Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1969 · 48th Convention › Page 162
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1969, Page 162

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

162 CHURCH RELATIONS

Someone may have been patiently waiting a long
while to make the interjection that in and for this
matter of “consensus” for “declaration” of proposed
“altar and pulpit fellowship between The Lutheran
Church — Missouri Synod and The American Lutheran
Church” statements had been made to the effect “not to
dig up the past.” However, in judicial courtroom pro-
cedure cross-examination for clarity or for correction or
for refutation is common legal practice and recognized
procedure, but it must refer and be related to something
introduced while processing the case in trial and in
order to establish the true and relevant facts for the
matter in hand. This is not only proper legal procedure
but the logical course in sound and consistent reasoning
for the establishment of facts and the right administra-
tion of justice. Therefore to bring into reference past
records in intersynodical doctrinal matters is in this
instance fully proper, and not only proper but required
by reference in the 1967 Proceedings to this matter, as
printed in the 1967 Convention Workbook, where in the
“Joint Statement and Declaration” on p. 421, in para-
graphs 3 and 4, past history of intersynodical meetings
is brought into reference for some implication in linking
together the present “consensus.” However, above all
that, it is demanded by God’s Word for the solemn and
right consideration of the Scriptural basis and principles
in the special matter proposed: Does in deed and fact
Scriptural “consensus exist for pulpit and altar fellow-
ship between The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod
and The American Lutheran Church”?

A quotation which sheds light on this matter and
gives the general observations of doctrinal conditions
between The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod and
the former American Lutheran Church and which still
is displayed in the present merged body, The American
Lutheran Church, is the following report in part as pre-
sented by the official Doctrinal Unity Committee, Pro-
ceedings, 1947, pp. 494, 497, and 498:

Efforts on our part to arrange a meeting with the
Fellowshin Committee of the American Lutheran Church
failed until August 23, 1946. At that meeting we received
what was to us disappointing information. It was stated
that in many sections of the American Lutheran Church
there prevailed an apathy, a reluctance, to study the Doc-
trinal Affirmation, and that this document did not receive
a favorable recevtion where it was studied. that only
three Districts of the American Lutheran Church ap-
proved it. but not enthusiastically, that some Districts
reiected it, and that some Districts took no action at

Now what is the situation? There are chiefly three

difficulties standing in the way of fellowship with the
American Lutheran Church:

1. The manifest lack of doctrinal unity. Although the
members of the Fellowship Committee told us that they
were not aware of doctrinal differences between our two
bodies, yet reports indicate the existence of doctrinal dif-
ferences. Writes the editorial staff of the Lutheran Wit-
ness (1947, p.76): “We have reported the fact that in
some conferences our men have found A.L.C. pastors
taking a wrong stand on conversion, inspiration, pre-
destination, and other doctrines. We have reported the
action of several A.L.C. conferences ... which definitely
revived old accusations against the Missouri Synod... .
Differences in doctrine still exist in various areas ... be-
tween the A.L.C. and Missouri.” It would seem to us
that if doctrinal unity actually prevailed, it would not be

difficult to formulate a document acceptable to all con-
cerned expressing such agreement.

2. The difference in conviction regarding the degree
of doctrinal unity required for fellowship. The American
Lutheran Church in its resolution adopted at Appleton
makes mention of an Overture on Unity to which the
American Lutheran Church agreed, and which proposes
that each Lutheran church body remain faithful to its
particular confessional statement without subscribing for
itself to the confession of any other Lutheran church
body. Thus by ignoring the existing differences in doc-
trine, fellowship is to be established by resolution, rather
than by actual agreement in doctrine as Scripture re-
quires.

3. The membership of the American Lutheran Church
in the American Lutheran Conference. Nine years have
elapsed since the American Lutheran Church gave the
promise in its Declaration, Proceedings, p.226: “At the
same time we recognize it as our duty to do what we
can to bring about the acceptance of these doctrinal state-
ments by the bodies with which we are now in fellow-
ship.” To date we have not been informed that any
definite action had been taken in that direction.

Our Synod has insisted and still insists that fellowship
must be based on unity in all doctrines clearly revealed
in Holy Writ. That type of unity alone agrees with Saint
Paul’s admonition quoted in the Constitution of our
Synod under the caption “Object,” to wit, 1 Cor. 1:10:
“Now, I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing and that
there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly
joined together in the same mind and in the same judg-
ment.” If church bodies can do no more than pledge
that each group be loyal to its own distinctive confession,
they are not speaking the same thing, nor are they joined
together in the same mind and judgment.

The present situation forbids us to propose that altar
and pulpit fellowship be established with the American
Lutheran Church.

From the above quotations of just one particular part
of official Missouri Synod intersynodical reports it must
be figured that to present pertinent matter in detail
would require extensive documentation of many typed,
or even printed, pages as taken from Missouri Synod
Proceedings, and from other official sources, to bring the
right description of previous actual conditions. Here
also there is to be remembered that the official notice re
memorials as published in the Lutheran Witness Re-
porter of Dec. 1, 1968, had the succinct and terse sug-
gestion: “And please be brief.” In consequence a docu-
mentary supplementation would have to be prepared
for this memorial, to further substantiate by document,
page, and direct verbatim contextual quotation the fact
from past intersynodical meetings, and also from the
three documents of the intersynodical committee:
“Grace Alone,” “Scripture Alone,” and “The Doctrine of
the Church in the Lutheran Confessions,” and from its
“Joint Statement and Declaration,” as they read, that
no kind of “consensus exists” to the effect of doctrinal
unity “for altar and pulpit fellowship between The Lu-
theran Church — Missouri Synod and The American
Lutheran Church.”

In conclusion, therefore, passages of Holy Scripture,
according to the Revised Standard Version translation,
will now be quoted which forbid in their simple and
clear sense and meaning and application under the
above circumstances the practice of altar and pulpit fel-
lowship and of any other kind of ecclesiastical fellow-
shiping with such church bodies or such local congrega-
tions or their members.