LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1962, Page 31

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DOCTRINAL-DEVOTIONAL ESSAYS 31

Together with Walther our fathers were always
eager and grateful to acknowledge evidences of true
Christianity in other church bodies, and they tried to
give a positive evaluation of their theology wherever
they could. But they would not let this recognition blur
their confessional stand.

We can only be thankful for our fathers’ strong con-
victions and dedicated attitudes. And our love for them,
our admiration for their constancy, and our approval
of their principles is not one whit lessened, nor is their
loyalty to the Word of God and the Lutheran Symbols
made doubtful if we remember that they were human
beings who claimed neither inspiration nor infallibility
for themselves and who would be horrified at having
their opinions mechanically quoted as authoritative or
their practices automatically repeated as necessarily
right or as the only proper method of applying their
perfectly valid principles.

The practices of the fathers were not uniformly con-
sistent, even as the setting in which all of them in suc-
cessive periods of time strove to manifest their un-
questioned attitude of faithfulness to God was not static
or uniformly the same. Human frailties played their
part, sometimes involving judgments and practices that
were not above question. They themselves were con-
scious of their limitations and were not ashamed to
admit having made mistakes. Certainly we are not
arrogantly looking down on our fathers in Christ nor
are we disparaging their position. They loved God and
they loved His Word. They cherished their Lutheran
heritage and would rather suffer reproach than become
disloyal. They loved the Lutheran Church and lived
with a profound sense of responsibility toward it. They
detested heresy and theological ambiguity. We of our
time have a lot to do to keep up with their standard.
It is in this spirit that we should approach the subject
before us today:

Unionism and Proper Practice

It is not a simple matter to treat this theme, because
of the terms involved. This is true particularly of the
word unionism. What is unionism? A number of defini-
tions could be quoted from our literature.

We cannot go to the Bible for our definition, because
it is not a Biblical word. This in itself does not, of
course, unfit it for use in theology. There are many
words and phrases (for example, Trinity, sacrament,
means of grace) that are not found in the Bible but still
perform a most useful service in summarizing Biblical
truth. Yet no word outside the Bible is sacrosanct and
above critical examination. In the use of a nonbiblical
term there is the ever-present danger of giving it an
arbitrary content and then ransacking the Bible for
passages that will support that content.

Again, it is not in itself wrong, though it may be
confusing, for an individual to use a word in a special
sense as long as he states clearly in what sense he in-
tends to use it. There is, then, a semantic problem
which should be carefully resolved before the matter
can be fairly treated as a theological issue. Article XIII

of the Apology is a good example of how to approach
the problems raised by the definition of a word. “We
do not think it makes much difference if, for purposes
of teaching, the enumeration [of sacraments] varies,
provided what is handed down in Scripture is pre-
served. ... If we define sacraments. .. .”

It is to be noted that historically the word unionism
arose out of the peculiar church-state relations in Ger-
many, especially in Prussia. The Hohenzollerns, who
were Reformed, regarded it as a traditional family pol-
icy to promote the union of Lutherans and Reformed
into one united Evangelical Church. A great deal of
pressure was applied to accomplish this goal. There
were many among the Lutherans and quite a few among
the Reformed who objected to this mingling of denomi-
national confessions with the resultant blurring of con-
fessional convictions and confusion of consciences. They
called it Unionismus. Instead of the two Protestant
Churches in Germany, Lutheran and Reformed, there
was now a third, the Unierte, United Church.

As many thousands of these Germans came to Amer-
ica, they brought these distinctions and terms with
them. From its original application to a mingling of
Lutherans and Reformed, the word unionism found its
way into inter-Lutheran relationships, first applied by
one Lutheran body to another which still admitted Re-
formed communicants to its altars. From there the con-
struction of the term became increasingly more rigid
until it was at times used by some almost indiscrimi-
nately to refer to nearly any kind of contact with others,
including other Lutheran synods not in full formal fel-
lowship with our synod.

The definition of unionism has, in turn, been inti-
mately associated with and made dependent on the
definitions of fellowship, in an inverse ratio. The more
exclusive the scope of fellowship, the more inclusive the
reach of unionism.

It should have become clear that it is not possible
to give a simple, umbrella definition of unionism that
may be automatically applied to any given concrete
situation. Nor can this question be considered by itself
in isolation from other doctrinal issues. It is quite pos-
sible that the same activity may be unionistic in one
setting and not in another. It should also be remem-
bered that simply to label something unionistic does
not make it so, nor does the absence of that label neces-
sarily make a practice unobjectionable.

What, then, is unionism? What was the concern of
those who first used the word? What positive and nega-
tive attitudes, grounded in the Scriptures, were they
trying to express?

Ultimately there is only one norm of right and
wrong, and that is the Word of God. What God says
to Christians about their relations with other Christians
must decide the issue. (It is well to note that the word
unionism is never used of relations between Christians
and non-Christians but is always used, properly or not,
to denote inter-Christian contacts on the religious
level.) In other words, the question narrows down to
this: What are the limits within which Christians, indi-