LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1967, Page 68

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68 THE DOCTRINAL ESSAY

“catholic,” identifying itself with the church catholic,
the church universal. We do not concede that claim to
others, and we do not make it for ourselves. We believe
in only one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. So
says the Nicene Creed, and so say we.

The word “catholic” is not Scriptural. Neither are
the words “triune” or “trinity” Scriptural. Yet we
espouse the Scriptural truth embodied in all three.

Diverse Meanings

What do we mean by the word “catholic”? The word
itself has diverse meanings. It can refer to the opinions
and the attitudes of those who adhere to certain posi-
tions within a divided Christendom. To the Roman
Catholic the word “catholic” probably calls up the opin-
ions and attitudes of his own church body. On the face
of it this is a complete distortion of the use of the word
in the Nicene Creed, and we do not accept that defini-
tion. For us the term “catholic” is directly related to
the act of God in which He justifies the sinner by His
grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

The word “catholic” can describe the espousal of
widely accepted creedal formulations which have their
basis in Christian history, like the three ecumenical
creeds. “This is the catholic faith,” says the Athanasian
Creed, and then proceeds to describe in some detail the
doctrines of the Trinity and of the person of Christ,
which are still the classic formulations of our own faith.

Amplification of Oneness

Furthermore, the term “catholic” can be regarded
as an amplification of the “oneness” of the church, espe-
cially where the concept of oneness seems to lean to
anything resembling an exaggerated individualism and
fails to recognize the universality as well as the unity
of the faith. In this case “catholic” represents recogni-
tion by the people of God of the people of God of all
times and places.

We are not the first ones, and we shall not be the
last, to know Jesus Christ by faith. We are not the
only ones who have eternal life in the Lord. We express
the reality and the hope of it all when we say by con-
viction: We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic
church.

Catholicity is a reality because Jesus Christ is a
reality. It is also a hope, since the people of God in
Christ have not yet reached their golden age. In no
place and in no form has catholicity reached the ulti-
mate. The fullness of the catholicity of the church lies
in the future, not in the past.

At Augsburg

The professors of the faith at Augsburg were giving
expression to the true catholicity of the church when
they laid before the emperor their declaration of faith
and their statement of grievances against the Roman
Church, which had allowed doctrines and practices to
arise that threatened to destroy the catholicity of the
church, They made the same protest against those sec-

tarians who set up artificial tests of the faith which have
no real basis in Scripture, even though they assumed
these attitudes and took these actions in the name of
reform and renewal.

It is typical of the Reformed confessions, like the
Westminster Confession, that they identify the catholic
or universal church as something invisible. There is
a certain validity in the distinction between the visible
and the invisible church, especially when it comes to
apologetics or defense of the church against the heresy
that the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church must be
identified with any one church body or church grouping,
At the same time it must be said that the Lutherans,
when they confessed the doctrine of the church at Augs-
burg, referred not at all to invisibility. Here is what
they said: “It is taught among us that one holy Christian
church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly
of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in
its purity and the holy sacraments are administered
according to the Gospel. For it is sufficient for the true
unity of the Christian church that the Gospel be
preached in conformity with a pure understanding of
it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance
with the divine Word. It is not necessary for the true
unity of the Christian church that ceremonies, instituted
by men, should be observed uniformly in all places. It
is as Paul says in Ephesians 4:4,5, ‘There is one body
and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope
that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one
baptism.’ ”

AC VIII

The only reference to the inability of the human eye
to discern false Christians and hypocrites from believers
is found in Article VIII of the Augsburg Confession:
“Although the Christian church, properly speaking, is
nothing else than the assembly of all believers and
saints, yet because in this life many false Christians,
hypocrites, and even open sinners remain among the
godly, the sacraments are efficacious even if the priests
who administer them are wicked men, for as Christ
Himself indicated, ‘the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat’
(Matt. 23:2).” This article then proceeds to anathematize
the Donatists, who denied the validity of the ministry of
those who apostatized in the 4th century because of
persecution.

As Schlink has pointed out in Theology of the Lu-
theran Confessions, the universality of the church calls
its unity into question, and the unity of the church calls
the catholicity of the church into question. In the Large
Catechism, Luther brought the two together: “I be-
lieve that there is on earth a little holy flock or com-
munity of pure saints under one head, Christ. It is
called together by the Holy Spirit in one faith, mind,
and understanding. It possesses a variety of gifts, yet
is united in love without sect or schism.” (Large Cate-
chism II, 51)

The catholicity of the church, as the Augsburg Con-
fession says, does not consist in the order of the church,
nor is it a matter of tradition. The Apology of the