Concordia Journal | Summer 2008

COncordiaournal volume 34 | number 3J July 2008

Where’s the Center?

What Are Ecclesiologically ChallengedLutherans to Do?

The Trans-Congregational Church in the New Testament

Thinking with Walther: Congregation, Synod, Church

July2008

Concordia

Journalvolum

e34

|num

ber3

a special issue

COncordiaournalJ

(ISSN 0145-7233)

All correspondence should be sent to:Travis Scholl

CONCORDIA JOURNAL801 Seminary Place

St. Louis, Missouri 63105

Issued by the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, the Concordia Journal is the successor ofLehre und Wehre (1855-1929), begun by C. F. W. Walther, a founder of The Lutheran Church—MissouriSynod. Lehre und Wehre was absorbed by the Concordia Theological Monthly (1930-1972) which was also pub-lished by the faculty of Concordia Seminary as the official theological periodical of the Synod.

The Concordia Journal is abstracted in Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft unde Grenzgebiete, NewTestament Abstracts.Old Testament Abstracts, and Religious and Theological Abstracts. It is indexed in RepertoireBibliographique des Institutions Chretiennes and Religion Index One: Periodicals. Article and issue photocopies in16mm microfilm, 35mm microfilm, and 105mm microfiche are available from University MicrofilmsInternational, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346.

Books submitted for review should be sent to the editor. Manuscripts submitted for publication should conform to a standard manual of style. They will be returned to authors only when accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes.

The Concordia Journal (ISSN 0145-7233) is published quarterly (January, April, July, and October). The annualsubscription rate is $12 U.S.A., $13 for Canada and $16 for foreign countries. Periodicals postage paid at St. Louis, MO and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Concordia Journal,Concordia Seminary, 801 Seminary Place, St. Louis, MO 63105-3199

Special thanks to the LCMS Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance and Concordia PublishingHouse for use of the artwork featured on the cover.

© Copyright by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri 2007www.csl.edu

publisherDale A. MeyerPresident

Executive EDITORWilliam W. SchumacherDean of Theological Research and Publication

EDITORTravis J. SchollManaging Editor of Theological Publications

EDITORial assistantMelanie Appelbaum

Student assistantsCarol GeislerJoel HaakMatthew Kobs

David AdamsCharles ArandAndrew BarteltDavid BergerJoel BiermannGerhard BodeJames BrauerKent BurresonWilliam Carr, Jr.Anthony CookTimothy DostThomas EggerRonald FeuerhahnJeffrey GibbsBruce Hartung

Erik HerrmannJeffrey KlohaRobert KolbReed LessingDavid LewisThomas ManteufelRichard MarrsDavid MaxwellDale MeyerGlenn NielsenJoel OkamotoJeffrey OschwaldDavid PeterPaul RaabeVictor Raj

Paul RobinsonRobert RosinHenry RowoldTimothy SaleskaLeopoldo Sánchez M.David SchmittBruce SchuchardWilliam SchumacherWilliam UtechJames VoelzRichard WarneckRobert WeiseQuentin

WesselschmidtDavid Wollenburg

Faculty

volume 34 | number 3July 2008

COncordiaournalJ

CONTENTS

EDITORIALs149 Editor’s Note

152 Where’s the Center?Dale A. Meyer

ARTICLES

157 What Are Ecclesiologically Challenged Lutherans To Do?: Starting Points for a Lutheran Ecclesiology

Charles P. Arand

172 The Trans-Congregational Church in the New Testament

Jeffrey Kloha

191 Thinking with Walther about the Church: Congregation, Synod, Church

William W. Schumacher

217 GRAMMARIAN’S CORNERGreek Participles, Part VII

BOOK REVIEWS

223 Highlights in Contemporary Ecclesiology: A Review Essay

John H. Rhoads

230 Additional Book Reviews

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Concordia Journal/July 2008

Editor’s Note

As we are preparing this special theme issue of the Concordia Journal, theBoston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are renewing their historic basketball rivalryin the 2008 NBA Finals. Much has been made of how Boston coach Doc Rivershas led his team to a marvelous turnaround season by rallying his players aroundthe slogan of ubuntu. Ubuntu is the traditional African concept that personhood ismost deeply realized in community. Hence, ubuntu is expressed in communal wel-fare, mutual high regard, unmitigated hospitality, and, yes, teamwork. It is expressedin the simple maxim: “I am what I am because of who we all are.”

It seems to me that ubuntu provides a powerful philosophical analogy toekklesia, to why God would gather his children together as one into the body wecall church. It is why individuals find themselves (in more ways than one) in a con-gregation. It is why a congregation finds itself in a synod. It is why a synod findsitself in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.

“I am what I am because of who we all are.”And yet, we find ourselves in an American context where it seems the oppo-

site holds sway. As part of his massive Pulpit & Pew research study, Jackson Carrollcites one of the central challenges faced by American clergy and their churches as“de facto congregationalism.” This reality confronts all of American Christianity, areality intensified by our ever-growing consumerist society and economy. De factocongregationalism is seemingly unique to American religious life. It is rooted in theEnlightenment notion of religious communities as “voluntary associations” ofautonomous individuals, part and parcel of the intellectual milieu in which“America” as a nation and culture was founded. As Carroll states in God’s Potters:Pastoral Leadership and the Shaping of Congregations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006):

This particular characteristic of American religious life has had itsimpact on almost all American religious communities. To varyingdegrees they all have come to adopt the voluntary principle. Almost allpractice what sociologist R. Stephen Warner has called “de facto con-gregationalism,” an organizational pattern that more or less follows themodel of the Reformed Protestant tradition that defines the congrega-tion as a voluntarily gathered community.... [T]his has important impli-cations for pastoral leadership in their work of producing religious cul-ture. (52-53)

American Christians, including those of us who find ourselves in TheLutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), have been living with these realitiesfor generations. And this is all the more true in a denomination that understands itspolity as a “modified congregational structure.”

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Yet, what does de facto congregationalism implicitly say about the church?What are the ecclesiological implications of such denominational structures? Theseare important questions, and this isn’t the first time they have been asked. But withthe publication of Congregation–Synod–Church, the study document of the Synod’sBlue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance, and in the adventof its ongoing work, we felt is was a good time to ask these questions again.

Hence, this special theme issue of the Concordia Journal.Its theme is ecclesiology. Its goal is to deepen and extend the conversation

about what it means to be church today, and what kind of church we—in one littlecorner of it—intend to be, already eight years into a new century. For us in TheLutheran Church—Missouri Synod this conversation has direct and significantimplications. But for the broader church, the implications are just as meaningful.This conversation impacts many American Christians, indeed many globalChristians. We enter into the conversation with the prayer that it may benefit thewhole church throughout all the world. And if we are to speak to each other withintegrity and charity, we must listen to each other openly and faithfully.

To that end, Concordia Journal submits the following voices to the conversa-tion. Concordia Seminary President Dale Meyer opens the discussion with theprovocative question, “Where’s the Center?” in the church today. Charles Arandfollows up with “starting points” in ecclesiology, especially as it pertains to theLutheran tradition, where ecclesiology is never cut and dried. Jeffrey Kloha thendigs into the New Testament foundations for “church,” particularly church as con-ceived as what he calls a “trans-congregational” community. William Schumacherfollows with a historical analysis of what one of the “founding fathers” of theLCMS, C. F. W. Walther, meant in his understanding of “synod,” how that culturehas changed in the intervening years, and what the historical implications are for usin a radically different cultural context. Finally, John Rhoads provides a compellingreview essay of “must-reads” in contemporary ecclesiology. All this is in addition tosome of the usual things you see in Concordia Journal.

But we should add a quick word about something you do not see, namely theHomiletical Helps. In light of what appeared as a kind of kairos moment in the life ofthe church, we felt the church benefitted from as much space as possible to talkabout it. For that reason, we made the difficult decision to cut the HomileticalHelps for just this one issue. Of course, the perception of kairos is often in themind of the beholder. So, we invite you to visit www.ConcordiaTheology.org, forhomiletical helps, and the ever-popular “Lectionary at Lunch” (under“Congregational Resources”) on the Seminary’s iTunesU portal (itunes.csl.edu).Both places provide a wealth of homiletical resources. And rest assured that this isa temporary hiatus; Homiletical Helps will be back with the next issue.

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As for the church, the Christ who is its head has promised that as long astwo or three or more are gathered, he is there. We—living as we are in the midst ofinnumerable communities who are yet one body—live in that faith, expressed inhope and love.

Or, in a word: ubuntu.Travis J. Scholl

Managing Editor of Theological Publications

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Where’s the Center?

I hope you keep that question in mind as you get into this important issue ofthe Concordia Journal. Through this issue the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St.Louis, invites you to theological thought and conversation about the study docu-ment prepared by the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure andGovernance.

So to the question, where is the Center of The Lutheran Church—MissouriSynod? The study document is titled, Congregation–Synod–Church. The center word is“Synod.” There was a time when structures of “Synod” were more central to thethoughts of the baptized about church than they are now. Back then, whatever itwas that commanded our loyalty to the Synod was commingled with other charac-teristics of our walking together. We were Americans, but largely a German ethnicchurch, often thinking in German categories even when we spoke English. We wereconcentrated in the Midwest, reflecting the demographics of early immigrants. Thetwo-pocketed offering envelopes reflected our commitment to work at home andsynod-wide efforts. From generation to generation we were loyal to our denomina-tion. If you moved away from home, you sought out the LCMS church and askedfor a transfer. All those and many other manifestations of our walking togetherhave changed or gone. Today you can ask our 2.4 million members (a decliningnumber which has us in a panic) about the Center of the Synod and they’ll tell youthey don’t care, that’s not where their faith life is. It’s certainly not the“International Center.” I recall the shocked look on the face of my district presi-dent when I told him that our church, a large congregation, didn’t really need theSynod. That was in the 1980s and it’s even truer today. Large congregations andassociations of congregations can do what the Synod historically has done. Timeschange, even for churches. “Here we do not have an enduring city” (Heb 13:14).

So is the essential Center the local congregation? Not without some majorqualifications. If a person is a “joiner,” any congregation may fit the need. Whenour members move, many do not automatically seek out an LCMS church but lookfor a congregation that fits what they like. Whatever compelled people to stay withLCMS congregations is not as strong as it used to be. We’ve been influenced by anattitude called “voluntaryism.” Senator Hillary Clinton expressed “voluntaryism”very well in the brouhaha over Senator Barack Obama’s pastor. “While we don’thave a choice when it comes to our relatives, we do have a choice when it comes toour pastors or our church.” There’s more going on than the lack of an inner com-pulsion to affiliate with an LCMS congregation. Who needs the bother of a con-gregation at all? You can get your spirituality from the TV, radio, internet, or at-home reading. Individualism is in the DNA of Americans and unless you’re a joineryou don’t need to bother with those church-going hypocrites, as the smear goes.And as we said, if you’re a joiner any church will do.

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So what’s the essential Center that makes the baptized glad to be part ofCongregation–Synod–Church? The very first sentence in my inaugural address in 2005was, “Concordia Seminary is all about Jesus Christ.” That is very close to articulat-ing the Center, but it’s an insufficient answer for the task at hand. In the controver-sies of the 1970s we heard fearful talk of “Gospel Reductionism,” of reducing thechurch’s discourse to the bare basics of sin and salvation through Jesus Christ.Rhetoric aside, I believe a certain kind of “Gospel Reductionism” has happened.My students preach class sermons that are scriptural but not textual (and all ourprofessors teach our students that there’s more than just “Jesus and me”). Wheredo our students pick up a Christianity that is robbed of the varied and far-reachingvitality of the living and active Word of God? Some argue that Synod’s public talkhas gone the same way, scriptural talk about outreach, stewardship, harmony, andthe like, with texts brought in for some predetermined purpose or program. Natureabhors a vacuum and a church that is not centered on deeper theological conversa-tion leaves itself open to all sorts of influences, some good, some bad, but usuallya surrender to American pragmatism. Many people dismiss the word “theology” asan arcane occupation and not relevant to daily life. Concordia Seminary, St. Louis,strives to bring theology down from the heights of Luther Tower to the hearts andhomes of people. Our own Dr. Robert Kolb has written, “Biblical interpretationand application in the Wittenberg way operated within a different framework fromits predecessors, specifically focused on pastoral care through proclamation… TheWittenberg way of exercising the office of public teacher of God’s Word presumedthat this exercise took place within the struggle of the repentant life and that God’sdisposition as the merciful Father placed the gift of Christ in the gospel at the cen-ter of the theological enterprise” (Bound Choice, Election, and the Wittenberg TheologicalMethod [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 66).

There, I believe, is the Center: a theological enterprise centered in theScriptures of Christ. Such a Center is manifest in congregations walking togetherbecause we talk together about our shared confession of the doctrines of theGospel. There are very few reasons left to perpetuate the Synod except that wewant to bind ourselves together around these doctrines and voluntarily hold our-selves accountable to one another for the theology we preach and teach. “Here wedo not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb13:14). We need each other, not so much for structured work as for nurture andgrowth in the full Word that leads to salvation. The masthead of Der Lutheranerused to remind its readers that God’s Word and Luther’s teaching shall never perish(Gottes Wort und Luther’s Lehr vergehet nun und nimmermehr). So much of our past isdead or dying. The study document is subtitled “Basic Theological PrinciplesUnderlying LCMS Structure and Governance.” Theology can’t just “underlie”; ithas to be our Center.

Dale A. MeyerPresident

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What Are Ecclesiologically Challenged Lutherans To Do?Starting Points for a Lutheran Ecclesiology

Charles P. Arand

When I was a graduate student during the late 1980s, I had the opportunityand privilege of assisting Dr. J.A.O. Preus, former president of the Synod, with hisbiography on Martin Chemnitz. While working through Chemnitz’s thoughts onthe church, we began discussing the broader topic of church and ministry. Duringthe course of that discussion he mentioned that at one time he saw Gerhard Fordewearing a button that said, “This man has no ecclesiology.” Jokingly, he quippedthat he wanted one as well! Part of what he meant was that Lutheranism inAmerica had long struggled with issues of church and ministry and would continueto do so into the foreseeable future.

Others have noted that Lutherans travel light on ecclesiology. Some mightsee this as a weakness. Historically, we do not insist on a particular polity or churchgovernment. Should congregations have voters meetings or boards of directors?We may prefer one or the other, but we won’t say that one is right and the otherwrong. Bishops? We can take them or leave them. Institutional mergers upon reach-ing agreement in confession? Not necessary, but they may be okay. In other words,given our approach to these questions, some might consider us to be ecclesiologi-cally challenged. Yet what some see as a weakness I see as a strength becauseLutherans focus on the theological essentials of the church. The rest we leave tosanctified common sense about how to organize ourselves within the world for thesake of the Gospel. This should position us well to address the desire for genuinecommunity with its attendant reactions against institutionalism in our day.

I. Where Are We Today?In his book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam documents the deterioration of

community in America as a result of a declining involvement in such things asPTAs, Lion’s Clubs, Kiwanis, book clubs and the like. These were places where weinteracted with people other than family members and fellow employees. Thesewere places where people talked about civic affairs and worked to build a common

Charles P. Arand is the Waldemar A. and June Schuette Chair in SystematicTheology and Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology atConcordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

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life together as citizens. Putnam notes that people still bowl, but increasingly not inleagues (hence the title of his book). Although Putnam suggested a variety of pos-sible reasons for the decline in community involvement, he argued that the singlegreatest source of this decline was the presence of “virtual community” in our tele-vision sets and on our computer screens. This kind of “engagement does notrequire commitment.”1

What Putnam documents as a decline of involvement in public institutionsand identification with community organizations can be seen also in our ownsynod. When the Missouri Synod was formed, its identity was tied more to a bookcalled Concordia than to an institution or bureaucracy. Confirmation committed usto the Small Catechism not to the LCMS. Our synod grew rapidly during its firstfifty years. By 1919, it was the largest Lutheran body in America. During the middlepart of the twentieth century, we began to look increasingly like a denominationwith the growth of a bureaucracy and the expansion of goods and services forcongregations (things that went beyond providing pastors and doctrinally soundmaterials). Synodical membership and public confession went hand in hand.

Since the 1960s, we have witnessed a decline of identification with thenational church body, fueled by an American individualism that separates spiritualityfrom organized religions (partly inherited from the radical Reformation and partlyfrom Thomas Jefferson).2 Rarely do people speak about “our beloved Synod.”More often than not, many people in our pews are unaware that such a thing as theSynod even exists. When people do know of it, they are likely to identify the Synodwith a corporate building and its bureaucracy. The Synod has become institutional-ized. We speak of “us and the Synod.” In the process, many have come to seeSynod (as corporate headquarters) at best as irrelevant to congregational life or atworst a roadblock to the mission of the church. This has in part prompted theSynod to consider proposals for restructuring itself at the 2010 convention. Thisraises a number of critical questions.

First, has the “Synod” become a para-church organization or an Americanversion of a European state church? We have seen a growing separation of confes-sional fellowship and synodical membership as evidenced by the organizing of‘confessional’ protests. Such groups may be in fellowship with each other but notwith others in Synod. They remain in Synod in part because they need some institu-tional support. The Word Alone Network provides a good example within theEvangelical Lutheran Church in America. So, has the Synod become a para-churchorganization as a provider of goods and services? It still supplies pastors throughseminaries and doctrinally sound materials from its publishing house. Beyond this,however, it has encountered increased competition from other organizations thatsupply hymns/songs, liturgies, sermons, and leadership training.

Second, what constitutes a person’s public confession today? In a denomina-tional age we based our decision whether to admit an individual to communion on



that person’s public confession. That public confession in turn was handily definedby that person’s membership within a particular denomination. We assumed thattheir membership denoted their commitment to that confession. But today, it is notuncommon to hear people argue that their membership within a particular denomi-nation does not de facto mean that they identify with or confess all that their par-ticular church body teaches. This raises an important semiotics question, namely,how do we interpret the significance or meaning of a particular action (in this casebelonging to a church of another confession)?

Third (and this semiotics question follows upon the heels of the precedingone), when a person comes to our church and requests permission to receive theLord’s Supper, does that individual person come as a representative of their churchbody (and everything that that church body teaches), and does such an action con-stitute an act of church fellowship? Most people probably see themselves as indi-vidual Christians and not as official representatives of any denomination. Or is itpossible to distinguish church fellowship (where congregations and pastors holdjoint worship services) from individual participation (where an individual from onechurch body communes at the altar of another church body simply as an individualChristian on the basis of an individual confession)?

Fourth, is the category of membership meaningful anymore today? At a con-gregational level, people float in and out. Is what matters simply their attendance?Is the desire not to become a member a desire to avoid long-term commitmentsand obligations? If membership does matter, how and why do we define it?Traditionally, we speak of baptismal members, communicant members, votingmembers, active members, and delinquent members. At the denominational level,one wonders whether pastors at times identify more with others in trans-denomina-tional movements (liturgical movement, charismatic movement, church growthmovement, the emerging church movement etc.) than with fellow pastors in theirown church body. These movements are generally not characterized by well-estab-lished, institutional structures.

Fifth, as congregations shop around for the goods and services they needbeyond the boundaries of their Synod, they become less dependent upon theSynod as an exclusive provider for their needs. This raises the question as to whythey need a synod, or why should they belong to an entity that we call synod? Ifthe reason is pragmatic, namely, we can do more things together than alone or canshare resources, such reasoning may no longer hold. As congregations become larg-er they become more self-sufficient and find that they have more than enoughresources to carry out their mission. So apart from pragmatic reasons, is there atheological imperative for them to connect with, be responsible for, and account-able to other congregations?3

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II. Basics of a Lutheran Ecclesiology

The decline of denominationalism challenges us to rethink afresh what itmeans to be church in the twenty-first century. But in order to do that, we mustconsider the basics of Lutheran ecclesiology. To that end, I will start with (andfocus on) the Small and Large Catechisms of Martin Luther.

In the explanation to the Third Article of the Creed, the Small Catechismbegins with the individual and then connects him/her to a community. I believethat the Spirit brings me to Jesus even as (gleichwie) he gathers all people to Jesusand keeps them with Jesus in the one true faith. The Catechism ties the Spirit’swork within me to the Spirit’s work within all other believers by means of theadverb gleichwie, which could be translated “even as,” “just as,” or “in the sameway.”4 The Spirit works in the individual Christian gleichwie, “just as” he does in thechurch. This construction parallels the explanation to the Second Article: “that Imay serve him in everlasting innocence, righteousness, and blessedness, even as (gle-ichwie) he has risen from the dead, lives and reigns through all eternity.” There, theresurrection of Jesus is the presupposition for me living under Him in His king-dom. So here, the existence of the church precedes me and in turn is the presuppo-sition for the Spirit bringing me to Jesus.

The Large Catechism unpacks these intriguing connections. There we readthat the Holy Spirit “has a unique community in the world, which is the motherthat begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which the HolySpirit reveals and proclaims, through which he illuminates and inflames hearts sothat they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it” (LC II, 42).5 When wasthe last time we thought about the church as our “mother”? What might that meanfor our understanding of church membership? Luther continues: “Through it [thisholy community] he gathers us, using it to teach and preach the Word” (LC II, 53).“Outside this Christian community, however, there is no gospel” (LC II, 56). Thishas enormous consequences. Individual persons do not come to faith apart fromcontact with the church. “The church is both chronologically and logicallyantecedent to the individual Christian life and to the existence of particular congre-gations.”6 The church gives birth to new Christians.

So just as the catechism rules out the synergism of American evangelicalism’sdecision theology whereby an individual chooses Christ (“I cannot by my own rea-son or strength”), it also rules out the synergism of American individualism anddemocracy whereby the church is created by the voluntary will of its members. Thecatechism’s treatment of the church runs counter to the “collegial concept of soci-ety” propounded during the Enlightenment “where communities are built up frombelow on the basis of each member’s free choice.”7 Put more bluntly, the cate-chism’s view of the church runs counter to the “whole idolatrous American pictureof the church as a voluntary society of like-minded people who band together to



suit only their own purposes.”8 The Spirit creates the community as he brings themtogether in Christ through that same community.

In the Small Catechism, Luther drives home the bond forged by the Spiritbetween the individual and the assembly by using the same verbs to describe theSpirit’s work within the individual and within the church (“called,” “enlightened,”“sanctified,” and “kept”). But now the Catechism adds the word “gather” to thelist. As the Spirit brings me to Jesus He gathers me together with others aroundJesus. I like the word “gather.” The Large Catechism explores it at length. ThereLuther expresses dissatisfaction with the German word Kirche to describe thechurch. He believes that most people too readily associate it only with a building(LC II, 47).9 I suppose that is true in our day as well when we talk about “going tochurch.” Nor does Luther like Gemeinschaft (communion) as it is too abstract. Theverb “gather” (sammelt) results in a concrete gathering, group, or assembly of peo-ple, believers, saints.

