Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 20

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20 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

taken aback by the fact that the Missouri Synod convention at
Milwaukee in 1950 was so quick to adopt it? Or should we have
expected this all along? But that is just exactly what happened.
‘We look at these Milwaukee resolutions, and we read them care-
fully. It was resolved by Missouri “that we rejoice and thank God
that the Common Confession shows that agreement has been
achieved in the doctrines treated by the two committees”; “that
‘we accept the Common Confession as a statement of these doctrines
in harmony with Scriptures”; “that if the American Lutheran
Church, in convention assembled, accepts it, the Common Confes-
sion shall be recognized as a statement of agreement on these
doctrines between us and the American Lutheran Church” (em-
phasis our own). Further resolutions of this convention, it is true,
provided for the formulation of phases of doctrine not treated in
the Common Confession, and the fact that “further study or future
developments may show the need of clarification or expansion,”
so that “additional statements . . . may be submitted to future
conventions of Synod,” but they certainly do not alter the fact that
the doctrines treated in Common Confession, Part I, were presented
as a settlement of the doctrinal differences which hitherto separated
The Lutheran Church — Missouri Synod from the American Lu-
theran Church. (Quotations from Resolution No. 14, Reports and
Memorials, Missouri Synod Convention, 1950. Emphasis, the
~writer’s.) ;

That is the only possible interpretation we can place upon
these resolutions. Of course, the question was raised, and repeatedly
so in our own circles, as to whether or not our Synod’s Standing
Committee on Church Union was pressing the meaning of these
resolutions beyond their intended significance. Was this, perhaps,
merely our own pessimistic interpretation? The answer lies, how-
ever, not with our Committee, but with the Missouri Synod’s
‘Committee on Doctrinal Unity, which states in its official minutes
of April 10, 1951, that the Common Confession is to be regarded,
not as defining an area of doctrinal agreement, but as furnishing
“a settlement of those doctrinal controversies that were before
the church up to the time of the adoption of the Common Con-
fession.” (Quoted in Proceedings, 31st Convention, Wisconsin
Synod, 1951, p. 146.) Who would be in a better position to give us
the correct interpretation of the Missouri Synod’s resolutions on
the Common Confession than the committee which was to the
greatest extent instrumental in formulating it and presenting it
for its adoption?

That is also the reason why Missouri submitted this confes-
sional document to us, as stated in Resolution No. 16 of its 1950
convention, “to secure the consent” of our Synod, as a constituent
synod of the Synodical Conference, to the course of action which
had been taken. Certainly it was not submitted to us as a document
which actually “settles nothing officially,” as a mere “progress
report,” or as something on which we could supply necessary im-
‘provements so that it might meet with our satisfaction. We were
to give our opinion on it as a document which had been officially
adopted as an adequate settlement of past controversies in the
doctrines treated therein. And it has been consistently defended
as such by official representatives of the Missouri Synod. At no