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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 80

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

80 THEOLOGICAL MATTERS

concerning them by attaching to them a foreign meaning
(Trigl., p. 847:6; Tappert, p.502:6). This includes es-
pecially also what is confessed in Art. VII of the Augs-
burg Confession as being necessary for the true unity
of the church, that is, the perpetuation of its spiritual
unity, or the unity of all true believers, the unity of
Christian faith and life which the Holy Spirit brings
about and sustains through Word and sacrament, Eph.
4:5-6. Regarding this matter, we confess with our
church that, aside from possible misuse of matters which
are commonly called matters of indifference,
churches will not condemn one another because of dis-
similarity of ceremonies (of which some may, in keeping
with the principle of Christian liberty, observe less, others
more) if only they be one in doctrine and all of its parts
as well as in the legitimate use of the Sacraments. (For-
mula of Concord, Thor. Decl., Art. X:31, restating what
is confessed in AC VII:2. The use of “parts” [Latin:
partibus] of doctrine as equivalent to all of its “articles’
{in the German text] shows the simple sense in which

this word is used here as well as elsewhere in our Con-
fessions.)

’

Together with other “pure” Lutheran churches and
schools, we regard the Confessions of our church, to
which we have pledged ourselves, as the sum and model
of the doctrine which Luther brought forth from God’s
Word and established against the sectarianism of the
day (FC, Thor. Decl., Summary Formulation. 9). One
dare not misrepresent this as though it were merely the
Gospel “as such” or some limited number of articles
which are “integrally related” to it. See the Lutheran
Witness Reporter, Nov. 17, 1968, insert prepared by the
office of the President of the Missouri Synod, p. 4.

In accordance with the above, we reject any and all
efforts to reduce the fellowship principle of Confessional
Lutheranism to anything less than agreement in the
whole doctrine which Luther restored to the church
from the Holy Scriptures after it had been buried under
the rubbish heap of papal tradition for centuries. We
reject, in particular, efforts of ALC/LCMS commission-
ers along this line. To cite but one specific instance of
this from their published work, we refer to their garbled
quotation from the Formula of Concord, out of its clear
context, within a fabricated context of their own, in
their “Essays,” p.9, last paragraph of the first column,
continued through the first paragraph of the second
column. We likewise reject the 8-page insert in the
LWR of Nov. 17, 1968, produced by the office of the
President of the Missouri Synod, which has already been
referred to.

We call attention also in particular to the citation of
Art. VII of the Augsburg Confession in the mutilated
form in which it appears in Tappert’s translation from
the German in the two official documents referred to
above, as well as in other current propagandistic ma-
terial— for instance. in the essay “Some Thoughts on
the Church in the Lutheran Symbols” by one of the
ALC;LCMS commissioners in the Concordia Theological
Monthly, March 1968, p.190. As for ourselves, we are
determined not to depart even a finger’s breadth either
from the subjects themselves or from the phrases that
are found in our church’s Confessions, which were writ-

ten in the first place to lead our churches and schools
to the fountains of Holy Scripture (Preface to the Book
of Concord, Trigl., pp. 21—23; Tappert, pp.12f.). Thus
we are determined to abide also by the plain, clear, and
pure sense of the words of Article VII of the Augsburg
Confession. To forestall possible argumentation directed
against our qualifications, we shall here cite the render-
ing of the German text of AC VII as it appears in the
outstanding work of that eminent General Council the-
ologian, Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Conservative
Reformation and Its Theology (J. B. Lippincott Co.,
Phila., 1872). It reads as follows, p. 162:

There must be and abide through all time, one holy
Christian Church, which is the assembly of all believers,
among whom the Gospel is purely preached, and the Holy
Sacraments administered as the Gospel demands.

To the true unity of the Church it is sufficient that
there be agreement touching the doctrine of the Gospel,
that it be preached in one accord, in its pure sense, and
that the Sacraments be administered conformably to God’s
Word,

Let it be pointed out with the greatest emphasis that
the Lutheran Church, right here as well as throughout
its Confessions, appeals to the Word of God as authority
for evangelical preaching in one accord. Contrariwise,
proponents of the false principle of church fellowship
that is being officially propagandized within the Missouri
Synod today presume to limit the authority of the Word
of God to the Gospel as such, or at most to a more or
less restricted number of articles of faith that are in-
tegrally related to it, as has been pointed out above.
(It should be added that our church concludes AC VII
with a specific appeal to Eph. 4:5-6, which is not in-
cluded in the citation from Krauth's work.)

In line with the above, we reject appeal to an al-
leged “consensus in the Gospel” (whatever this may
mean) as sufficient for fellowship. Concurrently we re-
ject the claim that the Gospel is being rightly preached
and taught in one accord, conformably to the Word of
God, in churches and schools of the ALC. As a matter
of fact, we deny that this is the case within the Missouri
Synod itself under its present leadership; and far from
accepting such a state of affairs as a proper reason for
fellowship, we reject it as being contrary to the will
of God.

For the reasons herein set forth, we pray the Mis-
souri Synod to reject any and all overtures for fellow-
ship with other professed Lutherans based on such false
assumptions as we have pointed out.

We furthermore pray the Missouri Synod to look to
its own present fellowship and its best interests, to put
its house in doctrinal order, and evangelically to disci-
pline or remove officials, teachers, and other members
who are acting contrary to our church’s Confessions and
who refuse to be corrected. If these things be first done,
then our church can hope, under God, to resume its
onetime objective as a member of the Synodical Con-
ference, which was bargained away for its present mess
of pottage. Reference to the constitution of the Synod-
ical Conference will show that this objective was the
uniting of all Lutheran synods in America into one
orthodox church.