In the Large Catechism Luther suggests Versammlung (“gathering/assembly”)as a rendering for the New Testament word ekklesia instead of Kirche (“church”)(LC II, 47). He also uses Gemeine to translate ekklesia (prominent in his Germantranslation of the Bible) so that we should think of a Christian gathering or assem-bly. “When you hear the word “church” understand that it means group [Haufe], aswe say in German, the Wittenberg group or assembly [Gemeine], that is, a holy,Christian group or assembly.”10 In this connection, he also likes Christenheit (holyChristian people—Luther uses this in the Small Catechism) and Christliches Volk(Christian people). And so the Small Catechism renders the creedal phrase communiosanctorum (communion of saints) as ein Gemeine der Heiligen (community of holy peo-ple) instead of gemeinschaft der Heiligen (communion of saints), which he consideredtoo abstract and unintelligible in German. In the end, the Creed should read, “Ibelieve that there is on earth a holy little flock and community of pure saints underone head, Christ” (LC II, 51).11

Speaking of the church in this way allowed Luther (and Melanchthon) tocounter Rome’s claim to be all that there was of church. Rome thought of thechurch as a Gesellschaft, an outward society (organization) or kingdom defined by a person (pope) and a place (Rome and the territory it governed [Ap VII, 23]). The Roman Catholic polemicist Robert Bellarmine argued that the church was asociety “as visible and palpable as the community of the Roman people, or theKingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.”12 Thus one is a citizen of Franceif one lives under the jurisdiction of the King of France. So one was a member of the church if one lived under the jurisdiction of the pope. The church wascoextensive with the boundaries of the pope’s domain. People encountered thatdominion locally through contact with the bishops (Ap VII, 23 and AP 28).13

Within those boundaries, the hierarchy of the church prescribed the works that

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people needed to do with the assistance of grace (provided by the sacraments) inorder to merit salvation.

Luther considers this community or gathering by looking at what holds ittogether at its the center. The Small Catechism states on the one hand that theSpirit keeps the believer “in the true faith” and on the other hand that the Spiritkeeps the gathering of Christian people with Jesus in “the one common, true faith”(italics added). It adds the word einigen (one) to the phrase “the true faith” (im rechteneinigen Glauben; per rectam unicam fidem). Here the Spirit unites Christian lives at thecenter. The true faith is what we share in common. We are not simply a communityof faith but a community of the faith. What is the relationship between “keeping us with Jesus” and “the one true faith”? Here the Latin may be of some help. In its use of the ablative it suggests that by means of the true faith we are keptwith Jesus.

What happens within this assembly? In the SC we learn that within thisChristenheit, within this group of Christian people, “the Spirit richly and daily for-gives my sins and the sins of all believers.” The Large Catechism confesses,“Therefore everything in this Christian community is so ordered that everyone maydaily obtain full forgiveness of sins through the Word and signs appointed to com-fort and encourage our consciences as long as we live on earth” (LC II, 55). Thisactivity of the Spirit distributing forgiveness within the church is unique to thiscommunity and makes it a community of the forgiven. We do not get this any-where else on earth (LC II, 56). And here we receive it until the Last Day when theLord returns. It is a community of authentic forgiveness. “Here there is full for-giveness of sins, both in that God forgives us and that we forgive, bear with, andaid one another” (LC II, 55).

What is the advantage to considering this gathering of Christians from God’swork at its center? If the church were initially a human creation, “if it were a prod-uct of voluntary organizing, then the lives of people in it would be connected onlytangentially, functionally, and not centrally.”14 In a voluntary conception of thechurch where people choose to sit next to each other in the pews, choose to helpout in the potluck, support a missionary, and choose to serve on committees, it willappear that they are “involved only at the edges of their existence where a tempo-rary act unites them.”15 But such a view can lead to all kinds of problems. A volun-taristic conception of the church allows one easily to dismiss the organized life astangential to one’s faith life and insist on a spirituality of one’s own and become“self-feeders.”16 For Luther, Christian lives are connected at the center by the factthat they are fed with the forgiveness of sins that they have with Christ.

With these catechetical statements as a foundation, I propose that we pro-ceed to consider this gathering of Christian people within the framework of pas-sive and active righteousness.17 We are righteous before God by faith, which alonereceives the gifts of Christ. It is a passive righteousness. We are righteous within



the world by virtue of our activity whereby we serve the neighbor. Here our right-eousness is active. The former is the basis for the latter. We seek both but for dif-ferent purposes. As we saw with Luther’s Small Catechism, what applies to the indi-vidual also applies to the church. In some ways, this distinction parallels our distinc-tion between the una sancta and local congregations. The assembly that gathersaround the throne of the lamb (coram Deo) and is hidden from the world also gath-ers within this world and carries out activities in plain sight of people within theworld (coram mundo). So just as the individual Christian lives in two relationships, sothe church also lives in two inseparable yet distinct realms.18 The church coram deolives from the Word of God, and coram mundo it lives to deliver the Word of God toothers.19

Coram Deo: The Una SanctaThe reformers argued that in its vertical dimension, the church lives in the

presence of God (coram deo) as an assembly of believers, a gathering of those whobelieve the Gospel, a gathering whose head is Christ. As an assembly of believers,the church remains hidden to human eyes. Only God can see who belongs to thechurch because only He can see the faith that exists in hearts. As such, the churchis an article of faith. We believe that it exists even though we cannot see it. It is aneschatological community that will be revealed when Christ returns.

Clothed with the righteousness of Christ, bound to its head, Christ, the gath-ering of believers is holy. Just as the believer is righteous by faith in Christ, so thechurch is holy and without blemish (Ap VII, 7). Luther does not hesitate to call thisgathering a “holy Christian people,” a “community of saints,” and a “holy communi-ty” (emphasis added).20 “There is on earth a holy little flock and community ofpure saints under one head, Christ.”21 By contrast, “all who seek to merit holinessthrough their works rather than through the Gospel and the forgiveness of sinshave expelled themselves from the church.”22

Within this community of Christians, the believer not only receives a newidentity as a child of God, but she acquires at the same time a new identity as a sis-ter of other believers. God neither created human beings to be alone nor did herecreate them to be alone. To be alone is downright inhuman. That original humancommunity created by God is now recreated in Christ. As faith receives the benefitsof Christ it also makes me a co-participant with others who also have faith. “Ofthis community I also am a part and member, a participant and co-partner in all theblessings it possesses” (LC II, 52).

In this community we have brothers and sisters throughout the world. Thecatechism does not intend to alter the meaning of “catholic” when it renders catholi-cam with christliche.23 The term “Christian” explains catholic and emphasizes that thisassembly is gathered from all nations. Luther in his Confession of 1528 confessed“that there is one holy Christian Church on earth, i.e. the community or number or

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assembly of all Christians in the world.” It is not bound to the pope or Rome, toLuther or Wittenberg, to Walther or St. Louis, to the president of Synod or 1333 S. Kirkwood Ave.

This gathering of believers is not confined by time. It does not pop up inone generation and then disappear for centuries. As a gathering of believers createdby the Spirit and ruled by Christ, the church exists not only throughout the worldbut throughout all times. And so, the catechisms “look beyond the largeness orsmallness of the local assemblies to the entire Christendom on earth for which theperpetuo mansura can be claimed” (AC VII).24

It is a community that lives from the promise. For Luther, “the church is thecreature of the word” of Christ (WA 6, 551 Z1). In this way the reformers coun-tered the charge that talk of the church as an assembly of saints was to speak of a“platonic republic.”25 That is to say, the church is not simply some kind of an idealin the human imagination any more than the believer’s righteousness in Christ wasa “legal fiction” or “pretend righteousness.” The church truly exists, even as thebeliever is truly righteous, because the Word creates it. God’s Word makes thingshappen. By his Word, God calls into existence the things that do not exist (Rom.4:17). “When God says ‘Sun, shine,’ the sun is there at once and shines.”26 Wherethe Word is, there the church is. That brings us to the location of the universalchurch (coram deo) within local assemblies within the world (coram mundo).

Coram Mundo: Local GatheringsIf the church is hidden, how do we find it? Here Lutheran theology picks

up on the idea of marks, distinguishing characteristics (Merkzeichen) or earmarks(Kennzeichen) to identify the church coram mundo. Marks are identifying characteris-tics that we can see (as opposed to something being an object of faith). Indeed, thephrase notae ecclesiae will become something of a technical term for Lutheran ecclesi-ology beginning with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article VII).27

In sixteenth century Europe, Lutherans used the “marks of the church” overand against the Roman church’s assertion that the one holy Christian church wascoextensive with the Roman government or the kingdom of the pope. In otherwords, they used it to reject the notion that the church was tied to a person (obedi-ence to pope) or to a single place (the city of Rome). The marks were way a way of identifying the church beyond the boundaries of the institutional church inRome.28 In other words, Rome cannot kick us out of the church, nor have we leftthe church.

Our American context is quite different from the sixteenth century. Here wedo not deal with a single church structure (like Rome). Instead, we confront anynumber of entities or groups all of which claim the name “church.” How do weidentify the true church in the midst of countless denominational and non-denomi-national “churches”? Walther retrieved the language of marks and expanded them



not only to identify the existence of the church but to distinguish the true churchfrom false churches, the orthodox church from heterodox churches in America.

The emerging church movement’s reaction against mega-church structuresand denominationalism in America suggests that for many, the church has becomeidentified primarily with an institution (although anti-organized religion has alwaysbeen a part of American life). At the same time, the impulse toward small, tempo-rary, face-to-face relationships among Christians raises its own questions. Are suchgatherings church? How do we know? What are the characteristics of an “authen-tic” church in the twenty-first century? How do such communities relate to othercommunities across time and space? Here the marks of the church might provide astarting point for addressing such questions.

In the sixteenth century, Luther might on occasion mention two, seven, oreven ten marks of the church.29 The naming and numbering can vary. The list isnot inviolable. Marks simply describe certain activities of the church by which it isidentified. To that end, we will consider three groups of marks. In the process, Iam going to distinguish between these marks by speaking of infallible marks andfallible marks. In other words, there may be a variety of identifying marks by whichwe identify the church. Some of them, however, guarantee the existence of thechurch at particular places. Others provide a good indication that the church mightbe there, but do not guarantee it.

Gathered by and Centered in the Word

The preeminent marks of the church are those that create and gather believ-ers. In this regard, Luther’s concept of the Church bears some resemblance to “agroup of people assembled around a camp fire in the wilderness. All the attentionis centered upon the focal point around which they gather, not upon the shadowyfringes of the group and the comings and goings at the margin.”30 Here we mightalso draw on images from Scripture where people gathered at Sinai (Ex. 19), theWater Gate at Jerusalem (Neh. 8/9), and Mt. Zion where the nations gather (Is. 2:2)to hear God’s Word.31 The Word of God gave the gathering a center that made itsomething other than a club. In turn the assembly of believers “is defined by whatis done in their midst.”32 And so the proclamation of the Word is the preeminentmark of the church for Lutherans. This includes the Word in all its forms (howeverordinary): the spoken word, the visible word (sacraments), and the written word.Where they take place we could erect a sign that says, “God at Work.”33

Baptism gathers us into the church as the missionary sacrament. It createsnew relationships by bestowing the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (SC).Baptism creates the community of believers by snatching us out of the kingdom of Satan and bringing us into the community of the forgiven. In doing so, Baptismincorporates us into Christ’s own body and into dying and rising with him (Rom.6). It initiates us into the fellowship of the disciples (Matt. 28). Where Baptism

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gathers us out of the unbelieving world, the body and blood of Christ gathers thefaithful around the table. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a koinonia inthe body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). Through Christ’s body andblood we commune with Christ and are united with one another. “The prayerrecorded in the Didache summons believers ‘from the four corners of the earth’ to the local Lord’s Supper.”34

Other activities may be considered marks on account of their connection tothe Word. The confession of faith as set forth in the ancient creeds, the ApostlesCreed and Nicene Creed, provided an ecumenical thrust to Luther’s understandingof the church. It showed that Lutherans were no heretics. Similarly, Luther con-tended that the catechism made the Word accessible to the populace. And so thecatechism could be considered a mark of church within each household. He couldalso identify persecution as a mark in that it involved suffering on account of one’sconfession of the Word. Because the life of the church, the very existence of thechurch, depends upon the Word, the church must attend to the Word. The call intothe ministry involved entrusting one with the office of ministry and preaching.Prayer comes to life through Word. The Lord’s Prayer is first God’s Word to usbefore it becomes our word to God.35

When all is said and done, the Word is the preeminent mark of the church.Commenting on Psalm 90:1, Luther wrote

Therefore when you are minded to pass judgment on the church, you mustnot look for a church in which there are no blemishes or flagrant faults, butfor one where the pure Word of God is present, where there is the rightadministration of the Sacraments, and where there are people who love theWord and confess it before others. Where you discover these earmarks, thereyou may be sure the church exists, whether the number of those who haveand observe these earmarks is small or whether the number is large. We arecertain that there will always be some who are members of the church. (LW13:90)36

Although the Word is the preeminent and infallible mark of the church’sexistence, it is not the only mark. And so we move on to take into account thebond of love.

Gathering Identified by Mutual Bond of Love

Where faith is directed toward the Word, love is directed to the neighbor.Wengert suggests that the passage in John 13 (“by this you will know that you aremy disciples, that you love one another”) prompted Luther to consider love also as



a mark. In a sermon on foot washing for Maundy Thursday 1538, he wrote:

Let us see to it that we discern the church by its colors. The first is theGospel with the Lord’s Supper, confession of Christ and Baptism, that is, thecharacteristic markings. The second is foot washing, not simply externally buteven more excellently everyone as servant to the other. These are inborn inChristians from birth. Christian things are not recognized by their hats but bythese two signs: where Christians believe in Christ as saved by faith andwhere they humbly give themselves to one another.37

This does not mean that love is as primary or preeminent as Word andSacrament, or a guarantee of the church’s presence. But it is important. As a camp-fire song from my youth goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” Themark of love provides a very good indication that church exists in a particular placeeven if it does not guarantee the church’s existence.

The Word gathers us together as brothers and sisters (coram deo). Like a fami-ly, it brings us together to look after each other. As members of that one bodyChristians live in a community of mutual union, mutual concern, and mutualresponsibility to one another (1 Cor. 12 and Rom. 12). Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in TheCommunion of Saints, wrote, “The community is constituted by the complete self-forgetfulness of love. The relationship between I and thou is no longer essentially ademanding but a giving one.”38 Love involves setting oneself aside for the sake ofthe other. Faith in the Word enables Christians to be exo-centered rather than ego-centered.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession develops these themes of lovenicely.

Commenting on Colossians 2, Melanchthon notes: In all families and com-munities harmony needs to be nurtured by mutual responsibilities, and it isnot possible to preserve tranquility unless people overlook and forgive cer-tain mistakes among themselves. In the same way, Paul urges that there betrue love in the church to preserve harmony, to bear with (if need be) thecrude behavior of the brothers [and sisters], and to overlook certain minoroffenses, lest the church disintegrate into various schisms and lest enmities,factions, and heresies arise from such schisms. (Ap IV, 232-234; KW, 155)

Although love is a mark in a Christian gathering we must not turn it into an infallible mark. Moral goodness does not define the church as the Donatistsbelieved. They insisted on establishing their own pure bishops rather than receivingthose who had handed over the Scriptures to the authorities during persecution.

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Against them, Augustine argued that the sacraments depended upon God and notupon the moral purity of any person. Instead, the church consists of forgiven sin-ners. Wengert suggests that a variation on Donatism arose in seventeenth centuryEngland with Puritanism, which made moral purity (ministerial and congregational)the “watchword of the true church.” The views it promoted “came to dominateAmerican church life.”39 They remain the greatest temptation to church life inAmerica.40

Structure/Order/Polity

Human gatherings cannot exist without some kind of organization, arrange-ment, or working agreement. Which rituals do we use? What kind of practices dowe develop? When do we gather? Where do we gather? Who does what? What dowe do when we gather? The church cannot sustain or fulfill its mission withoutsome “stable organizational features.”41 The development of these arrangements,orders, or agreements are a function of the assembly. The community agrees tofunction together in certain ways that have at times been called “covenants of love”(Nafzger) made for sake of harmony and tranquility (Ap XIV and Ap XV).42 Andso from the beginning of its existence the Christian community had certain agreedupon features. It had recognized ministers and bishops, accepted creedal state-ments, and established certain forms of worship. Structures, whether they bechurches or businesses, inevitably undergo a transformation over time. When theyare new and small, they can operate more informally and adapt to new situationsquickly. As they grow larger, they require more formal arrangements and changebecomes more problematic. After a number of years, those who enter the churchoften discover that they inherit a structure with practices that have become ossifiedand difficult to change.43 Generally speaking, the church has taken two approachesto the matter of churchly practices.

On the one hand, the church is conservative when it comes to its center, thatis, the Word. The church exists to preserve and perpetuate the proclamation of theWord by which the church is gathered to Christ. For Lutherans, structures (semi-naries, church orders, etc.) serve to maintain a sustained orthodox witness to theGospel. Apology XV stresses this strongly: catechesis, singing of Psalms, and lec-tionary all are to serve the teaching of the Gospel. Similarly, arrangements aremade for the sake of mutual love and looking after each other (monasteries, hospi-tals, visitations, schools). And so Melanchthon stresses that they have gladlyreceived many of the ancient traditions because they serve good order and tranquil-ity (causa finalis) (§37-48). In fact, he goes on to boast that with regard to churchorders Lutherans observe them in a far better manner than do the opponents.Melanchthon looks at three areas, liturgy (§38-41), sermons (§42-44), and the issueof mortification of the flesh by fasting (§45-48) and foods (Ap XXVI).

On the other hand, at its periphery the church’s structures have been flexible

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and adaptable.44 They have adjusted to societal and cultural change. As such, theway a Christian gathers structures often reflects the dominant ways of arranginglife within society. For example, the ancient Roman Empire provided the churchwith an episcopal form of church government that not only reflected societal theo-ries of organization, but also fit into the missionary situation of the church.Geneva’s aristocratic social structure provided a Presbyterian model that had thepotential of putting the abilities of the rising middle class at the disposition of theGospel. Lutheran consistorial government reflected the early modern reliance ofGerman and Scandinavian rulers upon the new bourgeois bureaucratic form ofsecular government (Kolb). In North America, congregations order themselvesaccording to congregational voters’ meetings or boards of directors.

None of these forms of church government are in and of themselves inimi-cal to the confession of the Gospel; none can guarantee the Gospel. In this realmof active righteousness we are dealing with that which is better and worse. None ofthese activities dare become the basis for righteousness coram deo. But even corammundo, they are not of equal weight or importance. The proclamation of the Wordis the unique mark of the church. Forgiveness of sins is found nowhere else in theworld. It is the infallible mark for identifying the church within the world. Works ofmutual love and the way in which we order ourselves are also characteristics of thechurch in this world. But they are not necessarily unique to the church and thus arenot guarantees of the church. It is a bit like looking at birds. Bird field guides pro-vide descriptions of identifying marks. At a distance one might get a sense of whatkind of a bird it may be. As it comes closer we can see a few more markings thatnarrows the range of possibilities. When we can see exact markings we can identifythe bird precisely. So from a distance, we see a community that kind of looks like achurch (organization). But it might be any number of kinds of communities. As wemove closer we see people looking after each other—another good indication. Butwe don’t know for sure until we hear the Word that is being proclaimed.

Unfortunately, within the history of the church, certain fallible marks havebeen made primary. Rome tended to elevate the institutional side to the pointwhere it obscured the proclamation of the Word or rendered the Word less relevantto being the church. Mainline Protestant denominations may elevate mutual love,getting along, and being tolerant of each other above the other marks. But othergroups have that as well. Lutherans stress the Word alone. For the Word alonebestows the forgiveness of sins and righteousness of Christ that renders us accept-able and pleasing to God.

Endnotes1 Gordon Lathrop provides a good summary of Putnam’s thesis in Gordon W. Lathrop and

Timothy J. Wengert, Christian Assembly: Marks of the Church in a Pluralistic Age (Minneapolis: AugsburgFortress, 2004), 10-11.

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2 See Stephen Prothero, The American Jesus: How the Son of God became a National Icon (NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

3 See Will Schumacher’s article elsewhere in this issue for a discussion of this crucial point.4 “Time” would be gliechseitig. For example, “Even as she entered the room the man stood up

to greet her,” namely, at the same time or the very moment. The 1941 Synodical Catechism used“even as” while the 1986 translation has shifted to “in the same way.”

5 “The Christian church is your mother, who gives birth to you and bears you through theWord. And this is done by the Holy Spirit who bears witness concerning Christ” (LW 51: 166).

6 Martin Marty, The Hidden Discipline (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1962), 59.7 Holsten Fagerberg, A New Look at the Lutheran Confessions (1529-1537), trans. by Gene J. Lund

(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1972), 252.8 Marty, The Hidden Discipline, 58.9 One can call the latter ‘church’ only on account of the gathering of Christians within it.10 “Someone wanted to explain the first term, ‘catholic church’ [and added the words] commu-

nio sanctorum, which in German means a congregation of saints, that is, a congregation made uponly of saints. ‘Christian church’ and ‘congregation of saints’ are one and the same thing. In otherwords: I believe that there is a holy group and a congregation made up only of saints. And you tooare in this church; the Holy Spirit leads you into it through the preaching of the Gospel. Formerly youknew nothing of Christ, but the Christian church proclaimed Christ to you. That is, I believe thatthere is a holy church [sanctam Christianitatem], which is a congregation in which there are nothing butsaints. Through the Christian church you were sanctified” (LW 51: 167).

11 For an interesting discussion on this topic, see Thomas M. Winger, “Communio Sanctorum:Gemeine or Gemeinschaft?” Concordia Student Journal 15 (Easter 1992): 10-19.

12 Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Doubleday, 1987), 34.13 Dulles, 34-35.14 Marty, The Hidden Discipline, 60.15 Ibid.16 Ibid., 61. This appears to be the case in the recent study conducted by Willow Creek in

Reveal: Where Are You? (Barrington, IL: Willow Creek Association, 2008).17 See Charles P. Arand, “A Two-Dimensional Understanding of the Church for the Twenty-

First Century,” Concordia Journal 33 (April 2007): 136-145.18 The Apology of the Augsburg Confession makes this very point when it asserts that the

church is “not only an association of outward rites and ties, but is primarily an association of faith.”(emphasis added). At a critical point in Apology VII, Melanchthon highlights this distinction as the cruxof the entire issue (§-as on p. 18, 34 and 37).

19 See Charles P. Arand, “The Future of Church Fellowship: A Confessional Proposal,”Concordia Journal 25 (1999): 239-52.

20 Large Catechism, Creed, 48-49, Book of Concord, 437, BSLK, 656-657.21 Large Catechism, Creed, 51, Book of Concord, 437-438, BSLK, 657.22 Large Catechism, Creed, 56, Book of Concord, 438, BSLK, 658.23 “And Luther, who is trying to avoid the use of foreign loan words as much as possible, had

good fifteenth-century precedent” (ACP, 730). “The translation Gemeine der Heiligen goes back in thevernacular to Carolingian times” (ACP, 730).

24 Harding Meyer and Heinz Schütte, “The Concept of the Church in the AugsburgConfession,” in Confessing One Faith, ed. George W. Forell and James F. McCue (Minneapolis:Augsburg, 1982), 177.

25 Apology of the Augsburg Confession VII,20, Book of Concord, 177, BSLK, 238.26 Luther’s Works (Saint Louis/Philadelphia: Concordia/Fortress, 1958-1986), cited as LW 1:21-22.

