LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2004, Page 435

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THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS 435

14. CTCR Report, 10.

15. For example, the CTCR Report uses the terms “District
President” and “Council of Presidents” (unknown to many Chris-
tian communions) 26 times throughout. This seems highly unusual
for a CTCR publication, and more appropriate for a Handbook or
institutional procedure manual.

16. The CTCR Report could easily be perceived as simply an
effort to “baptize” and further centralize current synodical practice
rather than as a proper theological exposition.

17. Kurt Marquart, unpublished statement submitted to the
CTCR, December 2002.

18. Robert D. Preus, “The Doctrine of the Call in the Confes-
sions and Lutheran Orthodoxy,” in Church and Ministry Today:
Three Confessional Lutheran Essays, John A. Maxfield, editor (St.
Louis: The Luther Academy, 2001). This fine essay covers the doc-
trine of the divine call in a comprehensive fashion through the fol-
lowing outline:

A. The Unity of Doctrine and Practice

B. The Call

C. The Call Is from God

D. God Calls through the Church

E. The Necessity of the Call

F. The Office

G. The Call Process

H. Conclusions, The Contemporary Situation (Aberrations, Ex-
cesses, Evaluation, Diagnosis, Prognosis)

I. Conclusion

As a layman, this writer cannot hope even to approach (much
less reproduce) the excellent Lutheran theological scholarship pre-
sented in Dr. Preus’s essay, and heretofore commends it for careful
study to any person with interest in this topic sufficient to read this
footnote in a Minority Opinion along with the CTCR Report. The
reader will find therein helpful correctives to some of the latter doc-
ument’s more speculative conclusions.

19. David P. Scaer, “Doctrine and Practice: Setting the Bound-
aries—An Abstract Essay with Practical Implications,” distributed
at a meeting of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s Com-
mission on Theology and Church Relations, April 19, 2002.

20. Closed Communion in Contemporary Context, A Report of
the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the
Lutheran Church—Canada, January 1998 (Manitoba: Lutheran
Church—Canada, 2000), 7.

21. C. F. W. Walther vigorously maintained this position over
and against the American Lutheran setting of his day. See Appen-
dix D for Walther’s position on Lutheran catholicity.

22. No mention is made of AC V in the CTCR Report. As noted
above, however, the Commission document does clearly state its
dependence upon the 1981 CTCR Report The Ministry: Offices,
Procedures, and Nomenclature, which begins with AC _V and pro-
vides some exposition within its own text.

23. Book of Concord, AC IV-V, trans. and ed. Theodore T.
Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 30-31

24. CTCR Report, 10.

25. Francis Pieper cautioned against reversing the order in the-
ology. The closing paragraph of his section on “The Means by
Which Theology Accomplishes Its Purpose” reads as follows: “A
word on church government in this connection. Schleiermacher
states that one of the purposes, the final purpose of theology, is ‘the
government and rule of the Church.’ We could subscribe to that
with the understanding that it is God’s Word alone that rules and
governs the Church. The regulations made by smaller or larger
church bodies, which concern the externals of their common work,
ought not be called ‘means of governing the Church.’ Luther:
‘Christians cannot be ruled by any other means than the Word of
God. For Christians must be ruled in faith, not by outward works.
Faith however, can come through no word of man, but only

through the Word of God, as Paul says Romans 10: Faith cometh
by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.’ (St. L. X:406),”
Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics (St. Louis: Concordia Pub-
lishing House, 1950), 1:106.

Elsewhere Pieper charges that Schleiermacher has replaced
Scripture with “the impression of reality” and “experience,” and
“feels that he must harmonize the teachings of experience with
Scripture” (2:367). Has the CTCR Report fallen under similar in-
fluences?

26. The Commission states: “In these articles, the reformers
demonstrate that the Lutherans were not establishing a new church,
but were making their claim to be church” (10-11). The Lutherans
understood themselves to be continuing in unbroken congruence
with the teachings of the ancient apostolic church. Rome made the
institutional decision to separate, not Wittenberg. The fact that both
found no possibility of compromise led to the institutional recog-
nition (by Rome and the Lutherans themselves) of “the Lutheran
Church.”

27. The Conclusion to the Augsburg Confession states: “Only
those things have been recounted which it seemed necessary to say
in order that it may be understood that nothing has been received
among us, in doctrine or in ceremonies, that is contrary to Scrip-
ture or to the church catholic. For it is manifest that we have
guarded diligently against the introduction into our churches of any
new and ungodly doctrines” [Tappert, 95]. In other words, the con-
fessors merely reproduced the teachings of the church down
through the ages from antiquity.

28. The church of the papacy was actually the newly established
church. Koehler’s annotated catechism rightly identifies the Coun-
cil of Trent (1545-63) as the birth of the papal church according
to public confession. Hence Koehler rightly identifies the Lutheran
Church as the oldest church of Western Christendom because its
distinctive confession dates from 1530.

29. “It will always remain the criterion for a concept of the
Evangelical [Lutheran] Church and of the ministry, whether one
agrees with Luther here or not, that in the case of necessity the con-
gregation [Gemeinde] can appoint its own office bearer. And in
fact, so far as I know, no Lutheran theologian has ever opposed
Luther on this question. August Vilmar himself, the proponent of
an expressly “high church” view of the office, emphatically agreed
with Luther ...”” Herman Sasse, “The Lutheran Doctrine of the Of-
fice of the Ministry,” in The Lonely Way: Selected Essays and Let-
ters—Volume IT (1941-1976), trans. by Matthew C. Harrison (St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2002), 133.

30. “Walther often cited from the German of the Treatise [on
the Power and Primacy of the Pope], paragraph 10, that ‘we havea
pure doctrine that the ministry (Predigtamt) comes from the com-
mon call of the apostles.” Here, rather than in philological rum-
magings through kaleoo (Greek for “call”) material, is the proper
starting point for an understanding of ‘the divine call.’ In our dog-
matical tradition the inexorable ‘chain of evidence’ linking the pre-
sent ministry to the apostles, runs as follows: (1) Christ established
the apostolate by His immediate call; (2) The one essential Gospel
office—minus the special apostolic prerogatives—was transmitted
by the apostles to their successors, and by them in turn to others, till
the present day (2 Tim. 2:2); (3) The later, mediate call through the
church is no less divine than the original immediate call (Acts
1:15—26; 20:28; Eph 4:11), and as such necessary (Rom 10:15). In
other words, the ‘divinity of the call’ rests squarely on the divinity
of the public ministry or preaching office. If the office belongs to
Christ, then it is He who places men into it and removes them from
it, even though He now does this mediately. This is what is meant
by the ‘divine call.’ ”

“Our Reformation Confessions, like all subsequent Lutheran
theology, understand the ordinary Gospel-and-Sacraments ministry
to have been instituted by Christ Himself in, with, and under the

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