LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 399

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ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 399

spiritual diversity as well as the element of historical change and
development. This is the unity of a fellowship which covers all
times and places and is summoned to witness and serve the world.’

27. Already in the New Testament there is the scandal of divi-
sion among Christians (I Cor. 1: 11-13, [ John 2: 18-19). Churches
not outwardly united, for reasons of history or through deliberate
separations, are obliged by their faith to work and to pray for the re-
covery of their visible unity and the deepening of their spiritual fel-
lowship. Set before the Church is the vision of unity as the goal of
all creation (Eph. 1) when the whole world will be reconciled to
God (II Cor: 5). Communion is thus the fruit of redemption and
necessarily an eschatological reality. Christians can never tolerate
disunity. They are obliged not merely to guard and maintain, but
also to promote and nurture the highest possible realization of com-
munion between and within the churches.

28. Such a level of communion has a variety of interrelated as-
pects. It entails agreement in faith together with the common cele-
bration of the sacraments, supported by a united ministry and forms
of collegial and conciliar consultation in matters of faith, life and
witness. These expressions of communion may need to be embod-
ied in the law and regulations of the Church. For the fullness of
communion all these visible aspects of the life of the Church re-
quire to be permeated by a profound spiritual communion, a grow-
ing together in a common mind, mutual concer and a care for
unity (Phil. 2: 2).

II. What We Agree in Faith

29. Anglicans of Britain and Ireland and Lutherans of the
Nordic and Baltic lands have at no time condemned one another as
churches and have never formally separated. But a deeper realiza-
tion of communion is certainly desirable, and now seems possible,
without denying that proper and fruitful diversity which has devel-
oped, in course of time, into a distinctive way of confessing and
expressing our faith. Anglicans have tended to stress the impor-
tance of liturgy as expressing the faith of the Church. Lutherans,
whilst not denying this, have tended to lay more emphasis on doc-
trinal confession. Both, however, see lex orandi and lex credendi
as Closely related. 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. They contain much common formulation and
bear common witness to the faith of the Church through the ages.
Building on this foundation, modern ecumenical contact and ex-
change have substantially helped to clarify certain residual ques-
tions, bringing out with greater precision the degree to which we
retain a common understanding of the nature and purpose of the
Church and a fundamental agreement in faith. We are now called to
a deepening of fellowship, to new steps on the way to visible unity
and a new coherence in our common witness in word and deed to
one Lord, one faith and one baptism.

30. To this end, we set out the substantial agreement in faith
that exists between us. Here we draw upon Baptism, Eucharist and
Ministry (the Lima text) and the official responses of our churches
to that text. We also draw upon previous attempts to specify the
range and nature of Anglican-Lutheran agreement. These include
the Pullach Report of 1973, the Helsinki Report of 1983, the Cold
Ash Report of 1983, Implications of the Gospel of 1988, The Meis-
sen Common Statement of 1988 and the Niagara Report of 1988.
These texts all testify to a substantia] unity in faith between Angli-
cans and Lutherans. We have benefited from the insights from
these texts as a contribution to our agreement in faith. Furthermore,
we have made considerable use of the results of the respective An-
glican—Roman Catholic and Roman Catholic—Lutheran dia-
logues.

31. The agreement in faith reached in the Anglican-Lutheran
texts was affirmed in a resolution of the Lambeth Conference of

1988, where it is stated that the Conference “recognises, on the
basis of the high degree of consensus reached in international, re-
gional and national dialogues between Anglicans and Lutherans
and in the light of the communion centred around Word and Sacra-
ment that has been experienced in each other’s traditions, the pres-
ence of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Lutheran Communion as
in our own’. There is a parallel affirmation in a resolution of the
Eighth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation in Curitiba in
February 1990: ~This Assembly resolves that the LWF renew its
commitment to the goal of full communion with the churches of
the Anglican Communion, and that it urge LWF member churches
to take appropriate steps towards its realization... that the LWF
note with thanksgiving the steps towards church fellowship with
national/regional Anglican counterparts which LWF member
churches have been able to take already and that it encourage them
to proceed.’

32. Here we declare in summary form the principal beliefs and
practices that we have in common:

a. We accept the canonical scriptures of the Old and the New
Testaments to be the sufficient, inspired and authoritative record
and witness, prophetic and apostolic, to God’s revelation in Jesus
Christ. We read the Scriptures as part of public worship in the lan-
guage of the people, believing that in the Scriptures as the Word
of God and testifying to the gospel eternal life is offered to all hu-
manity, and that they contain everything necessary to salvation.

b. We believe that God’s will and commandment are essential
to Christian proclamation, faith and life. God’s commandment
commits us to love God and our neighbour, and to live and serve to
his praise and glory. At the same time God’s commandment reveals
our sins and our constant need for his mercy.

c. We believe and proclaim the gospel, that in Jesus Christ God
loves and redeems the world. We “share a common understanding
of God’s justifying grace, i.e. that we are accounted righteous and
are made righteous before God only by grace through faith because
of the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and not on ac-
count of our works or merits. Both our traditions affirm that justi-
fication leads and must lead to “good works”; authentic faith issues
in love’. We receive the Holy Spirit who renews our hearts and
equips us for and calls us to good works. As justification and sanc-
tification are aspects of the same divine act, so also living faith and
love are inseparable in the believer.

d. We accept the faith of the Church through the ages set forth
in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan and Apostles’ Creeds and con-
fess the basic trinitarian and Christological dogmas to which these
creeds testify. That is, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is true God
and true Man, and that God is one God in three persons, Father.
Son and Holy Spirit. This faith is explicitly confirmed both in the
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and in the Augsburg Confession.

e. We confess and celebrate the apostolic faith in liturgical wor-
ship. We acknowledge in the liturgy both a celebration of salvation
through Christ and a significant factor in forming the consensus fi-
delium. We rejoice at the extent of our “common tradition of spiri-
tuality, liturgy and sacramental life’ which has given us similar
forms of worship and common texts, hymns, canticles and prayers.
We are influenced by a common liturgical renewal and by the va-
riety of expression shown in different cultural settings.

f. We believe that the Church is constituted and sustained by
the Triune God through God’s saving action in word and sacra-
ments. We believe that the Church is a sign, instrument and fore-
taste of the Kingdom of God. But we also recognize that it stands in
constant need of reform and renewal.

g. We believe that through baptism with water in the name of
the Trinity God unites the one baptized with the death and resur-
rection of Jesus Christ, initiates into the One Holy, Catholic and
Apostolic Church, and confers the gracious gift of new life in the
Spirit. Since we in our churches practise and value infant baptism

2001 Convention Workbook