LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 175

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THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 175

Christ sincere and pure. There are other gospels, other spirits, even
other Jesuses by which we and the world can easily be led astray.
We must not readily “put up” with them.

Background

For more than two years now, the debate over “A Prayer for
America” at Yankee Stadium has dominated Synod discussions. In
official circles, this debate came to focus upon the proper interpre-
tation and application of a few words in a CTCR document. Yet
even the official conclusion of the final dispute resolution panel
Stated that “debate can and will continue.”

When disagreements arise in the church, what is a synod to do?
First and foremost: “Conserve and promote the unity of the true faith
(Eph. 4:3-6; 1 Cor. 1:10), work through its official structure toward
fellowship with other Christian church bodies, and provide a united
defense against schism, sectarianism (Rom. 16:17), and heresy” (Art.
Il 1). Who participates in this conservation, promotion, work, and
defense? Every member of the Synod does; which is to say, those
who accept “without reservation” (Art. II) the Scriptures along with
the Creeds and Lutheran Confessions drawn from them and who also
renounce “unionism and syncretism of every description” (Art. VI 2).
The meaning of these words and their application to “A Prayer for
America” are the central questions of this debate.

On Dec. 20, 2001, at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Lockport, Ill., more than two dozen people signed their names to a
document they titled’ That They May Be One: A Scriptural and Con-
fessional Statement Concerning Church Fellowship and. Public
Prayer. They agreed with this statement: “We hereby subscribe our-
selves to this, the correct interpretation of our Lord’s teaching re-
garding fellowship, unionism, and syncretism” (emphasis added).
Then the signers of That They May Be One (TTMBO) sent their doc-
ument to officials of the LCMS. Their intention was stated within:

If the President of our Synod together with the Praesidium and Coun-
cil of Presidents can show us by Scripture and plain reason any error in
our confession, we will gladly recant. Otherwise, we must stand by this
confession of faith, for “to go against conscience is neither right nor
safe.” We invite our Synodical President, the members of the Praesid-
ium and the Council of Presidents to join us in common confession of
the one Holy, Christian and Apostolic faith, as set forth in the Holy
Scriptures, as taught in the Book of Concord, and as presented above. In
this way, we may continue to walk together as we proclaim the Gospel
delivered to us by our Lord, which is “power of salvation for all who be-
lieve.”

Rather than responding directly, the Council of Presidents
(COP) requested a study of the document from the Commission on
Theology and Church Relations (CTCR). Specifically, the Presi-
dents asked the CTCR to evaluate whether or not the document
“adequately and correctly gives expression to the doctrinal posi-
tion of the Synod.”! After more than a year of study, the Commis-
sion has completed its evaluation. While directed to the COP, this
CTCR document will surely reach a wider audience.

TTMBO and the CTCR’s Review

This disclaimer comes early in the Review: “The Commission
has not presumed to pass judgment on the appropriateness of par-
ticipation in the event under discussion in ‘That They May Be
One.’” Yet this is the very reason why TTMBO was written—to
present a definite point of view on the event at the fulcrum of this
debate. Can the CTCR credibly dispute that point of view while si-
multaneously claiming not to take one of its own? Such silence has
an unmistakable sound. The tortured effort to deliberately tiptoe
around the very event that stimulated people to write this document
in the first place—and which figures prominently as its central
topic—would seem to trace out a discernable position for the
CTCR after all. Many of the Commission’s questions and confu-
sions can be traced back to this disclaimer.

The CTCR itself can be commended for its willingness to af-
firm statements in 7TMBO that it recognized as correct and clearly
expressed, and for actually doing so. The Synod can rejoice that
the CTCR fully agrees with TTMBO’s emphases upon the need to
proclaim the Gospel faithfully, maintain the purity of our doctrine,
and pursue external unity in the church by means of agreement in
all the articles of faith.

Had the CTCR used Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions to
clearly demonstrate how and where certain TTMBO statements were
incorrect, that could also have been commended. It is difficult to sym-
pathize, however, with the Commission’s expressions of confusion
and discomfort at the “lack of clarity at certain critical points” when
most (perhaps all) of these could have been addressed in a single face-
to-face meeting with the writers of this document. This suggestion
was made within the Commission, but to no effect. Cautious about
“taking sides,” but hesitant to disagree, the Commission mostly ex-
pressed doubts or raised questions. In the end, the CTCR’s foggy re-
view declines to endorse the document while failing to provide a clear
overall verdict of right or wrong, good or bad.

Proceeding from “Affirmation” to “Evaluation,” the CTCR
pointed to five areas of concern: (1) The meaning of “church fel-
lowship”; (2) The definition of “civic events”; (3) The question of
“joint worship”; (4) The function of the “condemnations and/or re-
jections”; and (5) Scriptural and confessional argumentation. In
each of these areas, the CTCR’s own argumentation seems confus-
ing and inadequate.

First, the CTCR was troubled by TTMBO’s references to
“church fellowship,” listing several statements it found difficult to
reconcile. What is the basis for its concern? “Particularly crucial is
the distinction between the spiritual fellowship that all Christians
have in the body of Christ and the external unity based on agree-
ment in confession.” In the examples cited, however, the CTCR
seemed to have little difficulty in correctly identifying the sense in
which 7TMBO used the term based on the context.

The visible unity of the church must indeed be distinguished
from the invisible, but we dare never separate the two. The Augs-
burg Confession states:

Our churches also teach that one holy church is to continue forever.
The church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught
purely and the sacraments are administered rightly. For the true unity
of the church it is enough to agree concerning the teaching of the
Gospel and the administration of the sacraments. (AC VII 1-2)

True unity is both external and unseen, and the two must not be
confused or disconnected. Consider these sentences taken from the
CTCR’s own 1965 Report on the Theology of Fellowship:

Augustine and other teachers before and in his day taught that the
church is one in the sense of one visible organization. Heretics and
schismatics and their adherents did not belong to this one church. They
were considered to be without hope of salvation unless they left heresy
and schism and joined the one church. (p. 20)

Visible or invisible? The correct answer would seem to be
“both.” It speaks of the “one visible organization” to which
heretics, schismatics, “and their adherents” do not belong and who
are, therefore, “without hope of salvation.” One’s salvation is
known only to God and not the result of membership in a particular
organization. But heresy can be known and identified, and any vis-
ible church claiming any connection to the invisible church must
single it out and deal with it—visibly. Just as the visible and the
invisible must indeed be distinguished, so we dare never separate
them from each other.’

The conclusion to another CTCR document, The Nature and
Implications of the Concept of Fellowship (1981), also makes this
point:

Contrary to the understanding of fellowship prevalent in Christen-
dom today as relating to “matters about which men are free to make
their own arrangements” and that “whether fellowship is granted or
withheld depends on the good or ill will of those concerned,” the writers
of the New Testament use this term to refer both to spiritual unity in
the body of Christ and to external unity in the church. Each of these re-
lationships, therefore, may properly be referred to by the use of the Eng-
lish word “fellowship.” But neither of them is the result of human
achievement, nor “are they matters about which people are free to make
their own arrangements.”

Christians are not in spiritual fellowship with their Lord and with
each other in the body of Christ because they have voluntarily decided
to “get together.” God’s holy Word reveals that believers are brought
into a spiritual relationship with Christ and with all fellow believers by
virtue of their incorporation into the body of Christ by the power of the
Holy Spirit working through the means of grace. Having been made one
in Christ, members of His body are exhorted to be what they are. Chris-
tians therefore seek to be faithful to what the Scriptures teach about