LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 405

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ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 405

Is it true that Lutherans and Reformed are agreed about the fact
of the real presence, but differ only as to the mode or manner of
this presence? Why or why not?

Historical-critical theologians continue to question whether
Jesus instituted the Holy Supper before His death and whether He
rose from the dead. On these premises, what would it mean to say
that “the risen Christ imparts himself in his body and blood,” as
FOA does, citing an earlier ecumenical document? (See “A For-
mula of Agreement: A Theological Assessment” by the Depart-
ment of Systematic Theology, Concordia Theological Seminary,
Ft. Wayne, pp. 118-119.)

Paragraph 7

Briefly describe two theological issues that are raised by FOA
in addition to the Lord’s Supper.

Paragraph 8

What does it mean to be a Lutheran church? Has the ELCA
ceased to be Lutheran in either a confessional sense or an historic
sense? Why or why not?

Why does all of this make a difference? Various answers could
be given from different angles. This is perhaps the most important:
The Lord’s Supper is the meal in which, under the bread and wine,
Jesus gives His people His body and blood wherein the Lord for-
gives iniquity and remembers sin no more (Jer. 31:34; Matt. 26:28).
Where there is forgiveness of sin, there is also life and salvation.
The Lord has given us His Supper so that we can trustingly receive
His body and blood on the way to life everlasting. This is too great
a treasure to give up! Discuss.

A Formula of Agreement: A Theological Assessment

Department of Systematic Theology
Concordia Theological Seminary
Fort Wayne, Indiana

Prelude

The August 1997 assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America (ELCA) acted on three documents defining its rela-
tionship to three confessional families: the Roman Catholic
Church, three Reformed churches, and the Episcopal Church.
While the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with
the Roman Catholic Church addressed that one central truth, the
documents proposed with the Reformed churches and the Episco-
pal Church were intended to establish full fellowship, allowing the
clergy to preach and officiate, and encouraging the laity to partici-
pate in the Eucharist in the others’ churches. The Lutheran-Epis-
copal Concordat, which required new ordination procedures for the
ELCA, failed by a handful of votes to meet the ELCA’s two-thirds
constitutional requirement (though attempts are now under way to
reverse this rejection by revisions in the document). A Formula of
Agreement with the three Reformed churches fared better and
passed with an 82 percent majority. The Reformed signatories to
A Formula of Agreement (henceforth called the Agreement) were
the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America
(RCA), and the United Church of Christ (UCC). In the Lutheran-
Reformed “Proposal,” attached as a preface to the Agreement,
these churches are specifically called “the three Reformed
churches,” which identifies them as members of the family of
churches descended from John Calvin, the Geneva reformer and a
younger contemporary of Luther. Reformed (Calvinist) and
Lutheran churches have historically differed most notably about
the Lord’s Supper, though even more fundamental differences exist
between these two confessional families. Without in any way di-
minishing the significance of the Roman Catholic-Lutheran Joint
Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, the immediate results
of the Agreement are for Lutherans more catastrophic, as even

some members of ELCA have seen both before and after their Au-
gust 1997 assembly.

In the United States of America, the Agreement brings to a cli-
max Reformed attempts, reaching back as far as Zwingli’s meet-
ing with Luther at Marburg in October 1529, to let Reformed com-
municants participate in the Sacrament at Lutheran altars. Since
then the Reformed have attempted to make formal intercommunion
arrangements with Lutherans. They were eminently successful in
the 1817 forced union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in Prus-
sia, an arrangement adopted in other parts of Germany as well. By
contrast, parallel attempts in America were voluntary.' In our cen-
tury, the formation of the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKiD,
1948) and the adoption of the Leuenberg Concord (1973) have fur-
ther advanced Reformed inroads into Lutheran churches. Most re-
cently the Porvoo Declaration (1996) allowed northern European
Lutherans and Anglicans, historically a Reformed church, the same
privileges now accorded each other by the signatories to the Agree-
ment. We can hardly overestimate the seriousness of the Agree-
ment. It signals a reversion to the position of Samuel S. Schmucker
and a rejection of the great confessional tradition of Charles Porter-
field Krauth. By the ELCA’s surrender of what is characteristically
Lutheran, all Lutheranism has been diminished. With penitent
hearts for our frequent lack of gratitude for the gifts of the Refor-
mation and with the full conviction and confession that the bread
and wine of the Sacrament are the very body and blood of Christ,
we offer this assessment of the ELCA-Reformed A Formula of
Agreement.

It is our prayer “That pure we keep, till life is spent, Thy holy
Word and Sacrament.”

The Agreement

The Agreement acknowledges that the signatories “recognize
each other as churches in which the gospel is rightly preached and
the sacraments are rightly administered according to the word of
God.”* In approving the others’ position on the Lord’s Supper, the
central issue between the Lutheran and Reformed churches is ac-
cepted as settled. Lutherans differ from the Reformed on other doc-
trines: God, Christ, including the incarnation and atonement, Bap-
tism, justification, sanctification, the purpose and goal of the
Scriptures, election and the church.’ Differences on the Lord’s Sup-
per, which surfaced in the break between Luther and Zwingli at
Marburg, have made this doctrine the most prominent. While the
Agreement addresses the historical differences made explicit in the
Reformation and post-Reformation confessions and other official
documents of both churches,’ it really sets them aside as outmoded:
“Furthermore, in the light of the radically changed world of the
twentieth century, it was deemed inappropriate to defend or cor-
rect positions and choices taken in the sixteenth century, making
them determinative for Lutheran-Reformed witness today.” We add
that they were found to be inappropriate by the Reformed already
in the sixteenth century and by some American Lutherans in the
nineteenth century. In other words, doctrinally defining documents
are no longer binding as confessions. Here the Reformed under-
standing of confessions has won out over the Lutheran. Karl Barth
described the Reformed view as a “timeless appeal to the open
Bible and to the Spirit which from it speaks to our spirit.” He con-
tinued:

Our fathers had good reason for leaving us no Augsburg Confes-
sion, authentically interpreting the word of God, no Formula of Con-
cord, no “Symbolical Books” which might later, like the Lutheran,
come to possess an odor of sanctity. They lefi us only creeds, more than
one of which begin or end with a proviso which teaves them open to
being improved upon in the future. The Reformed churches simply do
not know the word dogma, in its rigid, hierarchical sense.*

This the traditional Reformed animosity to confessions and
dogma, summed up so well by Barth, provides the spirit and con-
tent of the Agreement.

2001 Convention Workbook