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27 Wengert, 71.28 Of course, Rome and Bellarmine responded by coming up with their own marks (more

than fifteen, all of which must be present in order to be church).29 In his 1539 essay, Councils and the Church (to help “a poor confused person tell where such a

Christian holy people are to be found in this world”), Luther lists seven marks. In his commentary onPsalm 90 he identifies ten marks.

30 Jonathon Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 176.31 Lathrop, 732 Edmund Schlink, Theology of the Lutheran Confessions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961), 198. 33 See Robert Kolb and Charles P. Arand, The Genius of Luther’s Theology: A Wittenberg Way of

Thinking for the Contemporary Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008).34 Robert Jenson, “The Church as Communio,” in The Catholicity of the Reformation, ed. by Carl

E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 6.35 Wengert, 85-89. See also, “The Lord’s Prayer in Luther’s Catechisms: The Battle Cry of

Faith,” Concordia Journal 21(January 1995): 42-65.36 Wengert, 82.37 WA 46:285. Translated by Wengert, in Lathrop & Wengert, 83.38 Cited in Dulles, 50.39 Lathrop and Wengert, 6640 Wengert, 65-66.41 Dulles, 25.42 Charles P. Arand, “Not All Adiaphora are Created Equal,” Concordia Journal 30 (July, 2004):

156-64.43 See Dulles for an extensive discussion of the institutional dynamics of the church within its

history.44 Lathrop, 14.

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What we label a given item impacts how we understand it. So basic an issueas how we perceive color is affected by language labels. The English language, forexample, distinguishes blue from green, but most languages do not. Such languages,however (Russian, as one example), typically have distinct terms that distinguishshades of blue (of which “green” is considered a part), whereas English does not.Recent study has confirmed that English speakers were able to perform complextasks more quickly when those tasks were connected with distinguishing blue fromgreen, but less successful when the same tasks distinguished shades of blue.Russian speakers, on the other hand, accomplished tasks more quickly when cou-pled with distinctions between shades of blue than the same tasks coupled withdistinguishing blue from green.2

While not experimentally demonstrated, most of us have experienced thefact that the labels that we apply to a given speaker, author, or theologian will affecthow we view that individual’s statements. If our political leanings are Democratic,we will tend to view unfavorably a proposal labeled “Republican,” often regardlessof the merit of the proposal itself. Similarly, when using biblical commentaries forsermon or Bible study preparation, seminary students and even pastors have diffi-culty trusting an author who can be called a “historical critic,” even if a given com-ment or conclusion is not in the least based on those principles. Likewise, a “con-servative” commentary, such as the classic series by R. C. Lenski, will often betrusted implicitly, even when its argumentation is based on a faulty understandingof the Greek language. What we label something shapes our perspective of it.

So it is with language we use to describe the various examples of gatheringsand organizations of those who are in Christ. Specifically, in English the label“church” is typically applied to a socially recognizable entity such as a local congre-gation, as in, e.g., “St. Paul Lutheran Church.” “Church” is also regularly applied toa collective of individuals who share a belief but have no socially recognizablestructural or tangible connection to each other. Thus in the creed we confess “one,holy, catholic and apostolic church.” We also use the term to denote a subset —

The Trans-Congregational Church in the New Testament

Jeffrey Kloha

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Jeffrey Kloha is Associate Professor of Exegetical Theology at ConcordiaSeminary, St. Louis, Missouri.



though a still intangible subset — of the una sancta, such as the “LutheranChurch.”3 However, in our circles we are reticent to apply the label “church” to anysocially or structurally identifiable entity beyond the local congregation. Instead, weuse terms like “district” and “synod,” terms which (as we use them) are foreign tothe New Testament—and intentionally not “church”—to refer to the organizationsand structures beyond the local congregation.4

This is not the place to rehearse the reasons why our tradition typicallyreserves “church” to designate only the local congregation or the una sancta.5However, this essay will argue that both Acts and the Pauline letters use “church”(evkklhsi,a) to refer to three identifiable entities: 1) individual congregations; 2) sev-eral (or many) local congregations conceived of corporately, that is, a “trans-con-gregational church”; and 3) the church universal, or una sancta. Second, it will arguethat the New Testament’s labeling examples of trans-congregational manifestationsof church as evkklhsi,a leads us to recognize that also what we call “districts” and“synods” are properly called “church.” Third it will suggest some directions for theways that congregations, clergy, and laity should relate to one another within thesetrans-congregational structures precisely because they are “church.”

1. The New Testament: Churches and ChurchThe standard lexicon of the Greek of the New Testament classifies the

usage of evkklhsi,a under multiple headings.6 The term can refer to any “regularlysummoned legislative body,” (entry 1) or to “a casual gathering of people” (entry2), two usages which do not concern us here. The third entry, “people with ashared belief,” is subdivided by usage according to context: sub-entry 3a, listingexamples in the LXX referring to gatherings of Israelites; and sub-entry 3b, listingcontexts where evkklhsi,a refers to “Christians in a specific place or area.” Thisgeneral usage is further divided into references to gatherings “of a specificChristian group . . . involving worship and discussion of matters of concern to thecommunity” (entry 3ba) and to “the totality of Christians living and meeting in aparticular locality or larger geographic area, but not necessarily limited to one meet-ing place” (entry 3bb). It is the subdivision of this entry into, essentially, evkklhsi,aas a local gathering for worship and evkklhsi,a as a larger “totality” of congrega-tions that will concern us in this section. The third sub-entry (entry 3c) for evkklsi,a in BDAG is its use as “the global community of Christians,” further defined asthe “(universal) church.”

As outlined above, the typical usage within our circles is to use “church” torefer to local congregations (BDAG entry 3ba) and the universal church (BDAGentry 3c), but we have avoided the use of “church” as referring to any socially or

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structurally recognizable instantiation of “church” beyond the local worshippingassembly (BDAG entry 3bb). The avoidance of this usage has not only led us tomisread the use of evkklhsi,a in certain New Testament texts, it has also resulted ina failure to recognize the larger unity of the church beyond the local congregationin ways that are tangible and even structural.

1.a Church in the Acts of the Apostles

Early in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles we see evidence of a trans-congregational dimension of the church. On the day of Pentecost 3000 were addedto their number (2:41), yet they devoted themselves to the “breaking of bread”—most likely a reference to the Eucharist—which took place “in the their homes”(2:46). No house in Jerusalem could possibly have accommodated 3000 people;these new assemblies, now gathered around Christ, must have met in smaller clus-ters in individuals’ homes. Yet they also “met together in the temple courts” (2:46)and “Solomon’s colonnade” (5:12), and shared property in common and participat-ed in some form of food distribution for the widows (6:1-7) which “pleased thewhole multitude (plh,qouj)” (6:5). No doubt these smaller gatherings in people’shomes reflected to some extent the life of the synagogue in Jewish practice, andthey do not conform precisely to the modern day conception of congregation.Nevertheless, individual groups, each centered around the marks of the church(Word and Sacrament) and meeting in people’s homes, were at the same time partof a larger body which shared oversight (by the apostles), pooled their financialresources to carry out its work, and carried out evangelism (“the Lord added totheir number daily” 2:47).7 They could also be described collectively, as in the useof the singular to describe the collective “whole church” in the account of Ananiasand Saphira (evfV o[lhn th.n evkklhsi,an, 5:118). Communication about this eventreached all the individual “churches” (worshipping communities), again indicatingsome kind of relationship among them. Hence, there is an organizational structurethat corresponds to “something” that is “church” but is neither a congregation northe una sancta.9 To return to the categories used in the BDAG lexicon, evkklhsi,a inActs 2 refers to “the totality of Christians living and meeting in a particular localityor larger geographic area, but not necessarily limited to one meeting place” (entry3bb).

Just as the “church” in Jerusalem was made up of multiple worshipping com-munities but still called “church,” the singular of evkklhsi,a is used elsewhere inActs to describe the church as a trans-congregational reality. The most explicit ref-erence is in Acts 9:31:

So the church (h` evkklhsi,a) throughout all Judea and Galilee andSamaria had peace (ei=cen eivrh,nhn) and was being built up. And walk-ing in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, itmultiplied (evplhqu,neto).


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In this passage a textual problem highlights the issue. The question iswhether evkklhsi,a and the verbs of which it is the subject should be singular (“thechurch throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria“) or plural in form (“thechurches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria“). The singular, found in thestandard text, is likely the archetypical reading.10 Significantly, this reading wasunknown to the editors of the Textus Receptus and hence both Luther and the trans-lators of the King James Version. Had the correct reading been available to post-reformation theologians, perhaps the use of “church” in a trans-congregationalsense would not have seemed so foreign. In any case, here again the narrative ofActs is not describing individual congregations in its use of evkklhsi,a here, but“church” in a wider sense, a trans-congregational sense.11

This trans-congregational depiction of the church is reflected throughout thenarrative of Acts. As the church grows beyond Jerusalem, a connection is alwaysmaintained with the Christians in Jerusalem. When Peter preaches to Gentiles inJoppa, some of the “circumcision party” (11:2) in the Jerusalem church questionedwhether the Gospel could be for the uncircumcised. After hearing Peter’s descrip-tion of the work of the Holy Spirit, they “praised God, saying, ‘So then, God hasgranted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’” (11:18). As the persecutedChristians scattered to Antioch and preached the Gospel there, more people“turned to the Lord.” (11:21). Upon hearing of this, the Jerusalem church sentBarnabas, who seems to exercise some kind of oversight in Antioch when he“encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts” (11:23).Afterward Barnabas goes to Tarsus, and returning with Saul stays in Antioch for anentire year, during which “he met with the church and taught a great many people”(11:26). In this situation, Antioch and Jerusalem, both collections of individualclusters of congregations, share a concrete form of fellowship with one another.Furthermore, when Agabus predicts a famine in Judea, the financial resources ofthe church in Antioch are pooled and sent to the church in Judea, further evidenceof organizational connections, even if in this case they are ad hoc and temporary.

A word must be said about Acts 15, a text that is often used (albeit with mul-tiple interpretations12) as a model for the functioning of the church. Walther, as anotable example, viewed the “council at Jerusalem” as corresponding to a synod(gathering) of representative voting delegates, which voted on a theological matter,passed a resolution, and sent out a “synodical letter.”13 Such an allegorical approachis not the best way to handle narratives. Nevertheless, what the passage does showis that the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, carries out its work as a trans-congre-gational church in action. To describe the text briefly: There was division within thechurch regarding the necessity of circumcision for the Gentiles. Some “fromJudea” taught that it was necessary; Paul and Barnabas (from Antioch) did not.Significantly, the mere fact that these two groups were aware of, and concernedabout, the doctrinal differences between them indicates that there is an awareness


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of a larger unity of the church that extends beyond that of the local assembly. Inorder to maintain this larger unity, and to ensure that each church was teaching thetrue faith, those involved gathered together and submitted their understanding ofthe Scriptures in the matter. It should be noted that there was not a call sent out toall the evkklhsi,ai to gather for the discussion, only those directly involved met withthe leaders in Jerusalem in order to discern God’s will. The congregations foundedby the activity of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13 and 14 were not involved. Neitherwas every evkklhsi,a in Jerusalem involved; the “apostles and elders” alone met anddiscussed the issue. There is debate about what office the “elders” (presbu,teroi)held,14 but it is not impossible that the elders were the leaders of the individual“house churches” which were under the overall direction of the “apostles.” Thishighlights that not everyone’s voice was heard; perhaps oddly to us, no Gentileswere brought in to plead their own case, and whatever specific role the elders per-formed, they were a group distinct from the whole church (the plh,qoj, 15:12; cf.6:5) in Jerusalem. The whole church greets Paul and Barnabas but is not part of thecouncil.15 In the end, consensus was reached under the guidance of the Spirit andthe study of Scripture, as well as the example of the Spirit’s obvious work throughPeter, Paul, and Barnabas. Once the issue was settled, all sides agreed to submit tothe shared understanding of God’s will. This passage relates a major event in thenarrative of Acts, one with significance beyond what is discussed here. But for ourpurposes, it does show that the congregations functioned in real and significantways as a larger “church.” Wayne Meeks draws three conclusions from this accountregarding the “organization” of the early Christians:

First, we see that within two decades of Jesus’ death the community ofthose who believed in his messiahship and resurrection had become adistinct sect among the Jews . . . Second, we see a concern for unityand conformity. What happened among Christians in Antioch matteredto those in Jerusalem, and vice versa. . . Third, the primary means forresolving conflicts seems to have been meeting and talking.16

In this episode, therefore, there was communication among congregations, eventhough geographically distant; there was a desire to meet for resolution on a diffi-cult matter of teaching and practice; there was the assumption, indeed the necessity,of sharing the same confession and practice, even though the congregations them-selves were located in very different cultural contexts (Jewish for the church inJudea; Greco-Roman for the church in Antioch); and, likely the main point of thenarrative, the resolution, based on the Scriptures, showed that the Holy Spirit wascontinuing to guide the church (both the individual congregations and the trans-congregational church) as it made witness to Jesus Christ.

In sum, the Acts of the Apostles uses the term evkklhsi,a to refer both toindividual congregations and to clusters or groups of structurally, geographically,



socially, and theologically related congregations. Indeed, Acts uses evkklhsi,a almostexclusively in these two senses, not in its more abstract sense of “universalchurch.”17 This is no doubt due to the fact that Acts is a narrative, describing thework of God’s people in concrete terms as it fulfills its mission.

1b. Church in the Pauline LettersA similar conception of “church” as both individual congregation and as a

trans-congregational reality is found in the Pauline letters. The congregations of thePauline mission were composed of clusters of Christians that gathered for worshipin “house churches.” For example, Paul praises the congregation that meets in thehouse of Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3-5), and sends greetings to the “church” thatmeets in the house of Nympha (Col 4:15). These “house churches” seem to corre-spond to the conception of “church“ or “local congregation,” as defined by theLutheran Confessions: a social unit that gathers together around Word andSacrament. Yet these Pauline “house churches” do not remain isolated from eachother, either theologically or socially.

Two very specific phrases in Paul’s letters indicate that local house congrega-tions gathered together for certain activities, and that both an individual housechurch as well as several house churches meeting and described together could becalled “church.” First, Paul uses the phrase evkklhsi,a . . . evpi. to. auvto, to describethe Corinthian house-congregations physically gathering together in the “sameplace,” whether for worship (VEa.n ou=n sune,lqh| h` evkklhsi,a o[lh evpi. to. auvto,, 1Cor 14:23), or for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (sunercome,nwn u`mw/n evnevkklhsi,a| . . . sunercome,nwn u`mw/n evpi. to. auvto,, 1 Cor 11:18, 20).18 The secondphrase Paul uses is h` evkklhsi,a katV oi=kon (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:9; Phlm 2; Col4:15), typically translated as “the church in [their] house.” This clearly is used of a“house church,” but why does Paul does not simply label these “house churches” as“church”? Gehring argues that although katV oi=kon must be understood locally, i.e.,“the church which meets in a house,” at the same time katV oi=kon distinguishes oneparticular evkklhsi,a from other evkklhsi,ai which are in the same city.19 In fact, at 1Cor 16:19 “all the churches in Asia” send greetings, along with a single housechurch within the larger collocation of the churches of Asia, the one that meets inPrisca’s and Aquila’s house (su.n th|/ katV oi=kon auvtw/n evkklhsi,a|). Similarly, in bothRom 16 and Col 4 both “house churches” and a collection of “house churches”(called an evkklhsi,a) are greeted20 as “church.” Because the phrase katV oi=konappears only in greetings there is no clear indication of the activities that took placein the house churches. Based on this usage, Gehring concludes: “This means that,in the various cities, alongside the local church as a whole there existed housechurches in which most of the activities and life of the church took place.”21Combined with the evidence of the phrase evpi. to. auvto,, it can be concluded that in


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the Pauline letters there is no theological or practical distinction between “church”as individual local congregation and “church” as multiple congregations gathering,working, and confessing together.22

Knowing that “church” is both the local worshiping community and multipleworshipping communities enlightens Pauls’ argument in key passages. Twice in 1Corinthians Paul urges the Corinthian church to be what they are: part of the trans-congregational “church.” First, in chapter 11 the Corinthian Christians are rebukedfor their celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They gather as evkklhsi,a in order to cel-ebrate the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:20), but their practices of showing social dis-tinctions and distinguishing between Christians “shame those who have nothing”(11:22). In creating these divisions, the Corinthians not only destroy the unity ofthe local assembly, but also “despise the church of God” (th/j evkklhsi,aj tou/ qeou/katafronei/te, 11:22). “Church of God” here is not a reference to the Corinthianassembly itself, but to the wider church (as discussed above). H. J. Klauck pointsout that by contrasting the Corinthian evkklhsi,a with the evkklhsi,a tou/ qeou/, Paulrebukes the Corinthians for not truly living as “church”:

Both words [in 11:20 and 22] in the Greek are only evkklhsi,a. TheCorinthians must let their own existence be held up as a mirror. Theyare evkklhsi,a, but they accomplish in their church assembly only a cari-cature of this evkklhsi,a. When this present church fails, the ideal imageof the church is turned critically against it.23

This use of “church of God” to compare and contrast the Corinthian church isvery similar to his exhortations for the Corinthians to follow the practices of “allthe churches” (discussed below). Here, however, evkklhsi,a is used in the singular todenote the totality of other congregations; the trans-congregational church canrightly be called “church.” Furthermore, the point made by Paul deserves emphasis.When the local church fails to conduct itself properly as church, it reflects poorlyupon (i.e., “shames”) the entire trans-congregational church. Conversely, the localchurch is to view itself not as a unique entity, but acting in concert with the entire(trans-congregational) church.

The second time Paul compares the Corinthian church to the larger church isin chapter 12. Though in 12:1-27 the vocable sw/ma is used rather than evkklhsi,a,Paul had described the Corinthians as evkklhsi,a in 11:18 (as discussed above). Nowsw/ma is used, as it had been in 10:14-22, in a non-literal sense to emphasize theunity that should exist among the Corinthians. Though there are many “parts,” theCorinthians are all “one body” (12:12). God has arranged the individual parts “ashe chose” (e;qeto, 12:18). In the same way, in the evkklhsi,a God has “chosen”(e;qeto, 12:28) apostles, prophets, teachers, “miracles,” etc. Here again evkklhsi,a isused in its trans-congregational sense, since the offices of apostle, prophet, and



teacher transcend the local congregation.24 Once again Paul calls the Corinthians tospecific actions that correspond to those of the larger (trans-congregational)church. Just as God has arranged things according to his will in the church, so itshould go also in Corinth.

In addition to this usage of evkklhsi,a and evkklhsi,ai to refer to individualcongregations and collections of congregations in a larger geographic area, at thesame time Paul applies evkklhsi,a to the entire Christian movement. The “church ofGod” can be conceived of socially as a group distinct from “Jews and Greeks” at 1Cor 10:32, while in the same letter the Corinthian Christians are greeted as the“church of God in Corinth” (1:2). Later in the letter he describes himself, prior tohis conversion, as one who “persecuted the church of God” (15:9) which cannotbe a reference to a single congregation, nor to the una sancta, but to the church in acollective sense. Meeks notes that Paul’s usage of evkklhsi,a to refer to somethingother than its typical Hellenistic usage of a town meeting of free citizens “musthave been puzzling to any ordinary Greek” because it “names not just the occa-sional gathering but the group itself.”25

That evkklhsi,a is stretched beyond its typical Hellenistic usage is seen at 1Cor 1:2. There, the “church of God” (th/| evkklhsi,a| tou/ qeou/) is the general term,with th|/ ou;sh| evn Kori,nqw| the specific manifestation of the “church” in Corinth.There is a purpose to this use of language. Immediately this puts the Corinthianson notice that they are part of a larger body of those made church by God. This isreinforced by the greetings “with all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christin every place” (1:2). According to Anthony Thiselton, this greeting

reinforces the thought that the church in Corinth is not a self con-tained autonomous entity: they are not a self-sufficient community;they are not the only pebble on the beach. Their lifestyle and practicesare monitored by translocal “fellow workers” of Paul’s (notably byTimothy, 1 Cor. 4:17). And they are required to follow patterns ofthought and lifestyle which characterize traditions or “order”(diata,ssomai) “in all the churches” (evn tai/j evkklhsi,aij pa,saij, 1 Cor7:17).26

The Corinthians are to view themselves in very concrete ways as “church” connect-ed to the “church” throughout the world.

Therefore, the New Testament evidences social and practical connectionsbetween what we would label “a local congregation” (evkklhsi,a . . . katV oi=kon,Rom 16:5), multiple local congregations in a given city (evkklhsi,a . . . evpi. to. auvto,,1 Cor 11:20; th/| evkklhsi,a| tou/ qeou/ th/| ou;sh| evn Kori,nqw/|, 1 Cor 1:2), the congre-gations of a given province (ai` evkklhsi,ai th/j Asi,aj, 1 Cor 16:19; h` evkklhsi,akaqV o[lhj th/j VIoudai,aj, Acts 9:31) and the entire Christian movement (evkklhsi,a


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tou/ qeou/, 1 Cor 10:32). All of these are labelled “church” (evkklhsi,a) in the NTbecause they are all, in fact, church.27 This may seem an obvious point, of course.The question is, do we also consider larger associations of congregations “church”?Or only the local congregation and the una sancta? The purpose of these relation-ships between the local congregation and other congregations–as church–are to beexplored next.

2. The Trans-Congregational Church of the New Testament

2a. Shared Communication

In our day communication occurs instantly via text message, cell phone, ande-mail, and in what is called “Web 2.0” via Facebook and MySpace pages and blogs.The ease with which communication takes place today should not blind us to thefact that communication should not be taken for granted, and was carefully encour-aged and maintained among the NT congregations. The Pauline congregations hadextensive communication and social interaction with one another, encouraged bythe Apostle himself. For example, Paul reported the faithfulness of one congrega-tion to another. He greets the congregation at Thessalonica: “Therefore we our-selves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith inall your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring” (2 Thes 1:4). Healso praises congregations for their example, which has become known to other–attimes quite geographically distant–congregations (Rom 1:8; 1 Thes 1:7-8). Paul alsopraises the Thessalonians because they “became imitators of the churches of Godin Christ Jesus that are in Judea” (1 Thes 2:14). What goes for one church (in thiscase, persecution) goes also for another church, and Paul encourages theThessalonians to see themselves as sharing in the same reality of being in Christ aschurches that were located half a continent away.

