LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 391

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ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 391

churches in Britain and Ireland and in the Nordic and Baltic coun-
tries have much in common, including much common history”
(Porvoo Common Statement, p. 8). It is also true that the Anglican
and the Lutheran are the only two liturgical churches that issued
from the Reformation. Yet they are liturgical in very different
senses. The Anglican Church puts “order” (specifically the “historic
episcopate”) on a par with “faith.” For the Lutheran confession,
questions of order, are, in principle, “‘adiaphora”—things neither
commanded nor forbidden by God, and, therefore, not to be treated
as necessary to the true unity of the church or church fellowship.
(In the modern Lutheran context one must add at once that it is var-
ious liturgical details that are adiaphorous, not the nature of New
Testament worship itself, which rather is confessed at some length
in Art. XXIV of both the Augsburg Confession and its Apology).

Under the title The Genius of the Church of England, a lecture
by Canon Charles Smyth of Westminster tellingly described

the dual principle of maintaining a decent uniformity in the external
worship of God according to the doctrine and discipline of the Church
of England, as the basis and condition of a wide liberty of theological
speculation. You can afford variety in the pulpit so long as you have
uniformity at the altar... The Anglican principle is here the direct an-
tithesis of the Roman: The Church of Rome encourages an almost lux-
uriant variety of devotion, but insisis on theological uniformity: the
Church of England embraces many shades of theological opinion, but
desiderates liturgical uniformity (pp. 33-34).

The “antithesis” to the Lutheran confession runs deeper still, as
H. Sasse shows:

Our church is in its essence a confessional church in a sense in
which the [Roman] Catholic and the Reformed churches are not. For
all these churches have beside their confession still something else
which shapes their distinctive characteristics and holds them together,
namely their constitution, their liturgy, their discipline, or whatever. The
Lutheran Church has none of that. It belongs to her understanding of
the divine Word, to the differentiation of Law and Gospel, that she finds
in the New Testament no laws about church constitution, church disci-
pline and liturgy. She can live in episcopal, presbyteral, or congrega-
tional forms of constitution. Her liturgical possibilities extend from
Swedish high-churchism all the way to Wuerttemberg’s lack of liturgy.
She has only her confession. If Gospel and Sacrament are the notae ec-
clesiae, by which we recognize the presence of the Church of Chnst,
then the nota ecclesiae Lutheranae, the distinguishing mark by which
we recognize whether a church is Lutheran or not, is the Lutheran con-
fesston (In Statu Confessionis, 11:247).

A fundamental difference between Anglicanism and
Lutheranism, therefore, lies not merely in the specific divergences
between the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Augsburg Confession, but
in the two communions’ totally different attitudes towards their con-
fessional documents. The Augsburg Confession meant to insist on
concrete doctrine and sacraments, which could be and were spelt
out at whatever length necessary, for instance in the Smalcald Arti-
cles and the Formula of Concord. The Anglican Articles seem to
have fallen short of the. status of strict dogmatic definitions even be-
fore the softening of the subscription formula in 1865 and its total
abolition (in England) in 1975. A.E.J. Rawlinson, then Bishop of
Derby, put it like this: “Even before 1865 . . . [the Thirty-Nine Arti-
cles] were found to leave room for variations of emphasis, and to
be capable of being taken in more senses than one. Whether inten-
tionally or not, they are, in effect, highly ambiguous; and we may be
thankful that this is so” (The Genius of the Church of England, p.
12). And the U.S. Anglican Reginald H. Fuller notes that the Thirty-
Nine Articles “are on their way to becoming what they are now in
many branches of the Anglican Communion—including this one.
relegated to the status of historical documents of the past”
(Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, p. 97).

The Porvoo Common Statement hints rather gently at the un-
derlying difference:

Anglicans have tended to stress the importance of liturgy as ex-

pressing the faith of the Church. Lutherans, whilst not denying this,
have tended to lay more emphasis on doctrinal confession. . . . The

Augsburg Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion were

produced in different circumstances to meet different needs, and they

do not play an identical role in the life of the churches (p. 16).

If the modern Lutheran tragedy is the wholesale surrender of
what is officially confessed as pure doctrine in the Book of Con-
cord, the Anglican tragedy is the devastating absence of compelling
doctrinal criteria: “And now abideth Scripture, Tradition, and Rea-
son, these three. In what some would claim is typically Anglican
fashion, we stubbornly refuse to say which of them is the greatest!
We give much lip service to the first, but when we do theology our
efforts at harmony have a way of coming out in three-part form”
(J.O. Hoffman, Jr., Lutheran-Episcopal Dialogue, p. 70).

The Sacramental Presence of the Lord’s Body and Blood

On the basis of the “common understanding of the nature and
purpose of the Church, fundamental agreement in faith and our
agreement on episcopacy . . . contained in Chapters II-IV of The
Porvoo Common Statement,” the Porvoo Declaration provides: “(ii)
we acknowledge that in all our churches the Word of God is au-
thentically preached, and the sacraments of baptism and the eu-
charist are duly administered; (iii) we acknowledge that all our
churches share in the common confession of the apostolic faith.”

Section III of The Porvoo Common Statement is titled “What
We Agree in Faith,” and ends thus: “33. This summary witnesses to
a high degree of unity in faith and doctrine. Whilst this does not
require each tradition to accept every doctrinal formulation char-
acteristic of our distinctive traditions, it does require us to face and
overcome the remaining obstacles to still closer communion” (p.
21). Point 32h draws upon various previous ecumenical agree-
ments, including Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry (Faith and Order,
Lima, 1982), in offering the following agreed language about the
Holy Supper:

We believe that the body and blood of Chnist are truly present, dis-
tributed and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord’s
Supper (Eucharist). \n this way we receive the body and blood of
Christ, crucified and risen, and in him the forgiveness of sins and all
other benefits of his passion. The eucharistic memorial is no mere call-
ing to mind of a past even or of its significance, but the Church's effec-
tual proclamation of God’s mighty acts. Although we are unable to offer
to God a worthy sacrifice, Christ unites us with himself in his self-of-
fering to the Father, the one, full, perfect and sufficient sacnfice which
he has offered for us all. In the eucharist God himself acts, giving life to
the body of Christ and renewing each member. Celebrating the eu-
charist, the Church is reconstituted and nourished, strengthened in faith
and hope, in witness and service in daily life. Here we already have a
foretaste of the eternal joy of God’s Kingdom (pp. 19-20).

The woolly language about sacrifice here is a masterpiece of
studied ambiguity. It will allow anyone to say anything. The intent
no doubt is to allow plenty of scope for the accommodations
reached in various dialogues with Roman Catholicism. The word-
ing (“Christ unites us with himself in his self-offering,” etc.) could
mean simply that Christ pleads for us on the basis of His substitu-
tionary sacrifice (along the lines of Luther’s “A Treatise on the
New Testament, That is, the Holy Mass”)—or that He makes us
co-offerers of His sacrifice.

On the sacramental presence the language seems at first glance
less ambiguous. The words “truly present, distributed” echo the
Augsburg Confession’s “vere adsint et distribuantur” verbatim.
But then the 28th of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles also speaks
of the Bread being “‘a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise
the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.” Yet that
Article adds: “The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the
Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner. And the means
whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is
Faith.” The very next Article (29) is titled “Of the Wicked, which
eat not the Body of Christ in the use of the Lord’s Supper.” This
reference to the Thirty-Nine Articles is not meant to prove that An-
glicanism is today committed to Calvinism, since it has been ac-

2001 Convention Workbook