From
Living Theology in the Metropolitan Chicago Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church In America
Volume 2, Number 4
Epiphany 1998
Ecumenism and Full Communion
Heritage and Hope?
Leon
G. Rosenthal
“Making Christ Known: Alive in Our
Heritage and Hope,” was the theme for the Churchwide Assembly of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America which met in Philadelphia, August 14-20,
1997. Ecumenical issues dominated the proceedings, with the focus on three
major decisions: (1) the Formula of Agreement with the three churches of the
Reformed tradition; (2) the Concordat of Agreement, with the Episcopal Church;
and finally, (3) the Joint Declaration between Lutherans and Catholics.
W. C. Fields once wise-cracked about what he wanted
on his gravestone: “On the whole I would rather be in Philadelphia.” I offer
some musings on the Philadelphia Assembly, even though I was not there in
person and I look at the events through the lens of history rather than
experience. I believe the ELCA in assembly has adopted a commitment to and
style of ecumenism which is acculturated American Protestantism (Kulturprotestantism). Rather than an
Evangelical Catholic ecumenism which affirms the Lutheran confessional heritage
and hope, the ELCA’s posture (as expressed in the actions of the assembly, not
necessarily in the documents—such as Ecumenism:
The Vision of the ELCA) draws from mainline American Protestant principles
of consensus. I offer in this article some rumination and musings on the long
road which leads us to this moment in our heritage and hope.
If we are ever to understand the
Philadelphia Assembly, we must think long and hard about two important moments
in American Lutheran history, both of which indicate how deep and abiding is
the American element and how tenuous and fractured the Lutheran. Historically
speaking, the struggle over what it means to be Lutheran and American traces
itself back to the 1830s through the late 1850s and Samuel Simon Schmucker,
head of the Gettysburg Seminary, who offered the first “ecumenical proposal” in
his American Recension of the Augsburg Confession (1855). Schmucker basically
said that the Lutheran Reformation had to be stripped of all Catholic trappings
which were still forms of Popish error—Private Confession and Absolution, the
Real Presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, the retention of the Mass, and
baptismal regeneration.
The pattern of the debate in last year’s
Philadelphia Assembly is all there in Schmucker’s proposal. The “Catholic
substance” of the Church needs to be refined out so that the Evangelical and
Protestant pure gold will remain; this was Schmucker’s contention. He proposed
language that avoided talking about anything like the “real presence” in the
Lord’s Supper. Needless to say, he sparked a crisis in American Lutheranism
that is still being played out. David A. Gustafston, in Lutherans in Crisis: The Question of Identity in the American Republic
(Fortress Press, 1993) describes Schmucker’s proposal in the context of
religious identity in Protestant America.
Another moment of crisis came almost eighty years
after Schmucker when a German Lutheran who came to America in the late 1930s,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was critical of the Kulturprotestantismus
in its ugly form under Hitler, as well as its tamer form in America. Bonhoeffer
spoke of the need for ecumenism to take its life from confessing Christ.
Bonhoeffer saw the American Protestant churches as being sub-Protestant it
their understanding of justification by faith and sub-Catholic in their
doctrine of the Church. In his Lutheran reading of ecumenism he advocated a
more countercultural and sacramental understanding of the Church, especially in
his efforts to renew the practice of confession and absolution. The priest who declares forgiveness is the
“real presence” of Christ to the penitent sinner. Bonhoeffer, in great contrast
with Schmucker, expressed dismay that the Protestant churches of America still
seemed to have no living links to the Reformation, lacking a coordinated
christology and ecclesiology. American Protestants, he noted, emphasized the
process of human transformation—such
as the social gospel, world missionary evangelization, and voluntary
renewal—rather than the content of
Christ’s life informing the vocation of the individual Christian and the
community of the Church. Confessing Christ makes Christ’s “real presence” in
and for the world. Evangelical Bishops were thus not a theological problem for
the Lutheran Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer along with other confessing Christians, and
especially the Bishops of Germany, were the exception to other ecumenical and
state church groups who acquiesced under Hitler. For Bonhoeffer confessing
Christ is a political act, but not one that politicizes the church. On the
other hand, a Kulturprotestantismus
confuses the world with the Church, and the law with the Gospel. The identity
of the Church is not a question of power, but of the theology.