Practical connections between congregations are also evident. In his lettersPaul frequently sends greetings from one congregation to another. At 1 Cor 16:9 agreeting is sent from “all the churches of Asia” to the church in Corinth. Thegreeting is doubly significant. Not only are greetings sent across the Bosporosbetween congregations, but a collection of congregations, all those of the provinceof Asia, send greetings together. There must have been some relationship amongthose congregations–beyond mere geography–that allowed Paul to conceive ofthem as a unit. Rom 16:16 also includes a greeting from multiple congregations:“All the churches of Christ greet you.” While the specific congregations that Paulhad in mind are not clear, it must refer to actual congregations, again conceived ofas a whole and in some real relationship among them. Further connections are seenin the very nature of the greetings themselves. Paul writes to Corinth, for example,while in Ephesus, and to Thessalonica and Rome while in Corinth. Thus the greet-ing in Rom. 16:1-2, which commends Phoebe from the “church of Cenchrae (a



port town of Corinth) establishes a direct link between Christians in Greece andRome. When Paul sends greetings “from all the saints” (Phil 4:22), he is referring tospecific congregations sending greetings to other specific congregations. Paul notonly sent greetings himself, but also arranged for individuals to visit other congre-gations and convey information about their home congregation. Most obvious inthis regard is Col 4:7-9, where the Colossians are told that Tychichus and Onesimuswill arrive and “tell you of everything that has taken place here.” In this way rela-tionships among congregations – not only between Paul and the congregations–arecreated and maintained. Indeed, the very purpose of Romans seems to be tostrengthen a relationship between congregations founded by Paul and thechurch(es) in Rome, which Paul had not founded.28 That these greetings wereintended to draw congregations together in very concrete ways is seen by the fre-quent exhortations to hospitality in the Pauline letters (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 3:2; Tit1:8; cf. also Heb 13:2; 1 Pet 4:9). Reidar Hvalvik notes in this connection that“There is . . . reason to believe that Christians on a journey often looked up thechurch when they arrived at a new place . . . By welcoming such guests the hostcould receive fresh information about other churches and about people from theirown church that had moved to other places.”29 No congregation was an island untoitself, and these connections could be called upon by individual members as theytraveled about and conducted business in the Pax Romana.

2b. Shared Practice

The purpose of this communication and interaction among the earlyChristians was not merely for social purposes. These relationships could be calledupon to encourage in the local congregation the beliefs and practices that wereshared by other congregations. Most obviously this occurs in the letter to Colossae,where Paul instructs them: “After this letter has been read to you, see that it is alsoread in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter fromLaodicea” (Col. 4:16; cf. also 2:1). This letter to Laodicea is no longer in existence,30

but these two letters, with their instructions, teachings, and exhortations, are intend-ed to apply to more than one congregation. Most scholars note that even 1Corinthians, perhaps the most situationally specific of Paul’s existing correspon-dence, was intended to be read by other congregations as well.31 Lars Hartmandraws together evidence from the Greco-Roman world as well as the PaulineLetters and concludes, “Paul wrote his letters to be more than occasional corre-spondence. He intended them to be read more widely.”32 In this way the teachingsand practices of one church would be the same as those in other locations.

That shared teaching and practice should exist among the “church of God”is seen most explicitly in 1 Corinthians. It is significant that even here where thereis controversy—perhaps even especially because there is controversy—Paul appealsto a broader unity of the church. In three passages in 1 Corinthians he appeals to


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the practice of the “church of God” when dealing with issues surrounding mar-riage and divorce (7:17), head coverings (11:17), and worship practice (14:33): “Ifanyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churchesof God.” More broadly he does the same in 4:16-17, where he tells the Corinthiansthat he has sent Timothy “to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach themeverywhere in every church.” That is, the practices of other congregations mustinform and shape those of the Corinthians. The Corinthians’ relationship to othercongregations is not simply that they have the same founder, or that they have vol-untarily agreed to do certain things together because it is expedient,33 but they arebound together in order to reflect the body of Christ himself. When one congrega-tion (or, in the case of Corinth, the congregations of a given city) deviates fromthose of other congregations, the erring congregation is challenged to return to theshared practices of the broader church.34

This is not mere submission to Paul because he is apostle to or founder ofthese churches, for Paul commands them to “submit” to the household ofStephanus and “such as these and to everyone who joins in the work” (1 Cor.16:15-16). Corinth could not have asked for correction, nor Paul given instructionby appealing to the broader church, if there was not a genuine unity of the churchthat is trans-congregational in nature.

2c. Shared Mission & ConfessionThough “mission” and “theology” are often separated, as if one simply mas-

ters theology and then carries out mission, in terms of the work of the church“mission” and “theology/confession” are inseparable. A key purpose of thechurch, as expressed by the NT, is to help its members make the proper confessionof Jesus Christ as Lord, who builds up his church. With “one Lord one faith, onebaptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all“ thechurch together, “speaking the truth in love,” is to “grow up in every way into himwho is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held togetherby every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makesthe body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Eph 4:5, 15-16).

The NT church demonstrates this purpose in numerous places. Perhaps themost dramatic is in Acts 15, where different churches taught different things abouthow the Gentiles could be a part of the church (teaching). But because they recog-nized that the church is bigger than their congregation, and that they in fact mightbe wrong, the Judean church and some from the party of the Pharisees, as well asAntioch, submitted to the wider church as it gathered in Jerusalem. This meetingcould only take place if the participants recognized that true confession is an essen-tial mark of the church, and together they carried the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Another dramatic example is Paul himself (Galatians 1-2). Here Paul narratesthe defense of his Gospel over and against the false teachers in Galatia by demon-



strating that his Gospel message had been accepted and approved on numerousoccasions. Most significantly, the Apostle himself goes up to Jerusalem to “setbefore them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel thatI proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had notrun in vain” (2:2). In the same context, Paul shows no hesitation in confronting andrebuking Peter when he saw that Peter “was not in step with the truth of thegospel.” Even an apostle submits himself the church to be sure that he “was notrunning in vain.”

The unity of the trans-congregational church is further reflected in the send-ing out of missionaries by several churches jointly,35 and by Paul’s request to thechurch in Rome that he be received by them and “helped on the way” as he contin-ues his mission work in Spain – essentially a missionary of the church in Antiochapplying for a grant from the church in Rome (Rom. 16:23-29).

One final example of shared mission in the NT is the collection for thechurch in Jerusalem. This was, at its core, a trans-congregational effort. Here sever-al individuals were “appointed by the churches” to accompany Paul (cf. 1 Cor 16:3-4; 2 Cor 8:19 which brought together the collection from multiple churches for thechurch in Jerusalem). The list of those participating, given in Acts 20:4, showsbroad participation: “Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and ofthe Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy;and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus.” The theological foundation given by Paulfor this effort shows that all the churches, no matter their ethnic background orlocation, are united: “your abundance at the present time should supply their need”(2 Cor. 8:14).

In many ways the church of the NT reflects their unity: through knowledgeabout and communication among even geographically distant churches, throughshared practice, even among churches in culturally diverse settings, and throughshared mission and confession. Somehow this could only have been accomplished(on a human level) if a structure of some kind existed, was maintained, and evenencouraged among the churches.

3. Implications for Life Together as ChurchThe NT writings do not command a specific church structure, neither for an

individual congregation nor to concretize the larger unity among Christians. Theydo, however, describe elements of that structure, such as the various offices of“bishop,” elder, and “deacon” (cf. Phil 1:1; Tit 1:5; 1 Tim 3:1, 8). In the LCMS wehave historically viewed these offices as adiaphora, and so do not use them.36 Thatis not to argue that Scripture mandates such offices and a hierarchical structure, butit should be noted that in our circles we have chosen to ignore clear NT descrip-tions of church structure in favor of different structures. How, then, do we legiti-mately read the NT in order to understand “church,” its nature, and in particular its


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structure? The emerging church movement, for example, claims to use the NTmodel of the church as its basis as well. However this movement comes to radicallydifferent understandings of church. In this model, the church is typically defined aslacking any structure, it is simply “living as community.” There is a lack of a trans-congregational understanding of church, and in fact emerging communities fre-quently define themselves against traditional structures. Even more problematic isthe danger of this movement losing a connection with the una sancta, since the indi-vidual, autonomous, self-defined group of authentic followers of Christ is all thechurch one needs.37 It may be that one reason the “emerging church movement” isgaining traction in the LCMS is because many pastors and congregations likewiseview the “church” as properly only the self-defined cluster of those seeking to liveChrist-like lives, and neither Synod nor any pastor or congregation in Synod has the“right” (pragmatically or theologically) to tell them whether or not re-orienting acongregation into an emerging model is a good idea.

The early fathers of the LCMS also used the NT to understand and structurethe Synod, though of course they came to a very different model than those in theemerging church movement. In particular, Acts 15 is used as the “example” uponwhich “synod” is based. Given the description of Acts 15 laid out in this essay, thecase can be made that Walther was right in viewing Acts 15 as “church in action”—i.e., “synod” as an assembly of the trans-congregational church conducting some ofthe work given it to do by consensual authority of the local congregation.38 At thesame time, however, Walther and the early LCMS framers of the synodical struc-ture chose not to use other passages. For example, Acts 1 and the choosing ofMatthias by lot was not adopted as a model for the selection of synodical officials.Walther, as far as I know, never addresses why Acts 15 must be followed but Acts 1should not. This is not the place to devolve into a discussion of hermeneutics,39

but the hermeneutical moves one makes in taking descriptions of the NT churchcan and should be clear. This essay seeks to lay out implications by moving fromtext to context as follows: First, the NT describes a “real thing” (the church) that ismanifest in various ways in the NT period. That same “real thing” (the church) stillexists today as “the synod,” though today it is expressed in different structures andorganizations. Second, we participate in the same reality of church that existedamong those who saw Christ, the apostles. To be avoided is allegorizing the NT tocome up with parallel structures, as may be tempting to do with “bishops” or“house churches.” Rather, here we seek to relate “the church” and its trans-congre-gational manifestations as described in the NT to what the church (local and trans-congregational) should look like in our day. In drawing out these implications,based on the previous discussion, this essay does not intend to be exhaustive ordirective, only suggestive. Pastors, congregations, and church leaders are encour-aged to reflect on the NT depictions of church and consider how they ought tolive as part of the church.



3a. Pastors and Congregations in Relation to OthersPerhaps the most overlooked aspect of the life of the NT church is the fos-

tering and maintaining of relationships among geographically distant congregations.How it goes in Judea is how it goes in Antioch, and Corinth and Rome cooperatein mission work together. As individuals travel, either as representatives of theirlocal church or even apparently as they conduct business they are welcomed bytheir brothers and sisters in other cities. Hospitality is encouraged. In our day ofinternet-booked hotels and self-guided tours such hospitality seems not to be need-ed. But is it to be avoided? And why not encouraged? As individuals travel overweekends should they not be pointed to a sister congregation? If possible, the hostpastor having been informed of their visit might even arrange a meal with individu-als from the host congregation. Worshipping together, sharing the Lord’s Suppertogether, even eating a meal together makes real on a personal level the fellowshipamong congregations that can and should exist. Conversely, congregations and pas-tors that refuse to celebrate the Lord’s Supper with their brothers and sisters in the(trans-congregational) church destroy the very fellowship which together “pro-claims the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).

A second significant aspect of the life of the NT church was the relationshipamong local “house-churches” in a given city. They shared letters with each other,gathered for worship and celebration of the Lord’s Supper together, and jointlysent out missionaries. While of course “house church” does not correspond exactlyto our constitutionally organized congregations, shared life together among congre-gations in a given city or area should be encouraged. Cooperation in areas asdiverse as shelters for the homeless or abused, food pantries, health services, youthactivities, and even days out for retirees reflect the unity that exists among localcongregations. Gathering for joint worship on such occasions as Reformation Day,or for mid-week Advent or Lent worship, or for mission festivals all reflect theunity assumed in NT statements like “to the churches of Galatia” (Gal 1:2) and“when you gather at the same place as church (1 Cor. 11:20). Beyond these exam-ples of situational cooperation, some congregations today are hearkening back toan earlier model of church structure. The Gesamtgemeinde in St. Louis, a “church” ofseven local congregations with C. F. W. Walther as their pastor, is now paralleled inmany situations where the ministries, budgets, and pastoral leadership of severallocations are combined into one structure. Whether intentionally or not, thisreflects in many respects the ways that the churches in Corinth and likely Jerusalem,and probably most other cities, related to one another. From there it is only a smallstep to the “bishops” of the second century and beyond in the history of thechurch. Nevertheless, these trans-congregational entities, not a single congregationnor a circuit, district, or synod, face their own set of challenges: That with the cre-ation of a larger structure the tendency may be to become isolated from other con-gregations and the trans-congregational church.


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Third, the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15) and the collection for the churchthere, as described in Paul’s letters and Acts 20, shows that the local churches par-ticipated in shared mission and work. Certainly congregations carried out their ownworks of mercy and gave witness to their neighbors about Christ. But at the sametime they participated with other congregations. In our day this is appropriatelyreflected in such efforts as human care, where individual congregations (and mem-bers of congregations) meet needs in their community, but also participate withother congregations in getting aid to locations worldwide.

Fourth, there is unity in confession and practice. One temptation for a localcongregation is to see itself as “autonomous” and therefore able to do whatever itsees fit as it carries out its work. At times these activities correspond to those ofnone of its neighboring congregations, let alone of the larger worldwide fellowshipof congregations. In such cases, perhaps American individualism and pragmatismhas affected our thinking. Nevertheless, the NT church went to great lengths toinsure unity of confession and practice. Again, Acts 15 is a prime example. Bothcongregations reaching out to Jews and congregations reaching out to Gentiles will-ingly met together in order to reach consensus regarding right teaching, practice,and mission. Corinth had good reason to think that its cultural context was uniqueand required unique practices. Paul, however, reminded them in four passages in 1Corinthians alone that their practices were to be the same as those of the otherchurches. And even Paul himself submitted himself to others in order to make surethat he “was not running or had not run in vain“ (Gal 2:2). If pastor or congrega-tion is teaching or practicing differently from other congregations in their fellow-ship, the reaction should be that of Paul, the Judean church, and Antioch: to seekconversation, prayer, study of the Word of God, and consensus.

3b. The Trans-Congregational Church

Although little specific is said, and even less commanded, regarding thestructures of the trans-congregational church in the NT, the larger church beyondthe local congregation is not free to organize itself in any manner it chooses. Itsstructures must reflect and contribute to its life as genuine church. It participates inthe same reality of being church as the local congregation. In this context, “trans-congregational church” refers to any structural entity beyond the local congrega-tion, be it circuit, district, synod, even international church organizations. A fewexamples may be brought forth for consideration.

First, since the church communicates and has genuine social fellowship withother churches, the trans-congregational church should work to facilitate such com-munication and fellowship in order to foster unity of faith, practice, and (perhapsmore nebulously) spirit. Second, the trans-congregational church carries out worksof mercy, filling the role of the Apostle in making sure that the abundance of onemeets the lack of another, so that there may be fairness (2 Cor 8:14). It is in a bet-



ter position than a local congregation to identify those places of need, though thelocal congregation certainly does its work as it identifies need. In addition, thetrans-congregational church calls and sends out missionaries, again because as itacts with the local congregations it is able to coordinate a broader perspective ofneed and opportunity. Furthermore, a major NT theme is that the trans-congrega-tional church works to maintain unity of confession and practice, and serves as thelocus for gathering together local congregations as they strive to maintain unitywith one another. This seems to be one area where the churches in America, what-ever their denomination, are having difficulty. Local congregations may be unwillingto submit to one another, and trans-congregational entities may be unwilling (orunable), for a variety of reasons, to bring about unity of teaching and practice.

Finally, something of a plea. It has become common to distinguish between“Corporate Synod” and “synod,” between “Synod, Inc.” and “synod.” While thelaw of the land of course, dictates legal incorporation and adherence to the law,this should not be the basis upon which we in the church define the church andrelate to one another in the church.40 The trans-congregational church in our daymust follow corporate regulations. It does not follow from this, however, that thechurch should act like a soul-less corporation when its representatives must dealwith matters of call, employment, and compensation. The synod is its pastors andcongregations, and we together are the synod. Though many today view trans-con-gregational entities as extraneous to the life of the local congregation, the NTspeaks otherwise. Circuits, districts, and synods, however they may be constitutedand arranged, are church. Local congregations are also that church. The currentconception of synod that many seem to have today, that it is a voluntary associa-tion — and nothing more — cannot be supported from the NT. By ignoring theNT understanding of the trans-congregational nature of the church we have weak-ened the bonds of fellowship, mutual concern and support, and unity in doctrineand practice which should inform and indeed define our life together as church. Byturning again to the New Testament we might sharpen our understanding ofchurch and apply that understanding to our structures. The goal is that the churchso structured and blessed by the power of the Spirit might all the more clearly con-fess Jesus Christ as Lord, so that every tongue might make that same confessionhere in this life and again finally at their resurrection on the Last Day.

Endnotes1 The term "trans-congregational" will be used in this essay to refer to the manifestations of

church larger than the local congregation but not the una sancta (as discussed in the body of the essay).Alternative terms may be "trans-parochial" or "trans-local."

2 As reported by Christene Kenneally, "When Language Can Hold the Answer," New YorkTimes, April 22, 2008. Available online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/science/22lang.html.

3 This usage of "church" is described in Congregation—Synod—Church: A Study Document OnBasic Theological Principles Underlying LCMS Structure and Governance (Blue Ribbon Task Force on


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Synodical Structure and Governance [LCMS], April, 2007), 11: "The Scriptures speak not only of the"church" universal (e.g. Matt. 16:18) but of local "churches" (e.g., 1 Cor.16:19, 1 Cor. 1:2, Acts 8:1,Rom. 16:16, 1 Cor. 11:16) when referring to Christian believers gathered around Word and sacra-ments. These are not two different churches or two kinds of churches, but are rather the one, holycatholic, and apostolic church we confess in the Nicene Creed. Local congregations are thereforeregarded as divinely instituted by our Lord through the Holy Spirit and therefore as possessing spiritu-al authority."

4 Again, as evidenced in Congregation—Synod—Church, 2: "Although we sometimes speak ofour Synod as a "church," it is, in fact, a human association of congregations and ministers, organizedto support them and to act in their behalf as requested."

5 Cf. Franz Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. III (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1953), 427-35,who argues primarily that what he terms the "representative church" is not church because it has onlyadvisory and representative powers. This is echoed in Congregation—Synod—Church, 12.

6 F. W. Danker, A Greek English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature,3rd edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. evkklhsi,a.

7 The reading "the Lord added to their number daily. But Peter . . ." translates the reading ofP 71 91 a A B C pc lat (o` de. ku,rioj proseti,qei tou.j sw|zome,nouj kaqV hvme,ran evpi. to. auvto,. Pe,trojde,). The reading of D sy and the Byzantine tradition, though incorrect, matches the usage of the sin-gular of evkklhsi,a in Acts to encompass multiple congregations: o` de. ku,rioj proseti,qei tou.jsw|zome,nouj kaqV hvme,ran th|. ejkklhsi,a|. VEpi. to. auvto. de. Pe,troj ("But the Lord added daily thosewho were being saved to the church. And Peter went up together . . . ."). Cf. BDAG, s.v. evkklhsi,a(3bb).

8 BDAG, s.v. evkklhsi,a (3bb).9 See Roger W. Gehring, House Churches and Mission. The Importance of Household Structures in

Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 86-89 for a summary of the relationship betweenthe Jerusalem house churches and the "church" in Acts.

10 The text as it stands in the Majority Text is the result of harmonization to the context. Notonly is the number of the noun altered (ai` evkklhsi,ai) but the number of the verb (ei=con) and theparticiples (oivkodomou,menai and poreuo,menai) is also altered. This is not exclusively a Majority Textreading, but is found also in the Old Latin and in E (which is a copy of Codex Bezae; Bezae is dam-aged here and so cannot be cited). So this is an early “Western Text” reading that has been adoptedinto the Majority Text, likely because it makes more sense to use the plural when referring to numer-ous congregations. However, one of the editorial characteristics of the Western Text is harmonizationto the near context; if the witnesses were reversed and the Western Text went against its tendencieshere there might be a slight chance of argument, but because the plural form is both the easier read-ing and characteristic of the editorial practices of its witnesses, it is most likely secondary. Eldon Eppsuggests that it reflects a further tendency of the Western Text to highlight the unity of the congrega-tions, but that seems to be an over-complicated explanation in this case; see his The Theological Tendencyof Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis in Acts, SNTSMS 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 100.

11 Contra K. N. Giles, "Luke's Use of the Term 'EKKLHSIA' with special reference to Acts20.28 and 9.31," New Testament Studies 31 (1985), 135-42. Giles argues that the plural should be readhere, though with questionable argumentation. For example, he rules out comparison to Acts 20:28 asa non-Lukan usage; that the singular evkklhsi,a refers not to congregations in Judea (as it does in Acts15) but to the single "church" in Jerusalem which had been dispersed by persecution; and reqiures asequence of variation that is not attested in the manuscripts.

12 Cf. the use of Acts 15 as an example of the difficulty in drawing application from narrativein J. W. Voelz, What Does This Mean? Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World, 2nd edi-tion (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1997), 330-1.



13 As found in "Dr.Walther’s First Presidential Address," (1848), included as Appendix D inCongregation–Synod–Church, 41-42.

14 Not least is the difficulty of whether the usage in Acts is derived from Judaism or from thatof the Gentile congregations and whether there is overlap between the two in NT usage; in theHellenistic congregations the duties of the "elders" included "exhortation and preaching in the churchservices" (BDAG, s.v. presbu,teroj 2ba); cf. J. Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles, The Anchor Bible 18C(New York: Doubleday, 1998), 483. Gehring (House Church, 105) tentatively suggests, regardless ofthe origin of the use of the term "elder," that "the elders mentioned in Acts 15 may well have beenmen who originally led house churches."

15 Hence, contra Walther in his first presidential address (see note 12), there were likely no laypeople present for the discussion and deliberation of the meeting at Jerusalem. However, as at Acts9:31, the text known to Walther differed from the standard text used today. At Acts 15:23, whichrelates the content of the letter sent “to the brothers from among the Gentiles," the "Byzantine" wit-nesses read "The apostles and elders and brothers (kai. oi` avdelfoi,) . . . to the brothers among theGentiles" The standard text reads "The apostles and elders, [who are] brothers (avdelfoi,) . . . to thebrothers among the Gentiles."

16 Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 113.17 Perhaps the only example in Acts of evkklhsi,a used to refer to the una sancta is at 20:28,

where Paul instructs the Ephesian presbu,teroi to "care for the church of God," though even here theinstruction is to a specific group of elders, each of whom are to care for a specific "church" which isa part of the larger Ephesian "church," and these all together along with other churches locatedbeyond Ephesus compose the "church of God." Paul is not instructing the Ephesian elders to watchover the "church universal" as abstracted from their local responsibilities.

18 Meeks, First Urban Christians, 108; Gehring, House Church and Mission, 155-59.19 Gehring, House Church and Mission, 157.20 Paul greets the "house church" of Prisca and Aquila at Rom 16:5 and the "whole church" at

16:23. At Col 4:15 the collective "brothers in Laodicea" are greeted along with Nympha's housechurch.

21 Gehring, House Churches and Mission, 157.22 A third phrase which merits further study in this connection is Paul's use of th|/ ou=sh|

(pa/sin toi/j ou=sin evn Rw,mh/|, Rom 1:7; th|/ evkklhsi,a tou/ qeou/ th|/ ou=sh| evn Kori,nqw|, 1 Cor 1:2). Asmany commentaries point out, the "which is in" is grammatically superfluous. It may in fact relate tothe Pauline ecclesiology described in this essay, that "church" is "church" no matter its size, composi-tion, or location. In the use of th|/ ou=sh| Paul is addressing specific instantiations of "church" (e.g.,which is in Rome or Corinth) which are connected to the larger church and should act as such, forexample by participating in Paul's mission work (Rome) or their teaching and practice (Corinth).

