mass
“directly and powerfully conflicts with this article.”
(Trigl., p. 463)

In a similar vein, from the vantage point of the
Gospel, he rejects the doctrine of purgatory, of brother-
hoods, of indulgences, of the invocation of saints, and
others, as being against the chief article, namely, the
article of justification by faith. Because this article,
which is nothing but the very essence of the Gospel,
is the heart and core of the teachings of the Lutheran
Confessions, the doctrine of justification has been called
the material principle of the Reformation and of Lu-
theran theology.

The confessional Lutheran Church must here Jearn
wisdom as she faces the questions and problems that
confront her today. She must take her position squarely
on the Scriptures and in doing so must recognize that
the heart and core of the Scriptures is the Gospel, the
doctrine of justification. And in evaluating and judging
movements and doctrines with which she is confronted
she must ask: What would such and such a doctrine
or such and such a movement do to my loyalty to the
Holy Scripture as “the standard according to which all
dogmas together with all teachers should be estimated
and judged”? Furthermore, how should I judge this
doctrine or this movement in the light of the fact that
I stand squarely on the doctrine of justification by faith,
i.e., on the Gospel?

It is from this vantage point that we wish now to
view the Ecumenical Movement.

In order to make sure that we are agreed on what
it is we are viewing and examining, permit me to de-
scribe and to define briefly. Both among people within
and among people without the Ecumenical Movement
there are opinions concerning this movement which the
official spokesmen of the movement would consider
erroneous and which the facts, insofar as they can be
examined, appear to contradict.

Today, when we speak of the Ecumenical Movement,
we usually think of the World Council of Churches,
organized at Amsterdam in 1948, shortly after the cessa-
tion of World War II, with subsequent meetings at
Evanston, Ill, in 1954, and at New Delhi, India, in 1961.
To this World Council of Churches belongs by far the
greater number of Christian denominations, with the
exception of the Roman Catholic Church, the majority
of Baptist churches, the Lutheran Synodical Conference,
including The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod, and
a number of so-called Churches of Christ.

However, to understand the Ecumenical Movement
one must not begin with the World Council of Churches
and its organization in Amsterdam. The Ecumenical
Movement is much older than the World Council of
Churches, and many attempts to bring the churches
into closer union had been made before 1948.

Students of the Ecumenical Movement describe the
origin of the movement somewhat as follows: At the
time of the Reformation the Christian church in the
West was divided roughly into three branches: the

Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Reformed, un-
derstood in the sense of Calvinistic Reformed. At var-
ious times and for various reasons during the following
centuries the church was further divided. Europe itself
was divided into many small kingdoms and principali-
ties, each with its own government and its own regional
or state church. This made for fragmentation and
division.

There was further added first of all a serious split
in the Reformed churches, in which many people re-
belled against certain excesses of Calvinism and sub-
stituted a contrary theology called Arminianism. For
several centuries new denominations continued to spring
from the Calvinistic and Arminian bodies, particularly
in England and later also in America, until that
which we sometimes call our denominational muddle
developed.

Sad as this picture of division and fragmentation
may appear, there was also a brighter side to the church
history of those centuries. There awoke here and there
in the divided churches a fervent missionary spirit
which moved men and women to carry the Gospel to
heathen nations. Roman Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans,
Congregationalists, Anglicans, and others were imbued
with missionary spirit, and hundreds of consecrated
missionaries were moved to obey the great commission,
“Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost.”

As was to be expected, each of these missionaries,
Lutheran missionaries included, sought to transplant
the Gospel according to the understanding and with the
customs and rites of his own home church to the
heathen. By and by this began to cause real difficulty
on the mission field. Heathen and converts from hea-
thenism were confused and often scandalized by the
divisions among Christians. Ostensibly all sought to
win the heathen for Christ, but Catholics fought Prot-
estants and Protestants fought one another on the mis-
sion fields. Not only were the natives puzzled and
scandalized, many of the missionaries themselves felt
that this was a very harmful situation and so reported
to their home churches.

The situation was so serious that a number of mis-
sionary councils of churches which had large numbers
of missionaries in foreign fields held joint meetings to.
discuss the situation. They correctly recognized that
the real trouble lay in their own divisions and that the
situation on the mission field could not well be healed
so long as the churches at home were sick with divisions
and denominationalism. Out of this realization grew
the Ecumenical Movement, which was not to begin with
an organization but rather with a deep realization among
concerned Christians and missionaries looking to efforts
to come together —to do away with harmful rivalry
and to present to the heathen world a united front
for Christ.

The International Missionary Council was formed,
with representation from many denominations, and five