LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 409

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS-—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT 409

4th edition (Philadelphia: The Lutheran Publication Society, 1914),
57-58.

7. “Editor’s Response,” Lutheran Forum 29 (Lent 1995): 18.

8. AC X, German, our translation.

9. Harding Meyer, “The LWF and Its Role in the Ecumenical
Movement,” Lutheran World 20 (1973): 28-30.

10. The Statement of Faith, adopted in 1959 by the United
Church of Christ, makes no reference to the eternal generation of
the Son, which denial is condemned by Augustana I.

11. It held that the body and blood were received spiritually and
only bread and wine were received by the mouth. This was a result
of the belief that Christ’s body was locally contained in heaven and
could not be on earth.

12. “Preface,” Agreement.

13. Wording borrowed from Louis A. Smith, “Some Second
Thoughts on the Joint Declaration,” Lutheran Forum 3\ (Fall
1997): 8. A Common Calling cites with approval and as an ade-
quate authority the Leuenberg Concord, that the “condemnations
expressed in the confessional documents no longer apply to the
contemporary doctrinal positions of the assenting churches.

14. “Here I Stand. And Here, and Here: The ELCA in Assem-
bly,” First Things 78 (December 1997): 72.

15. See Formula of Concord VII, especially paragraph 33:
“Sacramentarians and enthusiasts” who “will not believe that the
Lord’s bread in the Supper is his true, natural body, which the god-
less or Judas receive orally as well as St. Peter and all the saints.
Whoever, I say, will not believe this, will please let me alone and
expect no fellowship from me. This is final.” This is no doubt why
Bishop Perry at the closing convention of the Lutheran Church in
America “calmly and explicitly repudiated Article Seven of the
Formula” in the interests of the projected fellowship with the Re-
formed (Forum Letter [September 16, 1986]).

Leonard Klein is quite right: “Lutheran and Reformed eu-
charistic doctrine and practice are not complementary but contra-
dictory” (“Experiential Expressivism—The ELCA’s August As-
sembly,” Forum Letter [October 1997]: 4).

16. Neuhaus,”Here I Stand,” 72. “The proponents of fellowship
with the Reformed repeatedly cited Calvin over the more radical
Zwingli. Yet Calvin consistently stopped short of saying what
Lutherans insisted upon, namely, that the bread and wine in the Eu-
charist is truly the body and blood of Christ.”

17. At least some confusion over the issue is demonstrated by
the absurd statement of ELCA columnist Clark Morphew: “An
Episcopal bishop . . . is believed to have the power to make Christ
present in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Lutheran bishops have
never been given that power” (Fort Wayne News-Sentinel [May
16, 1997])!

18. Hermann Sasse, Union and Confession, translated by
Matthew C. Harrison, in Christ and His Church, edited by Ronald
Feuerhahn, Matthew Harrison and Paul T. McCain (Saint Louis,
Missouri: Office of the President of The Lutheran Church—Mis-
souri Synod, 1997), 38.

19. This is frankly admitted by Robert W. Jenson (“The August
1997 Assembly of the ELCA,” Pro Ecclesia VI [Fall 1997]: 389-
90): “The supposedly confessional ELCA was able to enter full fel-
lowship with the United Church of Christ even though it knows
that this partner is unable to commit itself creedally or liturgically
and was again so informed by the United Church representative at
the assembly.” For specific information on the United Church of
Christ, see Arthur Carl Piepkorn, Profiles in Belief, 4 volumes
(New York: Harper & Row, 1978), 2:664-74.

20. This phraseology is taken into the Agreement from James
E. Andrews and Joseph A. Burgess, editors, An Invitation to Ac-
tion: The Lutheran-Reformed Dialogue Series Il] 1981-1983
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), but the emphasis and ellipsis were

added by the writers of the Agreement and not the presenters of
this critique.

21. “sacramenta instituta sint, ... ad excitandam et confirman-
dam fidem, in his qui utuntur, .. .” So Christ’s bodily presence in
sacramental bread and wine precedes faith and reception of it.

22. We are not alone in our observation that the Formula of
Agreement is Calvinistic. Michael J. Root, formerly with the Insti-
tute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France, and recently
appointed to the ELCA faculty of Trinity Lutheran Seminary,
Columbus, Ohio, notes that “The Formula clearly excludes a
Zwinglian reading of the Supper and states that Christ gives him-
self to all who receive the elements” (Forum Letter 27 [March
1998]: 4).

At issue here, however, is not Zwingli’s, but Calvin’s view, as
rightly noted by ELCA clergyman, Russell E. Saltzman, the editor
of Forum Letter. “As we have read it, the trouble with the Formula
is not what it says, but what it does not say. It never says plainly
that what is given and received in the Supper is the Lord’s body
and blood. This was of course the same problem Calvin had, how
to say as much as possible about the Supper without finally ever
saying it is the Lord’s body and blood. ‘[W]e must establish such a
presence of Christ in the Supper,’ so he wrote in his Institutes, ‘as
may neither fasten him to the element of bread, nor enclose him in
bread, nor circumscribe him in any way... .’ Careful reading
shows the Formula accomplishing just that. ‘Imparts himself in his
body and blood,’ to quote Leuenberg quoted in the Formula, is not
nearly as distinct as ‘gives himself in his body and blood,’ just as
an example. The Formula is a very good attempt at grappling with
the Real Presence, but unless we and the Reformed are both speak-
ing of the elements as that “body born of Mary’ (LBW #215), then
ultimately we are speaking of different things. We agree, the For-
mula is not ‘feel good’ ecumenism, which is why a number of us
feel worse for it.” Lutheran Book of Worship #215 is Luther’s eu-
charistic hymn “O Lord, We Praise You,” in which the Reformer
confesses the identity of the sacramental gift with the body born of
the Virgin Mary and crucified under Pontius Pilate (TLH 313; LW
238). We concur with Pastor SaJtzman that the Formula of Agree-
ment presents Calvin’s and not Luther’s position.

23. The Jesus Seminar is the best known, but its determining
truth by ballot may relieve it of scholarly credence.

24. Marc Lienhard, Lutherisch-Reformierte Kirchengemein-
schaft Heute. Okumenische Perspektiven Nr. 2 (Frankfurt am Main:
Verlag Otto Lembeck, Verlag Joseph Knecht, 1972), 54, our trans-
lation.

25. Emphasis is in original.

26. It might go too far to suggest that the authors of the Agree-
ment were engaging in deception in using the word host, which can
refer to the person at the head of the table and to the sacramental
bread. The former comes from the Latin hospis and means “one
who entertains”; the latter from the Latin hostia and means “the
sacrificial victim.”

27. Ernst Sommerlath, “Die kommende Kirche? Anfragen zum
Leuenberger Konkodienentwurf aus der DDR,” in Von der Wahren
Einheit der Kirche: Lutherische Stimmen zum Leuenberger Konko-
rdienentwurf, 185, herausgegeben von Ulrich Asendorf und
Friedrich Wilhelm Kiinneth (Berlin und Schleswig-Holstein: Ver-
lag Die Spur GmbH & Co., 1973):

“Klar scheint mir aber zu sein, daB die Frage, ob die Kommu-
nikanten beim Abendmahl Christi Leib und Blut essen und trinken,
von der LKE verneint wird.” [“It seems clear to me that the ques-
tion whether the communicants eat and drink the body and blood of
Christ at the Lord’s Supper is answered negatively by the Leuen-
berg Concord.”’]

28. Lutherans in no way want to deny that the Sacrament is the
work of the Holy Spirit, who alone gives all good gifts to the
church, including and especially the Sacraments. The Reformed as-

2001 Convention Workbook