23 Hans-Josef Klauck, Gemeinde. Amt. Sakrament. Neutestamentliche Perspektiven (Würzburg:Echter, 1989), 33.

24 According to Wolfgang Schrage, "VEkklhsi,a kann hier nicht einfach auf die lokaleGemeinde von Korinth abheben (vgl. auch 10,32; 15,9), denn es gibt z.B. keine korinthischen Apostel.Der Apostolat ist ein übergemeindliches Amt." Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 3. Teilband 1 Kor 11,17-14,40, EKK 7/3 (Zürick: Benziger, 1999), 231 an. 702. See also Hermann Sasse, "Apostles, Prophets,Teachers: Concerning the Early History of the Office of the Ministry" in Scripture and the Church:Selected Essays of Hermann Sasse, ed. Jeffrey J. Kloha and Ronald R. Feuerhahn (St. Louis, MO:Concordia Seminary, 1995), 17-30 and in particular 18.

25 Meeks, First Urban Christians, 108. The typical hellenistic usage is found in the NT at Acts19:32.

26 Anthony Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000),74-75. Emphasis original.


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27 This confirms the description of the NT use of evkklhsi,a in BDAG; see note 6 above.28 Greetings between individuals are also sent (Phil 4:22 and 1 Cor 16:19), which indicates at

least a connection between individuals within the respective congregations, if not also between thecongregations themselves. See Hvalsik, pp. 130-31.

29 Reidar Hvalivik, "All Those Who in Every Place Call on the Name of Our Lord JesusChrist," in The Formation of the Early Church, ed. Jostein Adna (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005, 123-43,141.

30 Though Marcion labels what we know as Ephesians as the letter to the Laodiceans, it is notpossible to determine whether Ephesians is the letter that Paul instructs the Colossians to read.

31 Seen particularly in the greeting, "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sancti-fied in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all those who in every place call upon the name of ourLord Jesus Christ" (1:2). See Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, trans. J. W. Leitch (Philadephia: Fortress,1975), 23. Hvalvik, 134-40.

32 Lars Hartman, "On Reading Others' Letters," Harvard Theological Review 79 (1986), 136-46;citation on 145.

33 Paul's argument that he is "free" to do certain things (1 Cor 9:19-23) does not contradict hisdesire for unity in confession and practice; in 1 Cor 9 his freedom is to give up what one would preferto do for the sake of love of the other, "in order that somehow I might save some" (10:22).

34 Cf. Lockwood, 1 Corinthians (28): "On the one hand, the church in Corinth is fully church,with no gifts or graces missing. On the other hand, it is only one manifestation of God's churchamong many others, one outcropping, as it were, the one that happens to be in Corinth. . . .They areto obey the same apostolic Word that sustains all churches (cf. 4:17; 7:17; 10:32; 11:16; 14:33)."

35 2 Cor. 8:23 "And as for our brothers, they are messengers of the churches (avpo,stoloievkklhsiw/n), the glory of Christ."

36 Though the Lutheran Confessions allow their use; cf. Smalcald Articles III,X,1-2; Formulaof Concord, Solid Declaration 19.

37 Defining "The Emerging Church" is virtually impossible, as many observers note. EddieGibbs and Ryan K. Bolger (Emerging Churches. Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, GrandRapids: Baker, 2005) identify emerging churches by their "practices" of "(1) identifying with Jesus, (2)transforming secular space, and (3) living as community" (43-44). They note that "For many churches,the structure itself prevents family-type connections. An institutional way of being church must giveway to relational ways of being" (97); and, quoting Alan Creech, "The church as located somewhere,in a certain place, in order to connect with God, is not consistent with the New Testament. The'church in a place' contains and confines spirituality too much. It doesn't allow me to pray withoutceasing" (99). This latter statement is completely contrary to the argument of this essay.

38 See note 12 for Walther's discussion of Acts 15. While using Acts 15 allegorically to parallelthe "synod in convention" is mistaken, it is appropriate to see Acts 15 as calling the church to gatherin order to define true teaching and practice is appropriate.

39 Such a discussion is highly desirable, however, for there is not always agreement regardinghow to use narrative texts, for example, as normative for life and practice.

40 As Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians indicates regarding recourse to the legal system in 1Cor 6:1-8.


Thinking with Walther about the Church Congregation, Synod, Church

William W. Schumacher

Lutheran ecclesiology informs, but does not determine, Lutheran churchpolity. The structure and governance of the church are rooted in the theologicalunderstanding of the nature and mission of the church. This means that there isnot only one “orthodox” form of church polity, and that decisions about thechurch’s structure and governance are not purely theological decisions. Christiansproperly exercise great freedom in the ways they order their lives together in thechurch, since most of the details of such structure are neither required nor prohib-ited by the word of God itself. That is why church structures can and do vary indifferent times and places, without disrupting the unity of the faith. Such variationis legitimate, because the circumstances and contexts in which the church lives arenot the same everywhere. The church adapts to its environment in terms of itsstructure and governance, much as it adapts in terms of language. Yet theologicalinsight drawn from God’s word always guides and shapes the application ofChristian liberty in matters of church polity.

In the history of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, as in the historiesof other church bodies, discussions of structure and governance always move in atheological dimension as well as a practical one, and these discussions involve sensi-tive, central questions of the church’s identity. In fact, it is no exaggeration to saythat the theme of ecclesiology dominated the Missouri Synod’s early history andshaped its theological self-understanding. As the Synod wrestled with questions ofwhat it means to be church, C. F. W. Walther’s theology decisively influenced deci-sions about the Synod’s polity and structure from the very beginning. Walther’sengagement with questions about what the church is and how it orders its lifebegan in the early 1840’s — that is, even before there was a Missouri Synod — andcontinued throughout his life as one of the most important theological voices in19th century American Lutheranism.

Walther’s best known work for many students today is probably his lectureseries on The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. But his essays and discussions

William W. Schumacher is Mission Associate Professor of HistoricalTheology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he has taught since 1998. Healso serves as Dean of Theological Research and Publication.



of the church constitute arguably his most important theological work. His creativecontribution in the area of ecclesiology came about precisely because he seizedupon the American context as a unique opportunity to re-think the church fromthe ground up in a way that is thoroughly informed by Lutheran (and especiallyLuther’s) theology. In this study we will explore how Walther’s ecclesiology came toemphasize the importance and centrality of the local congregation, but we will alsocomment on important ways in which Walther pointed to a visible reality of thechurch which transcended the local parish and bound confessional LutheranChristians together. It will be argued that while more recent practice has tended tolay claim to Walther’s congregational emphasis, there is a need to recover hisinsights about the trans-congregational or trans-local character of the Lutheranchurch in our contemporary discussions of structure, governance, and fellowship.

In what follows, Walther’s main ideas about the local Lutheran congregation(German Ortsgemeinde) will be examined as he developed them on three key occa-sions. The first of these will be the Altenburg Debate in April of 1841. The nextwill be his famous Kirche und Amt, the theses on church and ministry, written aboutten years later and clearly a further development or refinement of the samethoughts expressed in the Altenburg Debate. It is necessary to review those earlierdocuments in order to appreciate a third important writing on the local congrega-tion, The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Local Congregation Independent of theState (often referred to by its short German title, Die Rechte Gestalt). These threewritings clarify the basic structure of Walther’s thinking about the local church, andalso let us observe him develop a set of connected ideas about the church as thesituation in America (and his understanding of it) developed. After examining whatmay be called Walther’s congregational ecclesiology in these texts, we will turn tohis most important essay on the trans-local church, The Evangelical Lutheran Church,the True Visible Church of God on Earth., in which Walther develops a somewhat dif-ferent conception of the “visible church” as a confessional fellowship which is notlimited to a local setting and helps local churches remember their ecumenicalresponsibility. For convenient reference, the theses from each of those documentsare appended to this essay.

Walther in the American Context

The context out of which Walther came had not traditionally fostered cre-ative reflection on church polity. Lutheran churches in Europe had largely retainedinherited structures which depended explicitly or implicitly on the existing politicalauthority structure. In other words, such churches represented various applicationsof the principle cuius regio eius religio by which the ruler of a territory was under-stood as having the legitimate authority to determine religious life within hisdomain. This arrangement supported the ecclesiastical order by means of secular

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authority and political power, but also gave the church’s authorities a stake in sup-porting and legitimizing the existing political order.

In the early decades of the young American republic, of course, the social,political, and ecclesiastical context represented a fundamental change to thatEuropean operating framework. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitutionprohibited government sponsorship of any church, and at the same time prohibitedthe government’s interference in religious practices. This meant that churches wereno longer able to lean on political authority for structure and support, but were freeto (and, in fact, were required to) organize themselves in whatever ways they deemedmost appropriate. When the civil authorities were intentionally disengaged fromchurch governance, Old World structures such as consistories simply could not bereproduced in America, and new arrangements began to take shape.

C. F. W. Walther was a young pastor in his late 20’s when he joined theEmigration Society that came to Missouri under the leadership of Martin Stephan.He was ardently and sincerely devoted to Bishop Stephan, since the older man hadhelped rescue him from his spiritual doubts as a pious but confused university stu-dent. Walther signed the document that named Stephan as bishop, in whichStephan was called “the last, unshakable pillar on the ruins of the now devastatedLutheran Church in Germany.” As they prepared to set foot in the New World,they put themselves entirely in Bishop Stephan’s hands. Walther, along with the oth-ers, had promised to Stephan their “sincere, complete, and childlike obedience.”1

Anyone who knows how events played out immediately afterwards must hearthose words with a sense of impending doom, like something out of a Greektragedy. In a classic case of hubris, Bishop Stephan’s authority was taken to beabsolute and unquestioned; his subsequent fall was swift and traumatic. The investi-ture document from which the words in the last paragraph were taken is datedJanuary 14, 1839, and by May 31 the same year Bishop Stephan had beenremoved—not just removed from office, but also physically removed from the com-munity and rowed across the Mississippi River to Illinois into exile. What followedwas much worse than a pastoral vacancy, or a leadership vacuum. The Saxon immi-grants had come to base the legitimacy of their entire project on Stephan himself.Loyalty to him, and submission to his authority, had become for them the hall-marks of whatever was left of true Lutheranism. It is no exaggeration to say that,in practice, they saw themselves as part of the true church because and to the extentthat they were associated with Martin Stephan.

Of course, this allegiance to a strong, trusted leader turned out to be aninadequate basis for ecclesiology! As soon as Stephan was gone, the rest of thecommunity could not avoid the question of legitimacy. If Stephan was no longerthe basis for their connection to the true church, what was? How could the com-munity’s clergy, including Walther, really claim to be pastors at all? After all, they

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had all resigned their calls from the congregations back in Saxony. They had beenordained by the Lutheran Church in Saxony, but they had also condemned thatchurch as theologically bankrupt and heterodox and had severed their connectionsto it, so that Saxon ordination hardly seemed like a solid foundation on which tobuild. If this group of immigrants on the Missouri frontier were not really achurch, then an immediate corollary was that these men were not really pastorseither. If they were not church, and they did not have pastors, then they could notbe sure about absolution, or baptism, or the Lord’s Supper. Suddenly, and in a waythey had never confronted before, the question of ecclesiology became an urgent,life-or-death question of salvation for the Saxons.

Young Pastor Walther was not immune to these doubts and struggles, butshared them and suffered great anxiety and guilt over his role in the whole sadbusiness. The uncertainty and insecurity lasted for nearly two years. In the winter of1840-41, Walther became ill and spent his convalescence reading Luther. It wasLuther who armed Walther with the insights he needed to challenge the lawyerAdolph Marbach, in the spring of 1841, to a public debate over whether the Saxoncommunity could legitimately lay claim to being a real “church.” The debate washeld in the tiny village of Altenburg at the log cabin they had built for their “col-lege” (seminary).

It will not be necessary to discuss each thesis in detail in order to summarizeWalther’s argument. But the shape of that argument is nevertheless instructive,because Walther does not simply give the “right answer” on the doctrinal questionat hand, but his approach exemplifies how one idea is connected to and leads toanother. At Altenburg Walther begins by talking about the invisible church whichembraces and includes all believers of all times and places who are united with oneChrist through one true, saving faith. That church is invisible to us (but not to God)because we cannot see the justifying faith in a person’s heart which is the constitu-tive factor which makes the person a member of the true church. What we can seeand observe is the word of God being preached and the sacraments being adminis-tered. These are the visible marks of the church, because through these objectivemeans of grace, the Holy Spirit has promised to be at work to create and sustainfaith in those who hear the gospel. And where God’s Spirit is thus at work makingbelievers through the gospel, there we can be sure the true church is being builtand established. The una sancta ecclesia, the one holy Christian and apostolic churchwhich is confessed in the creed, is constituted by saving faith in Christ, and thatfaith is the work of the Spirit through the word of the gospel in all its forms. Sothere is not only an invisible church but also a true visible church, namely theassembly or gathering of people where the gospel is preached in its purity and thesacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution.

It is very important for our considerations that we appreciate how Walther’sapproach directs our thinking away from organizations and structures and institu-

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tions, and makes us look for the “visible church” very concretely where the meansof grace are being offered and given, where there is preaching and teaching andbaptizing and absolving and communing. Such activity describes a real, tangible,local congregation, where these means of grace are regularly employed. It wasimportant to start with the invisible church because that helps us remember thatthe true church is about faith in Christ, not external connection to an institution.But thinking about the church cannot stop with invisible church because as soon asone talks about faith one must also talk about the way we obtain such faith, namelythe external word of the gospel. The true church is visible because the means ofgrace are visible, audible, tangible, and observable especially where God’s peopleare gathered around the gospel on a regular basis. An orthodox local congregationis therefore the primary and clearest manifestation of the visible church, in spite ofthe fact that every actual, real-life visible church has some people in it who are notgenuine believers. Those unbelievers are therefore actually not members of the unasancta; these “godless men, hypocrites, and heretics” (as Walther calls them) main-tain their visible, external connection with the church, but they do not constitutethe church. The church is what it is in spite of them, not because of them.

So far at Altenburg Walther has not said anything very surprising. But hedoes not stop there by proving that a true, orthodox local congregation (where thegospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly administered) is really“church” in the fullest sense of the word. When the circumstances leading up tothe Altenburg debate are kept in mind, it will be clear that he still had not answeredthe burning question in the minds of all the Saxons: are we church or not? Toanswer that, Walther moves on from orthodox congregations to companies orgroups or assemblies that gather around defective doctrine, who have departed insome degree from God’s truth and “have united under the confession of a falsifiedfaith.” Walther pushes the point that such groups or gatherings or “visible compa-nies” are also true visible churches because, and to the extent that, the saving of gospelof Jesus Christ can still be heard there, so that the Holy Spirit can still work justify-ing faith in those who hear the gospel. If the gospel is still there, even if it isobscured and partially buried under human error, then the Spirit still does his workso that “children of God may thereby be born.”

It should be obvious in the context of the Altenburg Debate that Walther isnot interested in excusing or encouraging heterodoxy or arguing that it doesn’t mat-ter whether the gospel is purely preached and taught in a congregation. He is notarguing against careful attention to doctrine, but simply reassuring the Saxons thatGod’s Spirit still works among them through the gospel to make them true mem-bers of the church, even though their “visible company” of immigrants was guiltyof serious errors of doctrine and life.

The local congregation, where the gospel is regularly at work in preached andsacramental forms, is “church” for Walther in the strict sense of the term. And

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even a heterodox congregation is a real church. That fact matters enormously, espe-cially to the Saxon colonists in Missouri in 1841. It mattered to them because itmeant that they could be saved as members of Christ’s church in spite of theirerrors and mistakes. They had not been cut out of the body of Christ when theysevered their ties with the Lutheran Church in Saxony. Their assembly—confused,misguided, perhaps even schismatic—could now with full confidence do things thatonly a real church can do: administer the goods of the church, establish the min-istry, call pastors, administer real sacraments, etc. What Walther did for the Saxonsat Altenburg was make it possible for them to live as a church, and that meant firstand foremost to live as a local congregation where the means of grace are at workmaking people into Christians.

The force of Walther’s argument at Altenburg rests on his ability to reclaimand defend a doctrine of the church which depends on God’s Word of grace, noton a trustworthy pious leader or a perfect polity or structure. He goes so far as tosay that a heterodox church should not be abandoned or abolished, but simplyreformed and brought into conformity with God’s Word. What this implied for theSaxons in 1841 is clear enough: the way out of their difficulties, even granting theworst construction of their errors in following Martin Stephan, did not requirethem to abandon their new life in America and disband their struggling congrega-tions. Rather, according to Walther’s final theses, they should examine and reformtheir churches to make sure that their public confession was orthodox, and thattheir members acknowledged and pledged themselves to that confession. Polity andstructure recede into the background as matters of little importance, in comparisonwith the centrality of correct doctrine and orthodox confession.

At Altenburg Walther’s argument about the church begins by focusing onsaving faith in Christ as that which joins a person to the church and defines thechurch. He then moves from faith itself (which is itself invisible to us) to the visi-ble means of grace by which God the Spirit creates and sustains faith; those visiblemarks locate the church and make it visible. And he ends by connecting those visi-ble marks to an orthodox public confession acknowledged and shared in commonby the church’s members. The church, strictly speaking, is constituted by faith inthe heart which trusts in Christ (fides qua). Walther’s Altenburg theses point to, butdo not develop significantly, the connection to the church as a visible company ofconfessors of the faith once delivered to the saints (fides quae). If Walther’s empha-sis on the means of grace as the location of the Spirit’s faith-creating work pushesWalther toward a congregational ecclesiology, his reference to the church’s publicconfession at the end of the Altenburg Debate leaves open the possibility of amuch wider understanding of church as confessional fellowship, a possibility whichhe will develop later in another context.

The Altenburg theses have commanded our attention here because the lineof argument Walther developed there became foundational for everything else he

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wrote on the church and the congregation throughout his career. He never aban-doned his initial clarity about invisible church constituted and defined by savingfaith in Christ; about visible church as a mixture of true and false Christians; andabout churches that are heterodox but nevertheless churches. His reasoning fromfaith, to the means of grace, to the local congregation where those means are atwork became the common frame of reference for all Missouri Synod ecclesiology,and has lastingly anchored our thinking about the church at the congregationallevel. This has to be seen against the backdrop of urgent needs in a bewilderingAmerican situation, but we should not imagine that Walther was just“Americanizing” or “democratizing” his Lutheran ecclesiology. It is probably moreaccurate to say that the new and unfamiliar situation he confronted in America, sodevoid of any existing church structures on which to build, forced Walther back tohis roots. He studied Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and especially Luther(perhaps more intensively than any other Lutheran in America in the nineteenthcentury) and came to understand the gospel core of Lutheran ecclesiology. Then heset about expounding an ecclesiology that faithfully reflected that core. His effortsat constructing church structures, at both the local and Synodical levels, followedon that ecclesiology. The American context of religious liberty and governmentnon-involvement in church life created this opportunity to “start from scratch” andorder the life of the church in a more thoroughly Lutheran way than had ever beenpossible in Europe, where the inherited church structures and historical connec-tions between religious and secular authority necessitated a series of compromisesand ad hoc approximations of what a Lutheran church could be.

Church and Ministry (1852)

The crisis with Martin Stephan was the first, but definitely not the last, chal-lenge presented by the complex and unfamiliar conditions in America. Very soonafter the Altenburg Debate had cleared the air for the Missouri Saxons, they had torespond to Pastor Johannes Grabau from Buffalo, New York. Grabau was aLutheran who had left the church of Prussian Union and had come to Americaabout the same time as the Saxons came to Missouri. In December of 1840 hewrote his famous (or infamous) Hirtenbrief (“Pastoral Letter”), in which he insistedon adherence to the old Lutheran church orders. Such conformity, he argued, wasnot only supportive of good order but also literally necessary for the real life of thechurch and the validity of the means of grace.

Walther and the other Saxons read Grabau’s letter with alarm. In spite of thefact that Grabau, like them, wanted to approach the topic and conduct his ministryout of a deep and sincere commitment to the Lutheran Confessions, the Saxonsdetected in Grabau’s argument an error all too close to their own mistake withMartin Stephan. Grabau’s understanding of the church did not begin with faith,worked by the Spirit through the word of the gospel, which therefore implies the

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centrality and churchly authority of the local congregation. Rather, Grabau seemedto presuppose the existence of some authority over the local congregation, embod-ied in the clergy collectively, which alone could validate the local congregation as areal “church” in the proper sense. The divine authority resided, in Grabau’s under-standing, not with God’s word itself, but with the office which proclaimed thatword. Such a view the Saxons rejected in no uncertain terms, and a permanent riftresulted between two groups of conservative German-speaking Lutherans.

The controversy with Grabau seemed primarily focused on the ministry, butWalther realized that the doctrine of the ministry cannot be properly understood orexplained apart from the doctrine of the church. He collaborated with pastorsLoeber and Gruber on an initial response to Grabau in 1843,2 but his classic andmost profound answer to Grabau came in the form of his Kirche und Amt [Churchand Ministry], published in 1852.3 Walther’s introduction to the volume makes clearthe context in which his theses are set, against the backdrop of Grabau’s virulentcriticisms of the Missouri Synod. Walther is clear that the issues at stake are notsimply questions of organizational structure or pragmatic concerns with theSynod’s constitution, but rather foundational doctrinal points about the nature ofthe Christian church and its relationship to the office of the public ministry. “Inorder to avoid misunderstanding,” writes Walther, “we declare expressly that in thismonograph we are not so much concerned about how the church is to be consti-tuted as rather with its essence and the principles according to which its manifesta-tions [Erscheinungen] are to be judged and on which its polity [Verfassung] is to rest.”4

In other words, Walther wanted to tackle the question of the church’s essence first,because only then do we have a foundation from which to judge and evaluate theparticular form or shape the church takes on in the world.

Starting with the church’s essence leads Walther to retrace his steps fromAltenburg. The invisible church consists in all believers, and only believers; the visi-ble church is identified by the marks of pure preaching and right sacraments. Thisimplies that the visible church is externally a mixture of true Christians and falseand ungodly persons, but the visible church nevertheless retains all true churchpower. One important implication of these truths is the further fact that the truechurch exists also in heterodox and heretical churches. All of this echoes exactlythe way of thinking sketched at Altenburg.

Walther makes explicit his conception of the local congregation as “church”in the full theological meaning of the term in theses 6 and 7, but this unpacksrather than changes his argument from 1841. The “visible church” he has in mindis first and foremost a local congregation, precisely because it is in that setting thatthe means of grace, which are the marks that make the church visible, are most inevidence. However, Walther puts much less emphasis on finding the church amongthe heterodox in Church and Ministry, because it was no longer the pressing pastoralissue it had been in 1841. The polemical context of the fight with Grabau shifted

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the emphasis away from the question, “Are we church or not?” At Altenburg,Walther argued that even a heterodox church should not be disbanded butreformed and renewed. By contrast, in Church and Ministry he urges that allChristians, for the sake of their salvation, must be careful to avoid false teachersand run away from churches that do not confess and teach the truth.