In Bonhoeffer we have a strong
counter-point to Schmucker. The key differences in how we assess the events of
Philadelphia are attributable to perspective, and nothing draws the comparison
more than these two assessments of American Protestantism. What one side calls
chaos and loss of unity, the other side sees as reconciled diversity. All the elements are there to compare: the
democratic versus sacramental structure of the Church; the authority and
identity of the pastor in absolution versus those who submit to no human
authority and view the sacraments as “visual aids”; the church as a confessing
of Christ in good times and bad versus the indifference to visible unity in the
Church; the key and central role of evangelical and episcopal oversight and
teaching office of the ordained ministry versus the organizational principles
of inclusivity, bureaucracy, and so on.
The question arises when we muse on the long road
leading up to Philadelphia 1997: Is the ELCA closer to Schmucker’s or
Bonhoeffer’s reading of Lutheran ecumenical identity? Are we so focussed on
providing for theological variation and exploration in our quest for Lutheran
ecumenism, what I would call the
voluntaristic pole of Protestant identity, that we are willing to abandon
or to compromise the sacramental
structure of the Church and faith?
Why were all the ecumenical proposals considered at
once? My take on this is that church planners acted out of American optimism
rather than confessional integrity and modesty! The Philadelphia Assembly,
combined these three proposals into a kind of two-for-one sale (the Concordat
of Agreement and the Formula of Agreement), with a bonus (Declaration on
Justification) thrown in. It is a market mentality at work. The jam-packed
agenda was a theological and confessional overload, characterized by great
optimism in the bandwagon effect rather than heritage and hope of Scriptural
and Confessional understanding. The surrender to the culture occurred already
in setting the agenda for this assembly in Philadelphia and goes back to the
acceptance of “Ecumenism: The Vision of the ELCA” in 1991. That document
supported the notion that it is possible to reach out in various directions for
Christian unity all at once. The document excels when it refers to Scripture
and the Lutheran Confessions, but it confuses the ecumenical vision when it
refers to the ELCA constitutional principles of inclusivity and representation.
These latter references make no connection to the confessing of Christ, but are
instead borrowed from the political and cultural principles which are current
in the world. They are the source of the optimism common among liberal American
Protestants, people who are prone to a kind of “Ecclesiastical Fundamentalism”
in their belief that once the church meets its quotas and shares power, then
the Church will really be renewed and united.
Such protean efforts are typical of
our American context where the first generation of lay ecumenical leaders, such
men as John R. Mott, Robert Speer and Charles Henry Brent, came into their own
vocation seeking Christian unity in the Progressive Era of this nation.
American ecumenists were men and women who understood themselves as missionary
conquerors of the world. Much good came from their vision and effort, and I am
by no means dismissing their witness. For an excellent critique of this
language read Douglas John Hall’s books on stewardship and a theology of the
cross for North America! Optimists all, the Protestant ecumenists claimed that
singleness of missionary hearts would “evangelize the world in this generation”
and sincerity of their social vision would bring moral and communal renewal.
Evangelizing the world in “this generation” meant the same as civilizing the
world, making it safe for Christianity, democracy, and the Kingdom of God.
Bearing the gift of civility and diplomacy to the Church, they were going to
save the Church from its divisive doctrine and authoritarianism (“Doctrine
divides, service unites,” was their motto). They favored federal unions of
churches and the more voluntaristic forms of Christian unity. Both clergy and
laity, these ecumenical folk, most of them also supporters of the Social
Gospel, applied the best of secular political models and cultural
statesmanship, convinced that in this way the Church would follow the new form
of world Christian leadership.
