LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 383

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 383

ditional Christology, from Nicaea and Chalcedon to Art. III of the
Augsburg Confession, is unbiblical and untenable in light of mod-
em historical-critical scholarship.” 1981 Resolution 3-20 “To Ask
LCUSA to Study Implications of Historical Criticism,” Convention
Proceedings, 160. Loyola University Professor Thomas Sheehan
wrote in The New York Review (June 14, 1984) of a developing
“Jiberal consensus” in Roman Catholic biblical scholarship to the
effect that “Jesus of Nazareth did not assert any of the divine or
messianic claims the Gospels attributed to him and that he died
without believing he was Christ or the Son of God.” Also at the
root of the recent Lutheran/Reformed/Episcopal agreements are
views that no longer speak of truth but only of opinions. In this en-
vironment Scripture is deprived of its authority and the creeds and
confessions, which depend on the Scriptures for their authority, are
seen as little more than milestones in church history and thus for
them the confessions have no binding authority. In 1997 the north-
ern European Lutheran churches established altar and pulpit fel-
lowship with the Church of England and her sister churches. In
1997 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America [ELCA] entered
into altar and pulpit fellowship with three churches that explicitly
hold to Reformed teachings, including the denial that Christ’s body
and blood are actually received by mouth in the Lord’s Supper.
One of these Reformed churches has no binding creed or confes-
sion. This action by the ELCA was followed by two more alliances
in 1999 that further compromised Lutheran teachings: 1) the estab-
lishment of full communion (altar and pulpit fellowship) with the
Episcopal Church, with the understanding that in the future its pas-
tors would be ordained by bishops who stand in the apostolic suc-
cession as it is defined and practiced by the Episcopalians; 2) the
signing of the Joint Declaration on Justification by member
churches of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman
Catholic Church. See the study guides prepared by the Commis-
sion on Theology and Church Relations titled The Formula of
Agreement in Confessional Lutheran Perspective, The Joint Dec-
laration on the Doctrine of Justification in Confessional Lutheran
Perspective, together with The Porvoo Statement and Declaration
in Confessional Lutheran Perspective prepared by the seminary
faculties (St. Louis: Office of the President and The Commission
on Theology and Church Relations, LCMS, 1999).

In an essay titled “The Historical-Critical Method and the
Method of the Lutheran Confessions,” Duane A. Priebe noted:
“Ernst Kasemann argues that denominational diversity is rooted in
theological diversity within the [biblical] canon.” The Function of
Doctrine and Theology in Light of the Unity of the Church
(Lutheran Council in the USA, 1978), 80. In an essay on “‘Perspec-
tives on the Hermeneutics Debate” American Lutheran Church
(ALC) theologian Harold H. Ditmanson wrote: “It is compatible
with the ALC position to hold that the Confessions contain a true
exposition of the Bible, but not the true exposition (Quan-
beck)....we affirm the relative character of Scripture, tradition, and
experience by seeing in them witnesses to the ultimate authority.”
John Reumann, ed., in collaboration with Samuel H. Nafzger and
Harold H. Ditmanson, Studies in Lutheran Hermeneutics (Philadel-
phia: Fortress Press, 1979), 92, 98. ALC theologian Warren Quan-
beck wrote: “The truth of God lies beyond any and all theological
statements.... The study of language has removed some of the pre-
tensions of theology, taking away its claim to be the truth or to pre-
sent truths and showing it to be symbols or signs pointing to the
truth which is in Jesus Christ.... The discovery of the different the-
ologies of the Bible opened theologians to the possibility of the-
ologies which differ but complement each other rather than contra-
dict or oppose each other.... The differences that exist between the
traditions are no longer seen as divisive.” Search For Understand-
ing (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1972), 48, 54, 64,
66-67.

43. In the early church, says Werner Elert, “[t]here was either
complete fellowship or none at all.” Eucharist and Fellowship, 164.
“Altar fellowship was possible only where there was confessional

unity” (169). “The modern theory that anybody may be admitted
“as a guest’ to the Sacrament in a church of a differing confession,
that people may communicate to and fro in spite of the absence of
full church fellowship is unknown in the early church, indeed un-
thinkable” (175).

44. Ibid., 182.
45. Quoted in Elert, Eucharist and Fellowship, 2.

46. Ibid., 2-5. What Luther meant by fellowship, then, is dia-
metrically opposed to what Schleiermacher meant by the term
when he spoke of the church. For Schleiermacher fellowship “is
created by the voluntary actions of men.” This is precisely what
Luther rejected when he denied that fellowship means “to have
something to do with a person.” Unlike Schleiermacher, Luther did
not get an idea of fellowship from somewhere and then derive the
nature of the church from the nature of fellowship. He first asked
what is the church, and what is the Sacrament, and then sought to
determine in what way each might be called a communio.

47. “Open Letter to Those in Frankfurt on the Main,” 341.

48. Armin-Ernst Buchrucker, Wort, Kirche und
AbendmahlbeiLuther (Bremen: Stelten & Co., 1972), 175 (out
translation). A footnote adds: “...to accede to the doctrine of the
other [party], that is church fellowship. For church fellowship is
doctrinal fellowship, which exists for Luther only where same-
ness [aequitas] in doctrine obtains.”

49. Luther wrote, “It is quite true that wherever the preacher ad-
ministers only bread and wine for the Sacrament, he is not very
concerned about to whom he gives it, what they know or believe, or
what they receive.... However, because we are concerned about
nurturing Christians who will still be here after we are gone, and
because it is Christ’s body and blood that are given out in the
Sacrament, we will not and cannot give such a Sacrament to any-
one unless he is first examined regarding what he has learned from
the Catechism and whether he intends to forsake the sins which he
has again committed. For we do not want to make Christ’s church
into a pig pen [Matthew 7:6], letting each one come unexamined
to the Sacrament, as a pig to its trough. Such a church we leave to
the Enthusiasts!...And all of this we have received from the begin-
ning of Christendom.” “An Open Letter to Those in Frankfurt on
the Main,” 343.

50. These errors are: ceremonies of the mass, private confes-
sion and absolution, denial of the divine obligation of Sunday, Bap-
tismal regeneration, and the real presence of the Lord’s body and
blood in the Eucharist. The “Definite Synodical Platform, 1855,” in
Richard C. Wolf, Documents of Lutheran Unity in America
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 103.

51. Ruth Rouse and Stephen Charles Neill, eds., A History of
the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948, 2nd ed. (London: S.P.C.K.,
1967), 322.

52. S. E. Ochsenford, Documentary History of the General
Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America
(Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1912), 63.

53. “Unionism” referred at first to the Lutheran-Reformed
“unions” of the 19th century, but later came to mean inter-confes-
sional fellowship generally.

54. Wolf, Documents of Lutheran Unity in America, 171. Some-
times the “rule” was worded to provide for exceptions: “The Ex-
ceptions to the rule belong to the sphere of privilege, not of right”
(170). F. Pieper criticizes this: “When Lutheran synods in America
indeed wanted to cling to the rule, ‘Lutheran altars for Lutheran
communicants only,’ but then wanted exceptions to the rule
granted, they were again making admission to the Lord’s Supper a
matter of human caprice and were thus in fact dropping the divine

2001 Convention Workbook