From
Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church In America
Volume 1, Number 4
September 1996
The Church and Salvation
How is the Synod Necessary for
Salvation?
Bishop Kenneth R. Olsen
The question that I have been asked to address flows
from a recent lecture series by Philip Hefner and Tim Lull at the Lutheran
School of Theology at Chicago on the issue, “How is the Church necessary for
Salvation?” Though I was unable to be present during that 1996 Hein‑Fry
series, I did have the opportunity to read the manuscript and spend a few hours
in conversation with Professor Hefner as he discussed some of the major issues
of the lecture series.
“How is
the Synod necessary for Salvation?” At first glance it seems to be an obvious
and almost ludicrous question...of course, it is not. But if it is obvious, how
do we answer the same question for the other parts of this church which we, in
the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, claim in all of our documents to be
a three‑fold expression: congregation, synod, and church‑wide. Much
of the way we discuss and answer these questions will depend heavily on our
ecclesiology.
Dr.
Hefner says “the church must be a community that is available to God’s
possibilities for the future of creation. If the church is not this community,
then talk about God’s salvation borders on blasphemy. To the extent that the
church is this community, its necessity for salvation requires no
argumentation.”
A crucial way of being available to God’s
future is to be open to all dimensions of church. My profound hope is that we
would never limit our understanding of the church community to any one of these
three, but see congregation, synod and the churchwide expressions as
intrinsically tied to one another as rings that have no beginning, end, or
seam. When we act with this understanding the salvation question will be
answered as we live out our lives in the church in witness to what God is doing
in the world.
One of
the major contributions that I believe Hefner makes in his lecture series is
his concept of “people’s church” which he introduces as a major theme for the future
transformation of the ELCA. His working definition of the term “people’s
church” is “the church life that is intimately bound up in the actual realities
of the lived‑out lives of its people and the cultural expressions of
these realities.”
Professor
Hefner presents a challenge to all of us in all three expressions of the church
when he asserts “that popular religion is often viewed with suspicion by the
official church and its leaders.” It is here that I take exception because I am
convinced that any person in the “official” church that is in daily contact
with the life of the church in any of its expressions has developed an open
stance to the developing vitality and passion that has been brought into the
arena by the various contingents of the “people's church.”
One of the great challenges that we face as a
synod is to recognize that many pastors and lay people are speaking out of the
same gospel context, but their lives and experiences create different
directions for their evangelical message. Some come out of a traditional and
historical Lutheran identity that finds it difficult to recognize the gospel
apart from the Lutheran Confessions and a Bach hymn. Others have been
influenced by modernity in some of its varied formats and have tried pouring the
wine of the gospel into new wineskins.
I believe it is the task of the synod to
allow all these expressions to be at home within our church, and to reach out
with a witness that calls each woman, man and child to respond to the gospel
where she or he is planted.
If mission and salvation are to happen, then
we will have to see each expression of the church supported by the whole body
and not just by one part. Dr. Hefner, I think, speaks to this very issue when
he talks about the “Big Story” and “Little Stories”. According to Hefner, “‘The
Big Story’ comprehends the largest dimensions of our lives and speaks to every
person and group, and thereby gives them confidence that their own personal
‘little stories’ are not just their own subjective fabrications.” For Hefner,
the “Big Story” is the church’s official rendering of the gospel, and so “The
Big Story is thus synonymous with what we call the Word of God and embodies our
interpretation of the basic message of the Bible and the Christian tradition.”
In the midst of this tradition told in the church, are the “little stories.”
These refer “to the stories by which individuals and particular communities
render their own concrete experience, the stories in which the coherence and
the projects of communities are given expression.”
I think that one of the challenges of the
synod is to allow people who have not been part of the mainstream to post their
“little stories” on the church’s kiosk in order that they may see themselves as
an intricate part of the “Big Story.”
Doing this will sometimes result in discussion, challenge, and even
furor. But then, as Jesus told his “little stories”, they certainly elicited
similar strong reactions.
Is the
synod necessary for salvation? Probably not, especially if it is isolated from
the rest of the church. However, united, as it is in the ELCA's three‑fold
expression of congregation, synod and church‑wide, the synod becomes a
part of the Church universal. In William Willimon’s words, “‘No salvation
outside the church,’ is not so much a judgmental declaration as it is an
affirmation that, wonder of wonders, salvation does occur (even!) in the
church.”
Bishop, Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America