The immodesty of our ELCA agenda, the decision to advance in all
directions simultaneously, reflects our acculturated optimism, rather than our
Biblical and Confessional roots. Of course, the Declaration on Justification
was a bonus coupon rather than the main thing at the assembly. That which got
the juices flowing were the two “full communion” proposals. The indifference
and lack of attention to the Declaration on Justification indicate to me that
we have turned our back on the Reformation vocation of healing the breach with
the Roman Catholic Church. The struggle which touches our identity is the
perceived choice between an Episcopal and a Reformed view of the Church. In
this, I believe we do “tilt” to the Reformed! We have joined the American
Protestant culture which has focused on models of unity and reform rather than
the Scriptural and Confessional norms of faith and life.
American models of Church unity exact
a price. The American system of consensus is devoutly and steadfastly a two
party system. Third parties have not done well in this nation. Historic
evidence of this “modern schism,” as Martin Marty called it, is apparent in the
church polity-based denominations (Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
Congregationalists, etc.) who first experienced the cultural divide of the
Civil War over slavery, again in the form of the battle for the Bible between
Fundamentalists and Modernist, and most recently in the Civil Rights struggle
and other forms of “culture wars.” The civilized and democratized Protestant
ecumenical mainline has sought parachurch federations and voluntary
organizations that overcome the divisions of clashing values. These
organizations quickly became identified with one side or the other of the
“modern schism,” as for example the National Council of Churches against the
National Association of Evangelicals. The American ecumenical movement thus has
“institutionalized conflict” within and among the mainline denominations and
those who exert cultural importance but are more marginalized by their own
choice.
In the political realm the two-party
system has a civilizing function, training the parties to participate through
democratically established principles of freedom and justice for all. The
playing field is level and the rules of conflict are parliamentary procedure (interestingly
Robert’s Rules of Order came into common use in 1876, about the same time as
the precursor movements of the Protestant ecumenical movement were emerging).
John R. Mott, “Mr. Ecumenist” was a master at parliamentary procedure. The
Enlightenment tradition on the one hand and the Revivalistic and Puritan
traditions on the other meet amicably, sometimes warily, in this American model
of finding a Christian bipartisan consensus.
It is my contention that the Kulturprotestantismus of American Protestantism has worked well by
American standards of democracy and civility, however it was not meant for the
Body of Christ. Americans prefer a system of consensus which gives maximal
power to the voter by the presentation of choices between Democrats and Republicans,
Liberals and Conservative, and so on. We seem to have chosen how we will name
our parties in the church. Not prone to fight over Biblical interpretation, as
the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod did in the 1970s, or to divide over those
who are poorest of the poor and defenseless (unborn children), we have selected
a confessionalist versus ecumenist axis to dominate our next assembly in 1999.
Early in its history the ELCA
recognized that if it did not affirm a theology and practice of ordained
ministry, the ELCA churchwide would lose its own fragile consensus, which has
been shifting away from confessional and ethnic ties. Church bureaucrats, many
of them untrained theologically and therefore unaccountable in Church order,
are but one challenge to the Lutheran experience of a compromising of Lutheran
confessional integrity on the issue of ministry. The lack of agreement on this
issue in those early years signaled a widening rift. Thus, in those formative
years of the ELCA, the sacramentalist understanding of the Church and the
ministry of the Gospel squared off in conflict with the functionalist. The
ministry study, which lasted for the first eight years and the term of Bishop
Chilstrom, did not resolve many of the key questions.
So, the ELCA has declared at Philadelphia that we
will give to both sides and not worry about the “contradictions” and
“inconsistencies.” The power to set the agenda and to advertise the Concordat
and the Formula together is a compelling and appealing affirmation of the new
two party system. All the efforts to mitigate this two party system—voting for
both electronically at the same time, waiting for results and urging prayerful
response—these are commendable; however, they fail to come back to the structure
of Christian faith, which lives not by technique but by telling the truth and
patient, loving response. Votes on Christian faith are not simply taken and
counted in the Church; the confessors of every age also have a vote. Likewise,
votes are not only counted, but they are also weighed! The presumption is that
the Scriptures have the final vote.