For the sake of time I will omit discussion of Walther’s theses on the min-istry which were connected to this rehearsal of his Altenburg ecclesiology. It isenough for our present purposes to recognize that the theses on the church areunchanged in their essential shape, in the line of the argument, from the AltenburgDebate, although the changed context has led Walther to add a more polemicaledge about the dangers of false teaching in heterodox congregations.

His work Kirche und Amt [Church and Ministry], first published in 1852, is theonly work of Walther which our Synod has definitively and repeatedly identified aspresenting our official public teaching, most recently at the 2001 Convention. Itwas for Kirche und Amt that the theological faculty of the University of Göttingenoffered Walther an honorary doctorate (which he turned down, but that’s anotherstory).

The Proper Form (1863)

Walther was a pastor, a teacher, a theologian—and an organizer. His impor-tance in the history of American Lutheranism, and of the Missouri Synod specifi-cally, is connected to all these roles. His influence is felt today as much in the waylocal congregations write their constitutions as in matters of national or Synodicalstructure. To see this influence, we could examine the constitution of Trinity con-gregation in St. Louis,5 which became the model for thousands of church constitu-tions throughout the Synod. But we turn instead to the third of the documentswhich develop the idea of the local congregation as church in a true and theologi-cal sense. Walther’s extended essay entitled “The Proper Form of an EvangelicalLutheran Local Congregation Independent of the State.” As many of Walther’sworks, this began life as a series of convention essays, and was first published as abook in 1863. (Note that the summary of the theses you have is not the completeset, but only the theses in which Walther defines the rights and duties of a congre-gation. His large third section, in which he discusses a whole series of practicalways in which these rights and duties may be exercised, has been omitted.)

Of significant theological weight in this essay are the first eleven theses, inwhich Walther lays out his understanding of the rights and duties of a congrega-tion. He does not rehearse the whole line of logic from the earlier works, butbegins in his introduction (theses 1-3) with a definition of a Lutheran Ortsgemeindeor local congregation. That definition hasn’t changed from Altenburg: it is still theassembly of people among whom the gospel is preached and the sacraments areadministered, with the explicit recognition that any such assembly can and will find

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genuine believing Christians mixed together with “false Christians and hypocrites,and at times even public sinners.” This visible assembly of people is really and trulychurch in the full sense of the term, in spite of the presence of non-Christians.What makes it a church is the fact that the Spirit is working through the means ofgrace there to create and sustain faith in Christ. What makes it independent of the stateis the fact that this local congregation has the freedom and opportunity “to ruleitself in all things.”

Walther does not point out what he and all his hearers knew: that such inde-pendence from the state and such freedom of self-rule has been the exceptionrather than the rule in the church’s history. Most congregations, in most times andplaces, have been constrained by their political or historical situation in ways thatlimit or even eliminate this freedom of self-rule. Even in Lutheran churches inGermany since the Reformation, local churches did not have the freedom to ordertheir own lives in independent ways based on nothing but their theology and con-fession. But in America the situation was quite different. What happened inAmerica with the ratification of the Bill of Rights (and its subsequent applicationalso to the legislatures of the states) was and remains a daring political experimentthat guaranteed the non-interference by government in the life of the local congre-gation.

Since most readers of this essay have grown up in this context of individualreligious liberty and government non-interference, we may take it for granted orassume that it is the normal situation. But that would overlook the really exception-al nature of the American experiment and therefore underestimate both the oppor-tunity and the challenge that faced men like Walther. For freedom and liberty cutboth ways. The local congregation which enjoys such freedom has the opportunityto express its true essence and character in whatever way will best embody theword of the gospel at work in it. But that freedom and opportunity also immediate-ly create a new necessity for the church to re-think and re-establish its own orderedlife, since nothing is imposed and nothing can be taken for granted.

What are the principles or essential foundations on which a church can prop-erly develop its form and structure? In other words, what are the rights of a localcongregation in this new situation of religious freedom? Walther, of course, is notparticularly interested in the legal or political rights of congregations, whether asinstitutions in the society, or over and against some kind of ecclesiastical structure.He is inquiring about the essence of what the church is by nature, and that is a the-ological question, not a political one. The fundamental right of a church (that is tosay, a local congregation) is the divine authority of the keys of the kingdom ofheaven, namely the power and authority to forgive the sins of penitent sinners andto retain the sins of the unrepentant. Walther asserts that the local congregationhas all the ecclesiastical power it needs when it is recognized that it has the powerto forgive sins. Every other authority or power flows from this prime and supreme

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right of the congregation. The congregation has this right from God himself, and ittherefore does not depend on or derive from any other source. The congregationdoes not receive its authority of the keys from a hierarchy or denominational struc-ture. It is not dependent for this supreme, divine authority on the presence of anexternally recognized ministerium. The authority to forgive sins belongs to the con-gregation by right and by divine command, regardless of the external circumstancesof the church, whether the congregation be large or small in number, richly giftedor confused and struggling.

From this fundamental right, the congregation derives its primary duties,which Walther lists in Section Two. The duties he identifies are: (1) establishing theWord as the lifeblood of the church; (2) care for doctrinal purity and Christian lifeof its members (including the duty of church discipline); (3) care for the bodilyneeds of members; (4) provision for decent good order in the church’s life; (5) pur-suit of unity with other orthodox churches in other places; and (6) building up thewhole Christian church as much as possible. Brief comments on these duties are inorder.

The first duty, that “the congregation should see to it that the Word of Goddwells richly and has free course in its midst” (thesis 6), includes but is not limitedto the establishment of the public ministry and the proper call of a pastor. Thechurch’s life in the word of God is not to be seen as restricted to the public min-istry of the pastor, but rather as the reason and goal of that ministry. Closely relat-ed to the centrality of God’s word is the next duty of pursuing and fostering purityof doctrine and life in the congregation. This serves as a powerful reminder thatthe supervision of doctrine is not primarily a task for an external ecclesiasticalpoliceman, but an internal duty of the congregation itself. The doctrine of a pas-tor’s sermons is subject to the careful scrutiny of the Christian people of the con-gregation. The confessional position of a congregation is a matter for all its mem-bers to take seriously, not the special domain of an elite professional caste.Members of a congregation want to be held accountable for their teaching, for thecontent of their faith, simply because they do not want to depart from the truth ofthe gospel. And part of that accountability is the congregation’s duty (not just its“right”) to exercise discipline. Notice, of course, that “doctrine and life” belongtogether, and that church discipline is to be exercised in regard to both. And “life”in this context should not merely be restricted to the personal morality of individu-als, but rather refers to all the ways our faith and confession express themselves.

Any discussion of the duties of the congregation according to Waltherwould be incomplete without mentioning what might be called the “ecumenical”responsibilities of each local congregation. It is well known, and often invokedtoday, that Walther and the Missouri Synod have, from its earliest constitution,ascribed a large degree of autonomy or self-governance to congregations. This wasand is a way of saying that the Synod is not an ecclesiastical legislature, imposing

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laws on congregations. On the other hand, it would be a gross distortion ofWalther’s position to conclude that congregational self-governance meant that con-gregations were simply free to “do their own thing” without consideration of anyother churches anywhere else. First and foremost, says Walther, it is a duty of everyLutheran congregation to work at building the unity of the Spirit with other ortho-dox congregations. This is the duty that gives rise to this thing we call a synod: eachcongregation is really church in the truest sense of the term, but all those churchesbelong in unity with all the other congregations that share this same orthodox con-fession (thesis 10). Later on he says that each congregation should regard anothercongregation’s need as its own. Congregations (and their pastors) are not meant tobe “free agents” and totally disconnected from each other. Just as individual mem-bers of a congregation are and want to be held accountable to their confession anddoctrine, so Lutheran congregations are and want to be (have a duty to be, inWalther’s terms) held accountable by other Lutheran congregations.

This duty of “ecumenical responsibility” that connects Lutheran congrega-tions to each other also makes them take seriously the needs and interests of thewhole Christian church (thesis 11). The duty of the local congregation extendsbeyond its own boundaries, not in the sense that every local congregation or everypastor should insert themselves into the affairs of their neighbors, but in the sensethat the congregation should look for ways that will build up and strengthen thewhole Christian church, including the Lutheran congregation in the next town andthe Presbyterian congregation across the street. For Walther, being an“autonomous” or self-ruling congregation brings with it the Christian duty of considering the needs of other Christian congregations.

The True Visible Church (1866)

All three of Walther’s treatments of the church considered so far trace very similar ground and proceed along similar lines. The result is that Walther’secclesiology is developed with a strong congregational emphasis. Indeed, one might be tempted to conclude from the material discussed above that for Waltherthe understanding of “visible church” which is essentially identical with the local congregation.

But that is not all Walther has to say about church, and particularly about the“visible” church. Walther’s theology of the church does not stop with an affirma-tion that the local congregation, gathered around the Gospel and the sacraments, istruly church and possesses all church power and rights, although he does stronglyaffirm those things. The works we have considered to this point might be read astending toward an exclusively congregational focus, as if each local Ortsgemeinde wasto be understood as an isolated unit, connected to the invisible una sancta, but withno necessary involvement in a visible church beyond its own local boundaries. Wehave already seen, especially in The Proper Form, that Walther rejects such an atom-

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istic view of autonomous congregations, since he included a concern for “ecumeni-cal responsibilities” among the duties of each local congregation. Yet a pervasiveindividualism in American culture and life tends to color our understanding ofchurch with a bias for autonomy and against mutual accountability.

As a corrective to such a one-sided congregational understanding ofWalther’s ecclesiology, we turn now to his essay The Evangelical Lutheran Church, theTrue Visible Church of God on Earth, delivered in 1866.6 The beginning of the argu-ment here is very familiar. Walther begins with the una sancta as the universal butalso invisible church, “the sum total of all those who truly believe in Christ.” Nextcomes the visible church, identified with “unmistakable marks by which its pres-ence can be known.” The marks are those which Walther had already identified atAltenburg twenty-five years earlier, namely the pure preaching of God’s word andthe “uncorrupted administration” of the sacraments. From this point about the vis-ible church then follows a consideration of heterodox churches (theses 4-6), whichWalther clearly distinguishes here from groups which deny the fundamentals of theChristian faith and are no churches at all (thesis 7).

The most significant new insight which Walther brings to bear in his treat-ment of the “true visible church” is a way of conceiving of the visible churchwhich cannot be reduced to or simply identified with a local congregation. This isthe Evangelical Lutheran Church, defined by Walther as “the sum total of all of allwho without reservation profess the doctrine which was restored by Luther’sReformation and was in summary submitted in writing to the emperor and therealm at Augsburg in 1530, and was treated and expounded in the other so-calledLutheran symbols, as the pure doctrine of the divine Word” (thesis 10).

Both Walther’s concepts of the local congregation as visible church and of amuch more comprehensive yet visible Evangelical Lutheran Church are aspects ofan ecclesiology of the Word. Walther knew what Lutherans are ever tempted toforget: that the church in its essence is not defined by forms or institutional struc-tures, or by the behavior of its members, but depends entirely on the Word ofGod. Walther’s complementary approaches to understanding the church revealsome implications of this Word-centeredness. Viewed as the “means of grace,” theproclamation of the Word focuses our attention on the local congregation as thesurest and clearest embodiment of the church. On the other hand, when theproclamation of the Word is viewed as “public confession” the church becomesvisible in a trans-local dimension, namely as all those who join in a common con-fession and are united in fellowship with each other by that confession. Whatemerges is not a different doctrine of the church, but multiple facets of the samedoctrine, as we grasp what it means for the church to be visible in the world by theWord alone.

It is important to bear in mind that Walther is not describing some kind ofabstract or theoretical entity, but has in mind a definite “visible” reality. Just as the

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local congregation is visibly marked as the church by the preaching of the Wordand the administration of the sacraments, the Evangelical Lutheran Church ismarked and located wherever and whenever this true doctrine is confessed. Suchconfession takes place in space and time, in specific contexts of culture and history.Yet the Evangelical Lutheran Church which Walther celebrates as “the true visiblechurch of God on earth” cannot simply be equated with the Missouri Synod, orwith any other denominational organization. It is defined not by organizationalmembership but by confession and doctrine, and confession is not the sole proper-ty of any institution. For Walther, the “Evangelical Lutheran Church” is muchmore comprehensive than the Missouri Synod or any other church body. What theMissouri Synod, or any Lutheran body, aspires and strives to be is a part of this“sum total” of all confess the doctrine of the Lutheran Reformation.

In fact, in the Missouri Synod’s history, there has been some ambivalenceabout considering the Synod as church in a real sense. Our terminology, at least,tends to hedge about whether it is appropriate to designate this body as “church.”Constituted in 1847 as the “German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri,Ohio, and Other States,” the Missouri Synod’s original name did not refer to theSynod as church. The Synod’s name was changed in 1947, and then included forthe first time the label church, though this was conditioned and modified by the“Missouri Synod” qualifier. In other words, we in the Missouri Synod have neverbeen entirely comfortable referring to our church body (or denomination) simply asthe Lutheran Church. While it is wrong to claim that the Missouri Synod can sim-ply be equated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church, it is also wrong to argue thatthe true visible church exists only in the form of local congregations, and not alsoin a trans-local confessional fellowship.

The question of whether we acknowledge the visible church in ways that arenot limited to a local congregation has a fresh urgency in Missouri Synod circlestoday. A formal process of considering new structures for our Synod is underway,led by the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance.Relationships of our thousands of local congregations and pastors to one anotherhave become somewhat problematic in places, and congregations (and individualmembers) do not always see themselves as accountable to each other in meaningfulways.

Conclusion

We have looked briefly at only a few of Walther’s writings about the church.We could add many more. He developed the connection between the congrega-tion’s churchly authority and the public ministry in a long essay entitled TheCongregation’s Right to Choose Its Pastor, which was printed serially in Der Lutheraner in1860–61.7 He was concerned with thinking through the relationship of these localLutheran congregations to each other in the wider church, as we read in Duties of

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an Evangelical Lutheran Synod (1879).8 But this study of several key writingsallows us to recognize the outline of Walther’s evangelical and Lutheran ecclesiolo-gy, which is grounded in the means of grace and therefore anchored in the life ofthe local congregation. The promise and peril of American freedom were the con-text that made possible Walther’s fresh yet faithful recovery of the treasures of theLutheran tradition in ways that had not been possible in an earlier context inGermany. We are also heirs of that same rich doctrinal heritage, and nourished by itwe confidently face our own set of threats and opportunities in twenty-first centuryAmerica.

Contemporary discussions about the church, as those in Walther’s day, can beclarified by starting concretely with the local congregation. We live at a time whenmany common assumptions and traditional understandings about the nature andmission of the church are being questioned or rejected. Many people talk about thetwenty-first century as a “post-denominational” age, and there is little doubt thatdenominational membership does not mean exactly the same thing in people’sminds as it once did. Denominational structures and institutions (such as TheLutheran Church—Missouri Synod) are viewed by some as more or less usefulpara-church service agencies, but not really as churches. Amidst such assumptions itis not helpful to start with a denomination or church body as a self-evident fact. Ifwe expect to come to greater clarity about the church, we are better off startingwith the visible, local, specific congregation. But our reflection on the theology ofthe church cannot stop at the local congregation, but needs to reclaim an apprecia-tion of visible (i.e., confessional) fellowships which transcend local autonomies andbind Christians together by a common confession of the Gospel. LutheranChristians need to think together about what it really means to be the church, to bea Lutheran church, and to be a synod of the Lutheran church. That project willlikely extend over a period of many years, far beyond our current debate over vari-ous specific proposals for modifying our structure and governance. Walther willhelp us in that long-term ecclesiology project, both by his grasp of the concretereality of the local church centered in the proclamation of the Gospel and by hisrecognition of the way our shared confession binds us to a visible church which isnot limited to the local setting.

Endnotes1 Carl S. Meyer, ed. Moving Frontiers: Readings in the History of The Lutheran Church—Missouri

Synod (St. Louis: CPH, 1964.) 134-135.2 Both Grabau’s Hirtenbrief and the 1843 Saxon “Evaluation” may be found in Soli Deo Gloria:

Essays on C. F. W. Walther. In Memory of August R. Suelflow, edited by Thomas Manteufel and RobertKolb [n.p.: n.d.], 141-176.

3 Church and Ministry [Kirche und Amt]: Witnesses of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on the Questionof the Church and the Ministry (1852), translated by J. T. Mueller (St. Louis: CPH, 1987).

4 Ibid., 9.

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5 Cf. the excerpt in Moving Frontiers, 166-170.6 In abridged form in Walther on the Church, translated by John Drickamer. Selected Writings of

C. F. W. Walther, August R. Suelflow, series editor (St. Louis: CPH, 1981), pp. 156-192. A fuller ver-sion, which draws together theses delivered at various district conventions, is available in Walther,Essays for the Church, volume 1 (St. Louis: CPH, 1992), 88-201.

7 Walther. The Congregation’s Right to Choose Its Pastor. Translated by Fred Kramer. Edited withdiscussion questions by Wilbert H. Rosin (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary, 1997). It is very significantthat this work was especially directed at a lay audience.

8 In Walther, Essays for the Church, volume 2 (St. Louis: CPH, 1992), 6-63.

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Appendix: Selected Writings on the Church by C.F.W. Walther

Theses for the ‘Altenburg Debate’ (1841) (translation from Walter O. Forster, Zion on the Mississippi, St. Louis: CPH, 1953)

I. The true Church, in the most real and most perfect sense, is the totality (Gesamtheit) of all true believers, who from the beginning to the end of the world from among all peoples and tongues have been called and sanc tified by the Holy Spirit through the Word. And since God alone knows these true believers (2 Tim. 2:19), the Church is also called invisible. No one belongs to this true Church who is not spiritually united with Christ, for it is the spiritual body of Jesus Christ.

II. The name of the true Church belongs also to all those visible companies of men among whom God’s Word is purely taught and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the institution of Christ. True, in this Church there are godless men, hypocrites, and heretics, but they are not true members of it, nor do they constitute the Church.

III. The name Church, and, in a certain sense, the name true Church, belongs also to those visible companies of men who have united under the confession of a falsified faith and therefore have incurred the guilt ofa partial departure from the truth; provided they possess so much of God’s Word and the holy Sacraments in purity that children of God maythereby be born. When such companies are called true churches, it is notthe intention to state that they are faithful, but only that they are real churches as opposed to all worldly organizations (Gemeinschaften).

IV. The name Church is not improperly applied to heterodox companies, butaccording to the manner of speech of the Word of God itself. It is also not immaterial that this high name is allowed to such communions, for out of this follows:

1. That members also of such companies may be saved; for without the Church there is no salvation.

2. The outward separation of a heterodox company from an orthodox Church is not necessarily a separation from the univer-sal Christian Church nor a relapse into heathenism and does not yet deprive that company of the name Church.

3. Even heterodox companies have church power; even among them the goods of the Church may be validly administered, the ministry established, the Sacraments validly administered, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven exercised.

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4. Even heterodox companies are not to be dissolved, but reformed.

V. The orthodox Church is chiefly to be judged by the common, ortho-dox, public confession to which its members acknowledge and confess themselves to be pledged.

Theses from Church and Ministry [Kirche und Amt]: Witnesses of the EvangelicalLutheran Church on the Question of the Church and the Ministry (1852) (from the transla-tion by J. T. Mueller, St. Louis: CPH, 1987)

Part One: Concerning the Church

1. The church in the proper sense of the term is the congregation [Gemeinde] of saints, that is, the aggregate of all of those who, called out of the lost and condemned human race by the Holy Spirit through the Word, truly believe in Christ and by faith are sanctified and incorpo-rated in Christ.

2. To the church in the proper sense of the term belongs no wicked per-son, no hypocrite, no unregenerate, no heretic.

3. The church in the proper sense of the word is invisible.4. It is to this true church of believers and saints that Christ gave the keys

of the kingdom of heaven, and it is the proper and only possessor and bearer of the spiritual, divine, and heavenly gifts, rights, powers, offices, and the like that Christ has procured and are found in His church.

5. Though the church in the proper sense of the term is essentially [according to its true nature] invisible, its existence can nevertheless be definitely recognized, namely, by the marks of the pure preaching of and the administration of the sacraments according to Christ’s instituion.

6. In an improper sense Scripture also calls the visible aggregate of all the called, that is, of all who confess and adhere to the proclaimed Word and use the holy sacraments, which consists of good and evil [persons], “church” (the universal [catholic] church); so also it calls its several divi-sions, that is, the congregations that are found here and there, in which the Word of God is preached and the holy sacraments are administered, “churches” (Particularkirchen [particular or individual churches]). This it does especially because in this visible assembly the invisible, true, and properly so-called church of believers, saints, and children of God is hidden; outside this assembly of the called no elect are to be looked for [anywhere].

7. As visible congregations that still have the Word and the sacraments essentially according to God’s Word bear the name “church” because of

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the true invisible church of sincere believers that is found in them, so also they possess the power [authority] that Christ has given to His whole church, on account of the true invisible church hidden in them, even if there are only two or three [believers].

8. Although God gathers for Himself a holy church of elect also where His Word is not taught in its perfect purity and the sacraments are not administered altogether according to the institution of Jesus Christ, if only God’s Word and the sacraments are not denied entirely but both remain in their essential parts, nevertheless, every believer must, at the peril of losing his salvation, flee all false teachers, avoid all heterodox congregations or sects, and acknowledge and adhere to orthodox congre-gations and their orthodox pastors wherever such may be found.A. Also in heterodox and heretical churches there are children of God,

and also there the true church is made manifest by the pure Word and the sacraments that still remain.

B. Every believer for the sake of his salvation must flee all false teach-ers and avoid all heterodox congregations or sects.

C. Every Christian for the sake of his salvation is in duty bound to acknowledge and to adhere to orthodox congregations and orthodox pastors, wherever he can find such. 9. To obtain salvation, only fel-lowship in the invisible church, to which alone all the glorious promises regarding the church were originally given, is absolutely necessary.

Part Two: Concerning the Holy Ministry or the Pastoral Office

1. The holy ministry or pastoral office is an office distinct from the priesthood of all believers.

2. The ministry of the Word or the pastoral office is not a human institu-tion but an office that God Himself has established.

3. The ministry is not an arbitrary office but one whose establishment has been commanded to the church and to which the church is ordinarily bound till the end of time.

4. The ministry is not a special or, in opposition to that of ordinary Christians, a more holy state, as was the Levitical priesthood, but is a ministry of service.

5. The public ministry [Predigtamt] has the power to preach the Gospel and administer the holy sacraments as well as the power of spiritual judgement.A. The ministry of the Word [Predigtamt] is conferred by God through

the congregation as the possessor of all ecclesiastical power, or the power of the keys, by means of its call, which God Himself has prescribed.

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B. The ordination of the called [persons] with the laying on of hands is not a divine institution but merely an ecclesiastical rite [Ordnung] established by the apostles; it is not more than a solemn public con-firmation of the call.

6. The holy ministry [Predigtamt] is the power, conferred by God through the congregation as the possessor of the priesthood and all church power, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in public officein the name of the congregation.

