LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1965, Page 281

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

orgs

ee ae ee

ia a a

THEOLOGY OF FELLOWSHIP 281

a. That the Confessions must be subscribed to quia,
not quatenus, i.e. because, not merely insofar as,
they are correct expositions of the Scripture;

b. That all doctrines taught in the Confessions are
binding;

c. That subscription to the Confessions must be im-
plemented by corresponding public teaching (pub-
lica doctrina) in pulpit, instruction room, semi-
nary, and in the church’s publications, and that
all who departed from this norm were to be dis-
ciplined.

i. Evaluation of This Principle

Point a. of the above position which calls for un-
qualified subscription to the Lutheran Confessions, is
necessary in order that a congregation may have the
assurance that its pastor is really a Lutheran pastor,
who will preach the Lutheran doctrine. The so-called
quatenus subscription would open the floodgates to
arbitrariness in doctrine.5? Point b. is necessary for the
same reason.

Point c. which stresses that Lutheran doctrine must
not merely be subscribed to on paper, but must actually
be taught in pulpit, instruction room, and in the church’s
seminaries and publications, is wholly in accord with
the Augsburg Confession, which, according to the Ger-
man version, lays the stress on publica doctrina when
it says:

... it is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian

church that the Gospel be preached in conformity with
a pure understanding of it. . 54

ii. Churehly Practice As a Criterion
for Church Fellowship

Along with unqualified subscription to the Lutheran
Confessions as well as public teaching in accord with
the Confessions a third principle of church fellowship
is stressed in the writings of the fathers of the Missouri
Synod. It is this that also the churchly practice must
be in harmony with the confessions.

Principles basic in the thinking of the fathers of the
Synodical Conference with respect to churchly practice
and its relationship to church fellowship were laid down
in the 18 Theses, the first sixteen of which were dis-
cussed at the meetings of the Synodical Conference from
1873—1879.55 The third of these theses reads:

The sole external bond of fellowship between individual
Lutheran congregations among different peoples and
languages is the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.

Thesis four says:
Therefore that is not an orthodox Lutheran congrega-
tion or Lutheran church body which does not accept the
doctrinal and polemic words of this confession as it reads.
Thesis five says:

Also he who denies the deductions which properly follow
from the words of this confession is not a true member
of the Lutheran Church, even though contrary to all
right, he clings to the name Lutheran.

An example of such a deduction or conclusion is
given in the sixth thesis: -
From the character and nature of this orthodox con-

fession it follows of necessity that churchly practice
must be conformed to it. For every churchly action is
either an immediate expression and actual carrying out
of the confession, or at least such an activity which,
even though it may lie in the area of Christian liberty,
nevertheless dare not actually contradict the confession.
Because they were persuaded that churchly practice
must be in conformity with the church’s confession the
fathers of the Synodical Conference concluded that
churchly practice may become a criterion for the grant-

ing or denial of church fellowship.

Thesis 7: From this necessary connection between the
confession and the church’s practice it follows logically
that a Lutheran Synod, in which the reigning practice
is in accord with the confession, dare not unite with
another Synod which calls itself Lutheran, but in which
the reigning practice is contrary to the confession.

Subsequent theses show that the fathers considered
the following to be practice contrary to the confession,
and therefore a bar to church fellowship: toleration on
the part of Lutheran pastors of pulpit and altar fellow-
ship with non-Lutherans; lack of firm testimony against
membership in secret societies; the serving of united
(unierte: referring to the kind of ‘union’ of Reformed
and Lutheran churches first established in Prussia in
1817) congregations by Lutheran pastors; the toleration
of temporary calls for pastors; lack of earnestness in the
establishing of parochial schools; lack of proper care in
seeing to it that only orthodox books were used in
church, school, and home; and the absence of doctrinal
and church discipline.5&

Essays and articles from the pens of Professors A. L.
Graebner, George Stoeckhardt, and Martin Guenther
provide evidence that the importance of churchly prac-
tice in harmony with the Lutheran Confessions con-
tinued to occupy the thinking of the leading theologians
in the Missouri Synod also after 1879 and that they
continued to consider practice in harmony with the Con-
fessions necessary for church fellowship.

Dr. Graebner was careful to define what he meant
by churchly practice:

Churchly practice is the sum total of the formal actions
(Verrichtungen) and institutions (Einrichtungen) which
belong to the life of the Church as such.57
The fathers sought to distinguish between the life of
sanctification of individual Christians and churchly
practice. In an article entitled “Lutherische Praxis” in
Der Lutheraner, signed G (Prof. Martin Guenther) this
sentence appears:
When we speak of Lutheran practice, we do not mean
the personal life of the individual members of a con-
gregation, or of a church body, but that which the
congregation does as a body, or what it tolerates in
its midst, its activity, its institutions, its regulations.58
Yet the same article draws an analogy between the
faith and life of the individual Christian on the one
hand, and the church’s confession and churchly practice
on the other, and says:
Even as that man is not a Christian whose life contra-
dicts the confession: I am a Christian, so also that is
not a Lutheran congregation, not a Lutheran body, whose

churchly activity (kirchliches Tun) contradicts the Lu-
theran Confession.

An essay by Dr. George Stoeckhardt, delivered in