The Result: The Ecumenism
Which Divides
The result of this democratic (and cultural) process
at Philadelphia is that we have discovered the Ecumenism which divides as well
as unites. Call this the Law of Unintended Results. In this we face the
persistence of sin and self-deception; we reckon with Christ the Crucified and
our need always to find grace in Him alone.
The irony of history is that
ecumenical movements can and do become just another denomination or human
division, confirmed now at the turn of the millennium in our own Lutheran
confessing movement, seemingly now just another mainline Protestant
denomination. The Philadelphia Assembly clearly points to the “tilt” of our
ELCA to the Protestant mainline denominations who have functioned as custodians
of the American, pluralistic, individualistic, and democratic spirit. The
preference for “healing the breach” with the Roman Catholic Church is now definitely
in demise among us. The ascending way in the ELCA is to emphasize our ecumenism
while the LCMS stresses her confessionalism
What is Our Hope?
After Philadelphia the relationship between
confessionalism and ecumenism has become even more ambiguous and tenuous. As
Harding Meyer has said, an ecumenical movement which avoids consensus in
confessing the Gospel “has no promise” (Pro
Ecclesia, Vol. III, No. 1; Winter 1994, p. 26), presumably this applies to
the ELCA itself, to Lutheranism as a confessional family, and to the whole communio sanctorum! A non-confessing
ecumenism is an impossibility, for the church to live Christ must live in the
community (Bonhoeffer).
Although subscription to the Lutheran Confessions has
never been the requirement for being in the Lutheran consensus and world
fellowship (e.g., Batak Church of Indonesia is a member of Lutheran World
Federation on the basis of its own confession of faith, without subscribing to
the Augsburg Confession or any of the other confessional writings), one
nevertheless presumes of Lutheran churches of the world a common confessing of
the Christian faith in the Triune God.
It is clear that the Churchwide Assembly of the ELCA faced important
ecumenical questions about “full communion” and doctrinal consensus with this
broadened, ecumenical understanding of the Lutheran Church as a confessing
movement within the whole Body of Christ. Unclear now is the understanding of
the Lutheran confessions and confessional subscription. The Reformation in the
16th Century was understood as an ecumenical proposal for renewal
and unity in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Confessional subscription was not
understood as restrictive or constrictive, but as the most hopeful act for
proclaiming the Gospel of Justification and for the preserving of the catholic
substance of the Church. Protest was not for the sake of protest, but for the
sake of return to the catholic substance of the faith. Luther himself posted
his 95 theses for the sake of disputation and debate to arrive at the truth of
the Gospel in pastoral practice!
Unfortunately, the burden of this
article is to suggest that the ELCA in its assembly, passing what should have
been rejected (the Formula of Agreement) and rejecting what should have passed
(the Concordat of Agreement), put further strain on the coherence and
hopefulness of its own ecumenical vision and the Lutheran confessional
heritage. Perhaps most poignantly, the widening breach with the Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod signals that all Lutherans agree to disagree on what
being Lutheran means. I fear the cynical result is people already say to
themselves, and even to others, “who cares?” One has to ask whether this is not
the major casualty of 1997. The naive optimism, so common in American political
and cultural life, is turning sour for the losers (there were losers!) and
becoming even worse among the winners.