7. The pastoral ministry [Predigtamt] is the highest office in the church, and from it stem all other offices in the church.A. To the ministry there is due respect as well as unconditional obedi-

ence when the pastor uses God’s Word. B. The minister must not tyrannize the church. He has no authority to

introduce new laws or arbitrarily to establish adiaphora or ceremonies.

C. The minister has no right to inflict and carry out excommunication without his having first informed the whole congregation.

8. To the ministry of the Word, according to divine right, belongs also the duty [Amt] to judge doctrine, but laymen also possess this right. Therefore, in the ecclesiastical courts (consistories) and councils they are accorded both a seat and vote together with the clergy.

Theses from The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran LocalCongregation Independent of the State (1862) (abridged from Walther on theChurch, translated by John Drickamer. Selected Writings of C. F. W. Walther, AugustR. Suelflow, series editor. St. Louis: CPH, 1981)

Introduction

1. An Evangelical Lutheran local congregation is an assembly of believing Christians at a certain place among whom God’s Word is preached purely according to the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the holy sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution as stated in the Gospel, in midst of whom, however, there is always also an admixture of false Christians and hypocrites, and at times even public sinners.

2. A congregation is independent of the state when the latter allows it to rule itself in all things.

3. In order that we may know when an Evangelical Lutheran local congre-gation, independent of the state, is properly constituted, it is necessary for us to learn from God’s Word, above all, two things: first, what its rights and obligations are; secondly, what the proper exercise of these rights and obligations is.

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One: Rights4. All the rights of an Evangelical Lutheran local congregation are

embraced in the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which the Lord gave toHis whole church originally and immediately and in such a way that they belong to every congregation in equal measure, the smallest as well as thelargest.

5. With the keys of the kingdom of heaven every Evangelical Lutheran local congregation has all the church power it needs, that is, the power and authority to do all things that are necessary for its administration.

Two: Duties6. In the first place, the congregation should see to it that the Word of

God dwells richly and has free course in its midst.7. The congregation should see to it that purity of doctrine and life is pre-

served in its midst, and therefore it is to exercise church discipline in regard to both.

8. The congregation must make it its concern that all its members are well taken care of in their bodily needs and do not suffer want or are forsaken in any need.

9. The congregation must see to it that all things are done decently and in order, and this not only before the Lord but also before men.

10. The congregation has the duty to devote itself to the unity of the Spirit also with the orthodox church beyond its area in the bond of love and peace.

11. It is also the duty of the congregation to do what it can do in order that the whole church may be built up and promoted.

Theses from The Evangelical Lutheran Church, the True Visible Church ofGod on Earth (1866) (from Walther on the Church: Selected Writings of C. F. W.Walther, translated by John M. Drickamer (St. Louis: CPH, 1981), pp. 156-192.)

1. The one holy Christian church on earth, or the church in the proper sense of the term, outside of which there is no life and salvation, is, according to God’s Word, the sum total of all those who truly believe in Christ and are sanctified through this faith.

2. While the one holy Christian church as a spiritual temple cannot be seen, but only believed, there are nevertheless unmistakable outward marks by which its presence can be known. These marks are the pure preaching of the Word of God and the uncorrupted administration of the holy sacraments.

3. In an improper sense Scripture calls also those visible communions

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“churches” which, though consisting not only of believers or such as are sanctified through faith, but having also hypocrites and wicked persons, nevertheless teach the Gospel in its purity and administer the holy sacra-ments according to the Gospel.

4. Scripture calls even such visible communions “churches” as are guilty of a partial deviation from the pure doctrine of the Word of God as long as they still retain God’s Word essentially.

5. Fellowships which, though retaining God’s Word essentially, nevertheless err obstinately in fundamentals of the Word of God, are, insofar as they do this, not churches in the sense of Scripture but factions or sects, that is, heretical fellowships.

6. Fellowships that disrupt the unity of the church through errors not destroying the foundation of the faith, or because of persons, ceremonies, or matters of life, are, according to God’s Word, sects (schisms) or separatistic fellowships.

7. Fellowships that call themselves Christian but do not recognize the Bible as the Word of God and so deny the Holy trinity are, according to God’s Word, not churches, but synagogues of Satan and temples of idols.

8. While ecclesiastical writers at times call those fellowships true or real churches that retain God’s Word essentially, in distinction from those that are not churches, nevertheless a true visible church in the strict sense of the term, in opposition to heterodox churches or sects, is only that in which God’s Word is proclaimed in its purity and the sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.

9. While, according to the divine promises, it is impossible for the one holy Christian church ever to perish, it is indeed possible, and it has actually happened at times, that in the full sense of the term there was no true visible church, namely one in which the preaching of the pure Word of God and the administration of the uncorrupted sacraments was carried

10. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is the sum total of all of all who with-out reservation profess the doctrine which was restored by Luther’s Reformation and was in summary submitted in writing to the emperor and the realm at Augsburg in 1530, and was treated and expounded in the other so-called Lutheran symbols, as the pure doctrine of the divine Word.

11. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is not the one holy Christian church outside of which there is no salvation, although it has never separated itself from the same and professes no other.

12. If the Evangelical Lutheran Church has the marks that it preaches the Gospel in its purity and administers the sacraments according to the Gospel, it is also the true visible church of God on earth.

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13. The Evangelical Lutheran Church recognizes the written Word of the apostles and prophets as the sole and perfect source, rule, and norm, and as the judge of all doctrine; (a) not reason; (b) not tradition; (c) not new revelations.

14. The Evangelical Lutheran Church professes the clarity of Holy Scripture (Private Views — Open Questions).

15. The Evangelical Lutheran Church recognizes no human interpreter of Holy Scripture whose official interpretation must be regarded as infallible and binding; a. not any individual person; b. not any special class; c. not any special or universal church council; d. not the whole church.

16. The Evangelical Lutheran Church accepts God’s Word as it interprets itself.A. The Evangelical Lutheran Church leaves the decision solely to the

original text.B. The Evangelical Lutheran Church, in its interpretation of words and

sentences, adheres to linguistic usage.C. The Evangelical Lutheran Church recognizes only the literal sense as

the true meaning.D. The Evangelical Lutheran Church maintains that there is but one

literal sense.E. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is guided in its interpretation

by the context and purpose.F. The Evangelical Lutheran Church recognizes that the literal sense

may be either the improper or the proper one; however, it does not deviate from the proper meaning of a word or sentence unless Scripture itself forces it to do so, namely by either the textual circumstances or a parallel passage or the analogy of faith.

G. The Evangelical Lutheran Church interprets the obscure passagesin the light of the clear.

H. The Evangelical Lutheran Church takes the articles of faith from those passages in which they are expressly taught, and judges according to these all incidental expressions regarding them.

I. The Evangelical Lutheran Church rejects from the very outset every interpretation which does not agree with the analogy of faith (Rom. 12:6).

17. The Evangelical Lutheran Church accepts the written Word of God (as God’s Word) in its entirety, regarding nothing set forth in it as superfluous or unimportant, but everything as necessary and important; it accepts also all doctrines which necessarily follow from the Scripture words.

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18. The Evangelical Lutheran Church assigns to every doctrine of Scripture the rank and significance which it is given in God’s Word itself.A. As the foundation, core, and guiding star of all teaching it regards

the doctrine of Christ or of justification.B. The Evangelical Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between

Law and Gospel.C. The Evangelical Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between

fundamental and nonfundamental articles set forth in Scripture.D. The Evangelical Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply between

what God’s Word commands and what it leaves to Christian liberty (adiaphora, ecclesiastical organization).

E. The Evangelical Lutheran Church distinguishes sharply and cau-tiously between the Old and New Testament.

19. The Evangelical Lutheran Church adopts as an article of faith no teach-ing not shown with incontestable certainty to be contained in the Word of God.

20. The Evangelical Lutheran Church highly esteems the gift of Scriptural interpretation as it is given by God to individual persons.A. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is sure that the doctrine set

forth in its Confessions is the pure divine truth, because it agrees with the written Word of God on all points.

B. The Evangelical Lutheran Church demands of its members, and especially of its teachers, that they acknowledge its Confessions without reservation and are willing to be obligated to them.

C. The Evangelical Lutheran Church rejects every fraternal or eccle-siastical fellowship with those who reject its Confession either in whole or in part.

21. The Evangelical Lutheran Church administers the holy sacraments according to Christ’s institution.

22. True Evangelical Lutheran particular or local churches or congregations are only those in which the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, sets forth in its symbols, is not only officially recognized but is also professed in public preaching.

23. The Evangelical Lutheran Church practices fellowship of confession and Christian love with all who are one in faith with it.

24. In short, the Evangelical Lutheran Church has all the essential marks of the true visible church of God on earth, as they are found in no known fellowship of another name; it is therefore in no need of any reforma-tion in doctrine.


Grammarian’s corner

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Greek Participles, Part VII

In our last installment of the “Corner,” we discussed the matter of time andthe participle. We said, toward the end of the treatment:

The “cheap, quick, and dirty” answer, which works nicely a largemajority of the time, is that a present participle is understood as con-veying action at the same time as the main/leading verb, while anaorist participle conveys action prior to that verb (emphasis added).

After a number of examples, we ended with the following problematizing state-ment: “Yet, there are critical problems with the analysis just offered, problems thatsuggest that the “cheap, quick, and dirty” explanation is not the final word....” Tothis problem we now turn.

What are the problems with the “standard” analysis detailed in the indentedquotation above? Simply put, there are more than a few instances in which presentparticiples do not seem to convey action at the same time as the main/leading verb,and, perhaps especially, when aorist participles clearly do not convey action prior tothe main/leading verb. Consider the following examples:

Present Participles:

1. Matthew 27:3: To,te ivdw.n o` VIou,daj o` paradidou.j auvto.n o[ti katekri,qh... e;streyen ta. tria,konta avrgu,ria... (Then Judas, the one who was betraying [?] him, upon seeing that he had been condemned ... returned the thirty silver pieces....)

2. Matthew 7:8: ...kai. tw/| krou,onti avnoigh,setai. (...and to the one who will be knocking [?] it will be opened.)

Aorist Participles:

3. Acts 1:8: avlla. lh,myesqe du,namin, evpelqo,ntoj tou/ a`gi,ou pneu,matoj evf v u`ma/j (But you will receive power, after [?] the Holy Spirit comes/has come upon you....)

4. Acts 25:13: ... VAgri,ppaj o` basileu.j kai. Berni,kh kath,nthsan eivj Kaisa,reian avspasa,menoi to.n Fh/ston. (...Agrippa the King and Bernice arrived at Caesarea, after [?] they had greeted Festus.)

As far as the present participles are concerned, in example 1, it seems quiteunlikely that Judas is being described as the one who was currently betraying Jesus(after Jesus had already been condemned).1 In example 2, it seems unlikely thatJesus is saying that opening will take place while the knocking is going on, and allof that is only in the future.2 Concerning the aorists, the problem is even more


obvious and stark. In example 3, it is quite unlikely that the meaning of the sen-tence is as conjectured above, with the reception of power being something thatoccurs only after the Holy Spirit comes upon the Eleven, and in example 4, wehave perhaps the most difficult case of all, since it seems inconceivable thatAgrippa and Bernice had greeted Festus at a distance before they had arrived inCaesarea, not afterward.3

What is the solution? As a first step, our understanding of time and the

participle must not relate the participle’s so-called tense to the time of the

main/leading verb of the sentence. Participle tense is not to be understood inlock-step with the time of the sentence’s main or leading verb—whether at thesame time or at a time preceding. Something more complex seems to be going on.To conclude the present discussion, I will indicate how I believe each of our fourdifficult examples should be understood. In the next installment, I will use myunderstanding to develop an overall theory of Greek participle tense usage, and,subsequently, to develop a general theory of verbal tense structure in the Greeklanguage.

So, then, let us return to our four examples above.

1. The first present participle example, number 1, seems to be best understood as conveying a characteristic of a person that is always true. It is not to be understood relative to the main verb; it is, more or less, timeless. Thus, we may translate the last part of Matthew 27:3 as “...Judas, the betraying-him guy,” or, otherwise expressed, “Judas, the betrayer of him.”

2. Example 2 is timeless as well, but in this case it is not a timeless characteristic that is described. Rather, what is described is an activity that occurs regularly or repeatedly, present, future, and (even) perhaps past. In this case, it describes the one who knocks, and he may be doing that right now—with opening to him follow-ing upon his knocking.

3. The first aorist participle example, number 3, is surely to be understood as conveying means, so that we may translate it: “But you will receive power by/when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” In other words, the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples will itself be the receiving of the power from God; it is not to be seen as an activity preceding the reception of that power. The action of the participle is, in this way, identical to the action of the main/leading verb.

4. The second aorist example, number 4, is quite different from the first. The aorist participle does not convey means or an action identical to the main/leading verb. It seems to convey action fol-

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lowing that verb! I.e., it seems to convey what happened next, after the main/leading verb (i.e., greeting followed going to Caesarea), but its action is subsidiary, making a participle appropriate.

Is there any rhyme or reason to what we are here describing? That will be thefocus of our next installment.

James W. Voelz

Endnotes1 This explains the aorist variant paradou.j, found in several good witnesses such as B, 33 and

the Coptic tradition.2 See a very similar problem several verses later, in 7:11, where we read:...po,sw| ma/llon o`

path.r u`mw/n o` evn toi/j ouvranoi/j dw,sei avgaqa. toi/j aivtou/sin auvto,n. (...how much more will yourFather who is in the heavens give good things to the ones who will be asking [?] him.)

3 We may note that a number of Greek miniscule mss., as well as the entire Latin and Syriac tra-dition, and part of the Coptic, read a future participle, avspaso,menoi, which would convey purpose, inplace of the aorist here, thus ameliorating the problem.

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book reviews

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John H. Rhoads is a Ph.D. candidate at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis,Missouri. This fall he will be joining the faculty of Concordia University,Chicago.

Concordia Journal/January-April 2008

What it means to be church has increasingly been the theological topic du jour, orshould I say, topic du siècle, of both the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. In1926, Otto Dibelius opened up space for this idea with his book, Das Jahrhundert derKirche (Berlin: Furche-Verlag, 1926), the century of the church. About sixty years later,Avery Dulles would discuss the theological work being done on the topic of the churchduring the last half of the twentieth century—both within the various Christian tradi-tions and between them—in an article, “A Half-Century of Ecclesiology,” TheologicalStudies 50, no. 3 (1989). Theologians of our synod have also not been silent on thistopic—e.g. Kurt Marquart’s contribution to the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series orRobert Scudieri’s Apostolic Church—and for the same reason as the broader trend: theso-called Constantinian age where Christian communities could define what it means tobe church in terms of being part of a Christian society, or over against churches whodefined themselves this way, is over. During the last twenty years or so, the question ofwhat it means to be church has been asked across the spectrum of Christian life andpublishing.

As a result of this breadth of scope, this essay must make some selective choices,offering some of the highlights from efforts outside our synod. Unfortunately, we willalso not be considering some valuable works which to a greater or lesser extent reflectthe counter-inculturated-church orientation of the sectarian or separatist traditions.Instead we will focus on some key works which reflect the orientation of the great tra-dition of both East and West in which the being of church results from God’s univer-sal claim on human society. Consequently, each of the books surveyed also has an eyeto the ecumenical movement whose motive of a united Christianity is laudable even ifits methods and images of unity are often not.

After setting the stage with a couple of books that can help readers orient them-selves to the broader conversation and a couple of books which make claims to aLutheran perspective, we will conclude with a brief discussion of two authors whoseperspective on the church as communion or koinonia have helped set the agenda formuch of the work on ecclesiology at every level of ecumenism during the last twentyyears.

Highlights in Contemporary EcclesiologyA Review Essay

John H. Rhoads


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Introduction to Ecclesiology Ecumenical, Historical & Global Perspectives. ByVeli-Matti Kärkkäinen. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002.

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s An Introduction to Ecclesiology provides a helpful survey ofthe ecclesiological landscape of the early twenty-first century. He describes hisapproach as attempting “what is sometimes called ‘comparative ecclesiology’” (14). Thebook is divided into three parts: seven ecclesiological traditions (from EasternOrthodoxy to Pentecostal), seven leading contemporary ecclesiologists (such as theCatholic Hans Küng and the Baptist James McClendon Jr.), and seven contextual eccle-siologies (for example, the Non-Church Movement in Asia and the Feminist Church).Perhaps the greatest weakness as well as the greatest strength of this book stems fromKärkkäinen’s typical method of summarizing each approach under its major themesrather than applying to each the same schema of systematic questions. While the com-parative task is complicated by his method, it potentially lets each tradition, theologianor movement set its own priorities, concerns and contexts. Another potential downsidemay be that Kärkkäinen seems to stress the pneumatological emphases which eachapproach has in common with his own Pentecostal tradition a bit more than theapproach itself might warrant. Still, overall, while one might quibble that since he oftenrelies too heavily on single interpreters of a particular tradition, or on his own spirit-focused reading, he loses some breadth and complexity of the various approaches, hischoices are reasonable—especially considering the impressive scope of this work. Forthose interested in surveying the broader landscape of ecclesiological reflection, thisbook offers a decent map.

Models of the Church. By Avery Robert Dulles. Expanded ed. Garden City, N.Y.:Image Books, 1987.

Dulles’ Models of the Church has already become a classic treatment of the main per-spectives on ecclesiology, and it does organize its comparative ecclesiology according tosystematic types or models. Although based primarily on the ecclesiological currentsswirling especially within Vatican II Roman Catholicism, they encompass much of thenon-Roman thinking as well. He defines a model for each of five main types—institu-tion, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, and servant—according to its under-standing of the church’s bonds of unity, beneficiaries, and the benefits they receive. Healso fleshes out each model with some consideration of its major proponents andopponents as well as its assets or advantages and its liabilities or disadvantages. He thenshows how each model or understanding of the church may result in differentapproaches and positions on pressing ecclesiological concerns such as its relationship toeschatology, the question of the true church, diversity of church bodies, ministry andrevelation. After offering an evaluation of each model, Dulles proposes his own disci-pleship model which he considers potentially more comprehensive than the more nar-rowly defined models analyzed in the previous chapters. Perhaps the biggest weakness



of this book is that Dulles relies on the notion of the church as “mystery” to obfuscatethe referential ambiguity existing between the various models. That is to say, thosespeaking of the church as “mystical communion” are not referring to the same referen-tial entity as those speaking of the church as “institution” and so, strictly speaking, arenot models of the same thing. Nevertheless, Models of the Church is written at a veryaccessible level and so provides a wonderful tool for thinking through theologicallywhat it means to be church.

Christian Assembly: Marks of the Church in a Pluralistic Age. By GordonLathrop and Timothy J. Wengert. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2004.

Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia colleagues Tim Wengert andGordon Lathrop, a historian and a liturgist respectively, collaborate almost antiphonallyin this argument for a particularly Lutheran view of the church and ecumenism. Thisview centers on God’s work to gather the one church through the means of gracerather than on any human effort toward church unity. They focus their discussion onthe uniquely Lutheran use of the concept of the church’s marks over against recentecumenical use of the concept to refer to the Nicene Creed’s four adjectives for thechurch. Wengert’s chapters focus on the history of the concept as developed by Lutherin his early debates with the papists and as reflected in the Lutheran confessions andlater Luther. This concept served to define churches as visible assemblies which alsoinclude hypocrites by their core of true believers in Christ. “On [the doctrine of justifi-cation by faith alone], the church stands or falls—not merely in a doctrinal sense (that itmust hold to justification) but in the very definition of the church itself !” (34).Lathrop’s chapters unpack biblical and historical images of the church to show how theLutheran understanding of the marks plays out in the lives of churches understood asparticipatory assemblies, mutually accountable to their faithful use. He ultimately offerschurches of today—both those fascinated by new trends and those which considerthemselves more traditional—probing sixteenth-century style visitation questions abouttheir fidelity to the Gospel in the marks. Each author regularly and helpfully brings outthe importance of his key points for modern ecumenical efforts. The book concludeswith chapters in which the authors comment on each other’s work.

Written in a very accessible style, Christian Assembly should be of great interest toLCMS readers who share its concern for an ecclesiology centered on the means ofgrace. Still, it should be noted—as Wengert and Lathrop did not—that Luther’s 1539list of marks from On the Councils and the Church differed from some earlier lists in morethan just the number. While Luther’s early list, also reflected in AC VII, was limited tothe Word and Sacraments as the Gospel means by which the Holy Spirit calls forthchurch, the later list included the Word and Sacraments along with ordination, sufferingand the rest as responses to the first table of the Law, not as Gospel means. As a result,the lists function differently as marks: the first focuses on signs that the Holy Spirit isactive bringing about the passive-righteousness church while the second focuses on

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signs that people are busy going about the business of being the active-righteousnesschurch. Moreover, both Wengert and Lathrop follow Barth in speaking of the churchas an event (27-28, 39); however, Wengert views Predigtamt in AC V as a reference tothe concrete “pastoral office” over against the concrete “priesthood of all believers,”rather than seeing that for the reformers this term for the “ministry of the Word” likeits Latin equivalent, ministerium, is, as Fraenkel argued in 1959, a verbal noun. Ministry isthe event, church its context and effect. Nevertheless, despite these slight critiques,readers will thoroughly appreciate Wengert’s masterful tour of Luther and theConfessions on the significant topic of the church defined by its marks as well asLathrop’s brief interruptions of this tour in order for readers to take pictures and soreflect on their own church lives. This book’s focus on the Gospel-Word as the located-ness of Chirst’s church brings both ecumenical comfort and ecumenical motivation atthis time of ecclesial division and separation between confessions.

Mother Church: Ecclesiology and Ecumenism. By Carl E. Braaten. MinneapolisMinn.: Fortress Press, 1998.

In Mother Church, Carl Braaten writes as an Evangelical-Catholic—not an evangeli-cal-Roman— “partisan . . . trying to win over the hearts and minds of people with adifferent and even opposing set of interests” to his vision of the way toward unitedChristianity (134). To this end he addresses questions such as the nature of theReformation with its resulting Protestantism, the relationship between church and thekingdom of God, the relationship between Gospel-freedom and ecclesial authority,teaching authority, hermeneutics, and the task of church theology. He consistentlyframes the issues from his evangelical-catholic perspective as a way of envisioning afuture church healed of its divisions. So, for example, he argues for historic churchstructures—not on the basis of out-dated theories of divine right or necessity but onthe basis of their benefits for future work together, especially some form of authorita-tive teaching office. Braaten seems motivated by the desire to correct the unnecessarylosses resulting from what he regards as a history of stressing the evangelical at theexpense of the catholic. Although thoughtful LCMS readers may, at times, feel thattheir theological tradition is either ignored or caricatured, we should remember that thispartisan’s main struggle is against the Protestant liberalism for which theology andchurch-life have become increasingly unrelated. Moreover, Braaten’s provocative workshould stimulate us all to consider how we can most faithfully confess by word anddeed, “We believe that there is one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”

Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and The Church. By Jean Zizioulas.Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985.

