LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 378

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378 THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS

ponents and blasphemers. These we do not by any means intend to tol-

erate in our lands, churches, and schools inasmuch as such teachings

are contrary to the expressed Word of God and cannot coexist with it....

But we have no doubt at all that one can find many pious, innocent peo-

ple even in those churches which have up to now admittedly not come

to agreement with us. These people go their way in the simplicity of
their hearts, do not understand the issues, and take no pleasure in blas-
phemies against the Holy Supper as it is celebrated in our churches ac-
cording to Christ’s institution and as we concordantly teach about it on
the basis of the words of his testament. It is furthermore to be hoped
that when they are rightly instructed in this doctrine, they will, through
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, turn to the infallible truth of the divine

Word and unite with us and our churches and schools. Consequently

the responsibility devolves upon the theologians and ministers duly to

remind even those who err ingenuously and ignorantly of the danger to
their souls and to warn them against it, lest one blind person let him-

self be misled by another (Tappert, | 1-12).*”

The Preface does not condemn individual members of heterodox
church bodies, but this does not mean that they should receive Holy
Communion at Lutheran altars.

The Book of Concord ts the “single, universally accepted, cer-
tain, and common form of doctrine which all our Evangelical
churches subscribe and from which and according to which, be-
cause it is drawn from the Word of God, all other writings are to be
approved and accepted, judged and regulated” (FC SD, Rule and
Norm, 10). Its confesstons comprise the Lutheran church’s solemn
and official confession of the Gospel and sacraments and provide
the basis and limits of church fellowship.*! Professing allegiance
to the Lutheran Confessions while practicing altar and pulpit fel-
lowship with those who oppose their doctrine is a denial of them.**

3. The Historic Christian and Lutheran Consensus
on Church Fellowship

Common today, even among some Lutherans, is the practice of
church fellowship without agreement in confession. This was not
the practice of the ancient church, where altar and pulpit fellow-
ship required doctrinal and confessional unity.* Werner Elert
writes:

By his partaking of the Sacrament in a church a Christian declares that

the confession of that church is his confession. Since a man cannot at

the same time hold two differing confessions, he cannot communicate in
two churches of differing confessions. If anyone does this nevertheless,
he denies his own confession or has none at all.4

Zwingli, the father of the Reformed churches, did not consider
his differences with Luther an obstacle to sharing the Lord’s Sup-
per with him. Luther refused. In the early 1800s Friedrich Schleier-
macher, a Reformed theologian, departed from the practice of the
ancient church and of Luther in supporting the union of Prussian
Lutheran and Reformed Churches into altar and pulpit fellowship
without doctrinal agreement. For Schletermacher the church was a
fellowship held together by what people did and not by what they
believed: “The general concept of the church, if there is to be such
a thing, must be derived from ethics because the church at all
events is a fellowship created by the voluntary actions of men, and
only through these does it continue to exist.” For Schleiermacher
people came together to form the church, which was simply a sub-
category under the category of fellowship.*° The church for him
was only one organization among others. Luther taught, however,
that the church was a divine fellowship created by Christ through
the sacraments.

Luther had confronted a similar situation in Frankfurt where
Lutherans and Reformed received the Lord’s Supper together. He
found it “appalling to hear in one and the same church or at one
and the same altar both sides should come for and receive of one
and the same Sacrament, yet with the one side believing that it re-
ceives only bread and wine, while the other [believes] that it re-
ceives the true body and blood of Christ.’” Luther, who required
confessional agreement for church fellowship,*’ urged the congre-

2001 Convention Workbook

gation to resolve whether or not the body of Christ was received
with the mouth.”

About the same time that Lutherans in Prussia were being
forced into altar and pulpit fellowship with the Reformed, some
Lutherans in America were voluntarily doing the same thing. The
followers of Samuel S. Schmucker in the General Synod identified
five alleged errors in the Augsburg Confession.” It accepted
Methodist revivalism, joined interdenominational mission societies
and promoted the Evangelical Alliance (1846), whose goal was “to
make the invisible church visible.”*' In commending the Prussian
Union, the General Synod distanced itself from the classical
Lutheran position.

In most of our church principles we stand on common ground with the

Union Church of Germany [Prussia]. The distinctive doctrines which

separate the Lutheran and the Reformed Churches we do not consider

essential. The tendency of the so-called Lutheran party seems to us to be
behind the time. Luther’s peculiar views concerning the presence of the

Lord’s Body in the Communion have long been abandoned by the ma-

jority of our ministers.

The LCMS was not alone in resisting the tide of unionism.™* In
1875 the General Council adopted the Galesburg Rule: “Lutheran
Pulpits for Lutheran ministers only-—Lutheran altars for Lutheran
communicants only.” In 1925 the Buffalo, Iowa, and Ohio Syn-
ods placed the same principle in the Minneapolis Theses:

[C]hurch fellowship, that is, mutual recognition, altar and pulpit fel-

lowship, and eventually cooperation in the strictly essential work of the

church, presupposes unanimity in the pure doctrine of the Gospel and of
the confession of the same in word and deed.

Where the establishment and maintenance of church fellowship ignores

present doctrinal differences or declares them a matter of indifference,

there is unionism, pretense of union which does not exist.*

In establishing the original American Lutheran Church, these
synods put the Galesburg Rule in their constitution: “The Synod
regards unity in doctrine and practice the necessary prerequisite for
church fellowship, and therefore adheres to the rule, ‘Lutheran pul-
pits for Lutheran pastors only, and Lutheran altars for Lutheran
communicants only,’ and rejects unionism in all its forms.”** In
1956 Franklin Clark Fry, president of the United Lutheran Church
in America, said: “Insistence upon agreement in doctrine as a pre-
condition for church fellowship is the distinguishing mark of
Lutherans among all Protestants and should never be relaxed.’

4. The Official Position of The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod on Church Fellowship

Since its founding in 1847 the LCMS has insisted on agreement
in doctrine for altar and pulpit fellowship, Its first president, C.P.W.
Walther, set forth the LCMS position in Thesis XXI of his The
Evangelical Lutheran Church, The True Visible Church of God on
Earth:

A. The Ev. Lutheran Church is sure that the teaching contained in its

Symbols is the pure [divine] truth because it agrees with ihe written

Word of God in all points...

B. The Ev. Lutheran Church requires its members and especially its
teachers unreservedly to confess and vow fidelity to its symbols....

C. The Ev. Lutheran Church rejects all fraternal and churchly fellowship
with those who reject its Confessions in whole or in part.**

The Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri
Synod (1932) presents the consistent position of the LCMS on fel-
lowship.

28. On Church-Fellowship. — Since God ordained that His Word only,

without the admixture of human doctrine, be taught and believed in the

Christian Church, | Pet. 4:11; John 8:3!, 32; 1 Tim. 6: 3, 4, all Chris-

tians are required by God to discriminate between orthodox and hetero-

dox church-bodies, Matt. 7:15, to have church-fellowship only with or-
thodox church-bodies, and, in case they have strayed into heterodox
church-bodies, to leave them, Rom. 16:17. We repudiate unionism, that
is, church fellowship with the adherents of false doctrine, as disobedi-
ence to God's command, as causing divisions in the Church, Rom.