Confessionalism is becoming an enterprise separate from ecumenism
in both the ELCA and LCMS. Both Missouri and the ELCA are perilously close to
having given up in despair on the Lutheran Reformation proposal for Church
unity. As Meyer has pointed out however, and the example of LCMS and ELCA most
poignantly illustrates, when disagreement over a “church-dividing issue”
happens, the schism or separation spreads throughout the Body of Christ. The
division metastasizes, becoming tightly woven with and concealed within other
aspects of the faith and “cannot possibly be dealt with in isolation.” The
systemic and sacramental nature of the Church, indeed the living and dynamic
character of all Christian dogma/doctrine, means that subtle divergences in the
separation of churches can reflect gross ones later on, or they can be
connected to major disagreements in other areas of life. By contrast, agreement
in faith also has a way of spreading into a lively fellowship (koinonia), which
becomes the basis of a new-found solidarity in suffering and in
service—worship, evangelism, stewardship, and so forth.
William G. Rusch concludes his book Reception: An Ecumenical Opportunity by
quoting Meyer, who compared the work of the ecumenical dialogues to the
discovery of a new land. The suggestion is helpful because it points us to the
biblical and confessional hills from where our help in God comes and to the
horizon of hope in the promised land. The evidence of Philadelphia, however, is
that reception of the ecumenical vision of the unity and mission of the Church
has become dependent on models of unity rather than on the normative sources
and resources. Confessions, and
congregational life of Word and Sacrament are not being preached, taught, or
received ecumenically. Robert Jenson correctly asserts that the Ecumenical
Movement as a whole is deeply flawed because theologians and leaders are
avoiding the explication of the doctrine of God. In our fear of Catholic forms
of idolatry—especially evangelical and confessing Bishops—we neo-Protestant
members of the ELCA have joined the blasphemy which tramples on the mystery of
the Gospel, especially the sacramental structures of faith, all of which we
have in earthen vessels.
Recently I presented a series of
“ecumenical surprises” found in the Lutheran confessions (The Book of Concord) to indicate how intrinsic and extensive the
sacramental understanding of the Church and the ministry of the Gospel is in
our Lutheran confessional heritage. For example, Luther advocated three or four
sacraments, depending on one’s enumeration. Melanchthon accepted four. Out of
pastoral and theological concern, both desired to maintain the sacramental life
of promise and faith. The addition of Private Confession and Ordination point
to the Reformation agenda of maintaining the catholic substance of Church
unity. Lutherans maintained that Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Private
Confession, and Ordination were sacraments, fulfilling the three requirements
of sacrament (commanded by God, promise of salvation, and embodied in earthly
or created means). When asked to explain what happens in the Eucharist, in
Baptism, in Confession, and in Ordination, Luther attested that a “change”
happens to the giver of the sacrament, to the sacramental vehicle or gift
itself, and to the recipient. The mode of that gospel transformation is not defined by a philosophical
explanation, but by a scriptural and confessional promise. The bread and wine
become the body and blood of Christ. The ordinary water in Baptism becomes a
washing of regeneration. The human words of the confessor become life-giving
forgiveness in the hearing of the one who confesses sin. In Ordination, a
layman becomes a pastor [or a bishop].
The proposal for the Formula of
Agreement lacked this sacramental understanding of the ministry of the Gospel.
The Lord’s Supper is the true “body and blood” of Christ given for sinners to
eat and to drink. At Marburg, Luther disagreed with the position that one can
“split the difference” between a “symbolic presence” and a “real presence”
position. The reason for this was that Luther definitely and confessionally
“tilted” toward the healing of the breach with Rome by maintaining the catholic
substance of the Church.
All three questions before the
Philadelphia churchwide assembly required a respectful and knowledgeable
appreciation of the systemic and interlaced nature of Christian history and the
life of the Church through the ages. The Concordat with the Episcopal Church
was explosively “wired” to many historical, doctrinal, cultural, and emotional
issues in the American cultural subconscious, none more explosive than that of
bishops in apostolic succession. We must never forget that one of the sparks
that led to the American Revolution was the threat of new bishops from England.
American Lutherans have always asked questions such as the following: How can
the teaching office of the bishop be reconciled with the Lutheran experience of
the freedom of the Gospel? How can apostolic succession as a sign of Christian
unity be understood as an integral aspect of the whole Church being conformed
to Christ? In the context of the proposal of the Concordat we further ask: How
can Lutherans and Episcopalians alike set aside their faith claims in order to
reach consensus? For Lutherans who
speak and believe all matters of dogma bind the conscience, this “setting
aside” proposal is a deft and devious form of diplomacy. Is the consensus that
results from the Concordat a theological consensus of the whole church or is it
a diplomatically achieved human accomplishment? Questions such as these may seem foolish to those who point to
the almost two-thirds consensus of those voting for the Concordat, but the
widespread lack of clarity still exists about the nature of the Concordat.
People want to know how it might be possible to find evangelical, pastoral
Bishops who are truly apostolic witnesses to the unity of the Church.
Visiting the proposal again and again
over the next two years may clear up the mess. There is no guarantee that
matters will not unravel even further!
The Formula of Agreement passed
overwhelmingly, but remains the vaguest of all three proposals, and is in my
view, the most problematic. The idea of
a joint commission “to work it out” betrays the loose ends which need
resolution. We are back to diplomacy, much of it by those who have no call from
God and certainly no accountability to the Church. Here are some of those
uncertainties which trouble many who oppose the Formula: Do the Reformed Churches practice the
Eucharist as the Body and Blood of Christ or as a symbolic meal? For that
matter, do Lutheran Churches practice the Eucharist as the sharing of the true
Body and Blood of Christ, as the “Use of the Means of Grace: A Statement on the
Practice of Word and Sacrament” passed in Philadelphia commits them? Viewed
from its worst possible scenario, perhaps Philadelphia 1997 is telling us that
the unity of the Lord’s Supper is not as important as we once thought. Related
to difficulties with the practice of the Lord’s Supper is the integrity of the
confessional life in the Reformed Churches. Do the Reformed churches,
especially those of the United Church of Christ, commit themselves to recover
theological and confessional discipline and accountability among clergy? What
concrete and visible assurances have they given of this commitment toward
confessional integrity and accountability? Declaring “consensus” is not the
same as confessing Christ and living in the visible unity we share. Appointing
a commission to find ways to implement the proposal is not a helpful way to
discover the unity of the faith on a churchwide or local congregational level.
Supporters of the Formula of Agreement
point to the Leuenberg Agreement to assert that doctrinal agreement has been
found on the most nettlesome problem of the Lord’s Supper. However, the
Leuenberg consensus presumes a European context where pluralism has not run
rampant over the consensus and where the old networks of the State Church still
provide vestigial support. That context has experienced the confessing Church
and the memory of Bonhoeffer more powerfully in Leuenberg than the American
one, which is closer to Samuel Simon Schmucker. The Formula discusses the
different practices of the Lutheran and Reformed celebration of the Eucharist
as if these are a matter of “differing emphasis,” not explaining where the
“breaking point” is between practicing faithful and unfaithful Eucharist.
Philadelphia’s Churchwide Assembly was
a myopic one, not because anyone lacked sincerity or good intentions. Lutherans
have been struggling since the Reformation for an ecumenical and confessional
“big picture.” This is not the time to panic or to point the finger in
disdain. The Formula of Agreement and
the Concordat should never have been proposed at the same time. The old
argument about which direction the ecumenical agenda of the ELCA should tilt,
to the Catholic or to the Protestant side, was simply ignored in the agenda.
The Protean grandeur of our ecumenical agenda, that we can do all things for
everyone, led us into the position of passing what should have been rejected
(the Formula!) and rejecting what should have been passed (the Concordat). This
is a set up for the ecumenism which divides while it unites!
An analogy may help. Satellites from
hundreds of miles above can see water in the underground aquifers beneath the
Great Plains that people who are on the ground cannot see. I suggest that we
not spend so much time digging into this speech or that motion at Philadelphia,
or portraying the anguish of our pain on the cover of The Lutheran, but that we look more at the whole. What we lack in
the telling of the story of Philadelphia is the big picture.
Pastor, Wilmette Lutheran Church