In this monumental and important collection of studies, John Zizioulas developsthe ontological import of the concept of communion or koinonia for understanding thevery being of God, of the human person, of truth and of the church. He reaches back,

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with an existentialist sensitivity—albeit of an ostensibly biblical rather than humanisticexistentialism—into the seed stores of Eastern Orthodox and Patristic thought in orderto argue that this concept of communion which holds together in a synthesis of beinglong-standing manifestations of the one-and-the-many antitheses within theology.While the first two chapters on the communion-ontology of divine and human person-hood and on the consequent notion of truth, respectively, provide a largely unharvest-ed field, ripe for further discussion, the later chapters on the implications which theconcept has for ecclesiology have fed the theological efforts at almost every level ofecumenical engagement.

In his ecclesiology of communion, Zizioulas calls for a synthesis of theChristological—the historical and geographically local—aspects of church with thePneumatological—the communal and eschatological—aspects. With regard to the his-torical and geographical, he pays special attention to the fact that the Biblical witnessand early church witnesses seem to point to the presence of a single church for a givencity. Each local and historical body of Christ is then spiritually constituted as churchbecause by the power of the Holy Spirit the one Christ-event becomes effective asmany events of incorporation, one baptism, one eucharist. As a result, Christians arebaptized into the one body of Christ manifested fully in geographically local eucharisticcommunities. Just as the one God exists as a communion of three persons each fullyGod, so the one church exists as a communion of communions, each fully church.This view of the church also results in seeing the bishop as representative and ministerof the eucharistic community’s unity and catholicity, the one in communion with themany. For this reason, the community’s “Amen” is an essential part of the bishop’sordination. Moreover, this view can also provide a helpful corrective to the question ofapostolic succession by placing greater value on the bishop’s locatedness within aneschatological community rather than on a merely historical continuity of bishops exist-ing quasi-independently. It must be noted that Zizioulas bravely puts some of his ownOrthodox tradition at stake as he observes that current practices of synodality don’talways live up to his vision since they either don’t have an established primus serving theunity of the synod or don’t always ensure that the primus acts in communion with themany. Moreover, he recognizes the problem posed by eucharistic communities eithernot presided by bishops and by the competing claims of confessional churches.

Church of Churches: The Ecclesiology of Communion. By J. M. R. Tillard.Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992. Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At

the Source of the Ecclesiology of Communion. By J.M.R. Tillard. Collegeville,Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2001.

Along with the Greek Orthodox John Zizioulas, the Roman Catholic Jean-MarieRoget Tillard was one of the leading voices of communion ecclesiology at the end ofthe twentieth century, and he articulated his vision most fully in two volumes: Church ofChurches and Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ. In the first volume, he argues for theecclesiology of communion which he claims united the undivided early church and

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now provides not only a coherent theological unfolding of the decrees of Vatican IIbut also the groundwork for promising ecumenical engagement between churches.Tillard’s vision of the church as communion is structurally quite comparable to that ofZizioulas and, like Zizioulas, defines the local church by God’s work of salvation—experienced most fully in the eucharist—and by the bishop as presumed eucharisticpresident. However, he expands this conversation by speaking not only of communionin the triune life of God but also of a dynamic communion with God’s mission ofcompassion for the whole world. According to this vision of communio, the pope servesthe communion of communions as the chief among equal bishops, and papal infallibili-ty is tied to his acting in communion with the bishops who are in communion withtheir local churches and the understanding of the faithful. In this way, all the structuresof the church serve the communion.

While the poor English translation is often troublesome, careful readers will appre-ciate not only this mission focus but also the way Tillard applies the concept of com-munion to almost every aspect of church life, mission and ministry. Moreover, Tillardalso insists on the necessity “to recognize that our communities are far from realizingthe ideal communio that we have described” (157). Still, LCMS readers should also beforewarned that this work is routinely faithful to Vatican II’s claim that people canreject the man Jesus of Nazareth without rejecting God, and like Vatican II, he doesnot answer how this is consistent with an orthodox Christology.

In the second volume, Tillard does not add to the ecclesiological substance of thefirst volume but rather amasses the data in support of communion ecclesiology fromthe scriptures and the early church fathers. LCMS readers will likely gravitate gladly tothis volume which not only dwells on important biblical texts but also patristic textswhich point to how these texts were interpreted and lived in the early church.

Concluding Thoughts

Perhaps it should be no surprise that the communion ecclesiology of these last twoauthors—which has demanded such attention within the ecumenical movement—bearsa striking resemblance to Walther’s ecclesiology, articulated before the century of thechurch began. It should be no surprise because the reasons are the same. In the largelysecularized and pluralistic societies of our world today, churches can no longer definethemselves in terms of some official state or societal function. Like the early MissouriSaxons they must consider what it means to be church, independent of the State orsociety.

Consider a few basic points. These major theologians of the Orthodox and Romantraditions have articulated an ecclesiology in which the basis of the church is the com-munity of salvation mediated through means of grace, a community which is not fullyrealized in any visible church (cf. Church and Ministry, Theses on the Church). However,this community manifests itself fully in the local church whose bishop holds the spe-cial, divinely instituted, and highest office in the church as a ministry within and inservice to the communion (cf. Church and Ministry, Theses on the Ministry; TheCongregation’s Right to Choose Its Pastor). Furthermore, this sharing of the same church

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identity means that the affairs of the local church dare not be devolved into any ruggedcongregationalism but rather lived in communion with other churches (cf. The Form of aChristian Congregation, esp. Part 6 on the duty to “seek the unity of the Spirit, in thebond of love and peace also with the orthodox church outside itself ”). Consider thesewords from Walther’s discussion of his sixth Thesis on the Ministry and reflect on hisimagery in light of our brief discussion of communion ecclesiology:

By these words our church confesses that the whole church, not mere-ly the large and well-ordered organization but also its smallest parts,has the keys and so also the ministry [Amt] of the Gospel, just as awhole face reflected in a mirror appears in every single part of it,though it may be smashed into a thousand pieces.

Is it too much to say that we also share something else with Zizioulas and Tillard?We aren’t living up to this ecclesiology either.

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THE ROLE OF JUSTIFICATION

IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLO-

GY. By Mark Mattes. Grand Rapids:Eerdmans (Lutheran Quarterly Books),2004. 198 pages. Paper. $25.00

Mark Mattes is one of the brightestyoung Lutheran systematic theologians inAmerica today. Although he is known totheologians at both LCMS seminaries, hemay not be as well known among thepastors of the Missouri Synod. Thatneeds to change. Mattes combines acommitment to the Lutheran confession-al tradition with a facility to negotiate thelabyrinths of contemporary theology in away that strengthens the confessionalLutheran witness to the Gospel. MostMissouri Synod pastors have received asolid grounding in the Scriptures, theLutheran Confessions, and the orthodoxLutheran heritage. But they have notbeen as thoroughly immersed in thephilosophical and theological world ofthe last two centuries. This has not beenentirely bad. And yet, it makes the read-ing of much of contemporary theologydifficult in that it is built upon thethought world of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries. This is where Mattes’work enters. He is a very helpful transla-tor and evaluator of late twentieth centu-ry theology within a LutheranConfessional framework.

In The Role of Justification, Mattesexamines the thought of five prominenttheologians from the last three decades.Some are familiar to Missouri readerswhile a few may be less recognizable.These five theologians include, Wolfhart

Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, JürgenMoltmann, Robert Jenson, and OswaldBayer. In their own way, each of thesetheologians has sought to appropriate thedoctrine of justification for our own agein light of the intellectual challenges con-fronting the Christian church. But dothey do so for the purpose of proclaim-ing the Gospel to people who have notheard it? Mattes contends that the firstfour theologians are primarily interestedin constructing comprehensive andcoherent theological systems either forthe purpose of apologetics or for thepurpose of affirming a catholic identity.In other words, each of their systems isan accommodation to some aspect ofmodernity in order to find respectabilitywithin the academy and the world. As aresult, their interest in justification has todo with the place and role that it playswithin the overarching system. In theprocess, these theologians often divorcesystematic theology from preaching.Mattes finds that only one of these the-ologians, Bayer, is concerned to articulatethe doctrine of justification for the pur-pose of delivering the Gospel promise toGod’s human creatures.

In each chapter, Mattes lays out thecentral lines of their thought on the doc-trine of justification and the role that jus-tification plays within their theology.Jüngel grounds his system in feeling (tak-ing God out of the world), Pannenberggrounds his in knowledge (God asthought), and Moltmann grounds his inaction (human person as an agent).Where these first three “seek a founda-tion for Christian faith shared by non-

Additional Book Reviews



Christians” (143), Jenson sees the churchas an alternative to the world and sogrounds his system in the church. Mattessummarizes the thought of each theolo-gian in a way that the reader, who is notconversant with the context in whichthese theologians wrote, can understandand appreciate. Following the treatmentof each writer, Mattes explores the wayin which each author has appropriatedLuther and concludes with his ownanalysis and critique. In the end, Mattesexpresses a clear preference for the workof Bayer, whose doctrine of justificationdoes not split forensic and effective justi-fication, for God does what he says(171). For Bayer, conflict, not accommo-dation, is constitutive for theology, forlaw and gospel cannot be harmonizedthis side of eternity.

In my opinion, the real value of thisbook lies in the way in which Mattes pro-vides us with glimpses of his own theo-logical sensibilities as a preview of thework that he may develop and produce inthe future. Throughout the book, thereader will see Mattes’ acknowledgeddependence upon themes found in thethought of Gerhard Forde (and behindhim, C.F.W. Walther) with his emphasisthat theology must serve proclamationand so theology must attend to the dis-tinction between law and gospel wherebyhuman creatures are “restored to cre-ation” as God intended. Mattes arguesthat “theology exists primarily for pas-toral discernment” to which end he pro-poses that we speak of justification notsimply as one topic of theology, but as adiscrimen, a kind of pastoral discernment.

A discrimen “is a configuration of crite-ria that are organically related to oneanother as reciprocal co-efficients” (11).Thus justification can help us see how anumber of Lutheran themes — law-gospel, death-resurrection, hidden-revealed God, and two kinds of right-eousness — are related to each other.Such discernment has become all themore necessary in a day and age whenmany are not anxious about their justifi-cation because they have been anes-thetized by therapeutic ways of thinkingwithin and without Christian theology.

The assumptions, language, method,and goals of the theologians with whomMattes carries on the conversation arechallenging, especially if one is not famil-iar with the thought of the writers thathe examines. But stick with it. The readerwill be more than amply rewarded by thetheological insights and pastoral applica-tion that Mattes brings to the subject. Inthe end, one will be the better for work-ing through it, with heightened pastoraldiscernment and tools for bringing theword of promise to bear upon the livesof twenty-first century people.

Charles P. Arand

PREACHING WITH VARIETY:

How to Re-Create the Dynamics of

Biblical Genres. By Jeffrey D. Arthurs.Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2007. 239 pages.Paper. $15.99.

“I believe that a sermon’s contentshould explain and apply the Word ofGod as it is found in a biblical text, and a


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sermon’s form should unleash the impactof that text. The second part of that dec-laration is the special province of thisbook” (13). Jeffrey Arthurs, professor ofpreaching at Gordon-ConwellTheological Seminary, goes on to offerinsightful comments on the pragmaticsof six different biblical genres (psalms,narrative, parables, proverbs, epistles, andapocalyptic literature) along with helpfulhints on how a preacher might recreatethose dynamics for a modern audience.

Arthurs stays away from simplisticadvice like “Preach a narrative whenyou’re preaching on a narrative.” Instead,he first examines how a particular genrefunctions—that is, in what ways the formcommunicates the content. He approach-es each genre on its own, pointing outthe effect various features have on hear-ers. For example, he observes that paral-lelism in Hebrew poetry “prompts . . .meditation” and “intensifies the readingand listening experience” (43). OldTestament allusion in the epistles, on theother hand, “draws us in, engages ourminds, and prompts us to participate inour own persuasion” (161).

After examining the pragmatics of agenre, he offers some suggestions onhow to recreate those dynamics inpreaching today. This portion of eachchapter is a bit weaker than the first, butthe suggestions are still helpful. Theyprompt the preacher to ask not simply,“Given this text, what do I say?” but“What effect does this text work, andhow might my preaching achieve a simi-lar effect?” For example, Arthurs sug-gests plotting an “emotional outline” ofa psalm and then writing a sermon withsimilar “moments of effective intensityand then a backing off and moments of

relief for the congregation” (53). When itcomes to preaching on apocalyptic litera-ture, he recommends using “a slightlyelevated style” and “panoramic illustra-tions” rather than mundane ones (194).

Arthurs’ commitment to the authori-ty of the Scriptures will sit well withLCMS readers, and his discussion ofform and rhetoric will certainly sharpenthe preaching of any reader willing to trysome his suggestions. In the end, what istrue of form in the Scriptures is true ofform in our sermons as well: “The formof a text is not simply the husk sur-rounding the seed; it is the way authorsmanage their relationship with readers”(201). The preached Word of God is aword that is completely embodied: it iscomposed by a particular person,preached with all the tone and timber ofa particular voice, and heard through thelens of an entire ministry. The questionis not whether or not to use rhetoric,because rhetoric is always going on.Arthurs’s book will help preachers get ahandle on their own implicit rhetoric bylooking more closely at how forms com-municate in the Scriptures and in theirown sermons.

David LoyBolivar, Missouri

ROME AND JERUSALEM: The

Clash of Ancient Civilizations. ByMartin Goodman. New York: Alfred A.Knopf, 2007. 598 pages. Cloth. $35.00.

Compared to their professors whohave spent decades in the biblical texts,seminarians are whisked through theirexegetical studies. With so much theologyand practice for the aspiring pastor to



learn, that dash is understandable. Everystudent knows that you never graduatefrom learning Scripture but most of usfind out that parish duties do get in theway of continued learning. A parishioneronce telephoned the study and asked if Iwas busy. “I’m reading.” To that she said,“Good, I’d like to talk to you.” So I putthe book down and listened to what wason her mind. “So many books; so littletime.” The result is that the passing ofyears and limited reading can contractour knowledge to certain basics thatseem to stand the busy pastor in goodstead. One fact that seems assured is thatfirst century Jews hated the Romans andthe destruction of Jerusalem was just amatter of time. Jesus said, “Not onestone here will be left on another; everyone will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)

Martin Goodman is a fellow of theOxford Centre for Hebrew and JewishStudies, former editor of the Journal ofRoman Studies and the Journal of JewishStudies. He edited the 2002 OxfordHandbook of Jewish Studies for which hewas awarded a National Jewish BookAward for Scholarship. In Rome andJerusalem Goodman argues that Romanand Jewish cultures were different butnot locked in a death fight and that thedestruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD wasnot inevitable. He asks: “Was there any-thing intrinsic in Jewish and Roman soci-ety that made it impossible for Jerusalemand Rome to coexist? Were the tensionswhich had so dramatic an effect inAugust 70 already apparent in 30 whenJesus preached in Jerusalem and diedthere on the order of a Roman gover-nor? And…what was the effect of theconflict between Jews and Romans onthe relations between Jews and Christians

in a Roman world?” (25). The answers tothose questions may not make a differ-ence when the busy pastor makes hospi-tal and shut-in calls, socializes withparishioners, or puts down a book toanswer a phone call, but Goodman’s the-sis offers a reservoir of facts to alter oldattitudes and enrich parish preaching andteaching. And if a pastor takes time notonly to read but to take specific insightsinto his preaching and teaching, Christianwitness might improve.

The destruction of Jerusalem wasterrible. Josephus described the devasta-tion in August 70, when the walls of thecity were breached and the Templedestroyed. “You would have thought thatthe Temple hill was boiling over from itsbase, being everywhere one mass offlame, but yet that the stream of bloodwas more copious than the flames andthe slain more numerous than the slayers.For the ground was nowhere visiblethrough the corpses; but the soldiers hadto clamber over the heaps of bodies inpursuit of the fugitives. …All the rest ofthe wall encompassing the city was socompletely leveled to the ground as toleave future visitors to the spot noground for believing that it had ever beeninhabited” (24-25, quoting Josephus,Jewish Wars, 6.271-6; 7, 1-3). Indeed, thename “Jerusalem” was to be eliminatedas well. Late second–early third centuryhistorian Cassius Dio wrote that theemperor Hadrian “founded a city in placeof the one which had been razed to theground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, andon the site of the temple of the god heraised a new temple to Jupiter” (461,quoting Cassius Dio, 69.12.1). Except forpious Jews and Christians who remem-bered it, the name “Jerusalem” was not


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known. In 310 AD a Christian namedPamphilius was on trial before theRoman governor of Palestine,Firmilianus. Pamphilius said, “Jerusalemwas his fatherland, meaning, indeed thatJerusalem of which it was said by Paul:‘But the Jerusalem that is above is free,which is our mother.’ That disturbedFirmilianus, who imagined that theChristians had established some new citynamed “Jerusalem” that was hostile toRome” (534, quoting Eusebius, “Martyrsof Palestine,” II.9-12). It wasn’t just thatthe stones of the Temple were takendown, as Jesus had predicted, but theplace and even the name “Jerusalem”were obliterated.

Why? Over the centuries theRomans had demonstrated that you don’tmess with their power. In 321 B.C. theSamnites led by Gavius Pontius, perhapsan ancestor of Pontius Pilate, defeatedthe Romans at the Caudine Forks. Ratherthan kill his enemies, Pontius let theRomans go. In 291 the Romans returned,defeated the Samnites but did not returnthe show of mercy, killing the capturedPontius. In the second century BC Catoended many of his speeches with“Carthago delendum est,” Carthage must bedestroyed. It was, totally, in 146 BC. Inthe late first century AD, the Nasamonesin Africa were eliminated. EmperorDomitian announced to the Senate, “Ihave forbidden the Nasamones to exist”(149, quoting Cassius Dio 57.4.6). Thatsaid, Rome was lenient, so long as yousubmitted to its rule and presented noactive threat. Of course, every provincehad its troublemakers but their punish-ment wouldn’t obliterate the chief city ofthe province and unleash hostility againstthe whole nation. Wrote Cicero in the

first century BC: “There is no race whichhas not either been so utterly destroyedthat it hardly exists, or so thoroughlysubdued that it remains submissive, or sopacified, that it rejoices in our victoryand rule.” (in Ann Wroe, Pontius Pilate,63). “In general,” Goodman writes, “theRomans were happy to allow theirprovincial subjects to continue to livein…idiosyncratic ways” (148). To imagineimplacable hostility between Rome andthe Jews makes it difficult to explain legalconcessions made to the Jews. Judaismwas a “religio licita,” a permitted religion.The empire permitted diaspora Jews tosend their yearly Temple tax to Jerusalem.The government banned many associa-tions of citizens, and though synagogueswere classified as such “collegia,” syna-gogues were exempted from the ban.Sabbath observance was safeguarded,though it struck many Romans as a wasteof time. In addition to those and otherconcessions, Jews were able, quotingfrom the First Amendment to theAmerican constitution, “to petition thegovernment for a redress of grievances.”They did. In 40 AD Philo led a delega-tion to Emperor Gaius (Caligula) onbehalf of the Jews in Alexandria. Paul’sappeal to the emperor is hard to under-stand if the Roman system was dead setagainst anything Jewish. Remember thatin these early decades after Christ,Christianity was a sect in Judaism, not afree-standing “church.” These relativelygood relations between Rome and itsprovinces—Goodman calls them “laissez-faire”—are reflected in mid-century NewTestament documents (148). Paul’s viewof government in Romans 13 is positiveas is Peter’s in 1 Peter. It’s later in thefirst century, after Rome had obliterated



Jerusalem, that emperors like Domitiancould turn also on Christianity.

So how does Goodman explain thedestruction of Jerusalem? In 66 AD apriest named Eleazar led an ambush ofRoman troops. It fell to the Roman gov-ernor of Syria, Cestius Florus, torespond. He marched down towardJerusalem but then stopped. Had he goneon to Jerusalem to take revenge, thescore would have been settled. ButFlorus retreated, and in retreat the forcesof Eleazar routed the Romans. The stagewas set for what? The destruction ofJerusalem? No, but at least a major hand-slapping of the Jews by Rome.Surprisingly, nothing happened for overthree years. In that time the Jews lived asan independent nation. The number ofRoman soldiers in Judea was normallysmall, but the need to reassert Romanrule brought 60,000 troops to Judeaunder the command of Vespasian. Backin Rome, mid-68 and 69 saw EmperorNero deposed and four men claim theimperium, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, andfinally Vespasian, who won out. EveryRoman emperor since Augustus had laidclaim to power because of personal mili-tary prowess. In some cases, likeAugustus, the claim was legitimate. Inother cases, like Claudius and Gaius, mili-tary victories were contrived, but theywere contrived because they were seen asnecessary to claim the supreme power.Hence, Vespasian, aspiring to be emper-or, needed a major military victory. Quiteconveniently, he was poised with troopsready to avenge Florus’ defeat and thehumiliation of Rome. What would havebeen a routine “hand-slapping” of Judeanow became an occasion for an over-whelming military victory, and the need-

ed PR for a general to become emperor.

Vespasian’s bid, and hisneed to advertise a victoryover foreigners to give itlegitimacy, explain theenergy with which theattack on Jerusalem wassuddenly prosecuted. …Vespasian’s image urgentlyneeded the gloss of for-eign conquest—the surestfoundation of authorityfor a Roman politician—for him to be portrayed inthe capital as warrior heroand savior of the state.Vespasian delayed his ownjourney to Rome until thesummer of 70, in themeantime instructing hisson Titus, left behind inJudea, to win the war asrapidly and comprehen-sively as possible, regard-less of the cost. (419)

So Jerusalem was obliterated, notbecause of implacable hostility betweenJews and Romans but because the Jews’little rebellion in 66-70, insignificant inthe big picture of the empire, gave anaspiring emperor an opportunity to claimpower. When Vespasian died in 79, sonTitus assumed power and needed militarytrophies to justify his rule. His role in thedestruction of Jerusalem served thatfunction. The same for EmperorDomitian, who succeeded Titus on hisearly death in 81. “Once the Flavians hadestablished their power on the back ofthe defeat of the Jews, it was not in theinterest of most subsequent emperors to


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tamper with the image so carefully con-trasted, let alone to challenge it directlyby allowing the Jews to rebuild theirTemple” (554).

Yet, the true value of Rome andJerusalem is the way it brings together datafrom two major cultures then translatesthat data into a better understanding ofthe Christian situation in our culture,especially the terrible heritage of anti-Semitism. In the first decades afterPentecost, the church enjoyed as its ownthe special privileges Rome had given theJews. “At least some Christians in thefirst generation assumed that they werepreaching not a new religion but simply anew kind of Judaism” (499f.) But whenJudaism became enemy of Rome and theFlavians, it was to the advantage ofChristians to assert independence fromtheir Jewish origins. “Among the mostimportant reasons for the growth andspread of Christianity during these years,one must be that after 70, and even moreafter 135, Christians presented them-selves to the gentile world as unconnect-ed to the Jews, whose alienation frommainstream Roman society had beensealed by the destruction of the Templein Jerusalem. …[B]y the fourth century,when Constantine became the firstRoman emperor to portray himself as adevotee of Christ, the links betweenChristianity and Judaism had been delib-erately obscured by Christians them-selves” (488). We will, of course, see thework of the Spirit in the amazing growthof the church, but things do happen in acontext, and that setting may not alwaysbe good and pure.

This book takes time to read andeffort to use. On the book jacket TomHolland of The Sunday Times describes

Rome and Jerusalem as “magisterial.” Youdon’t just read a book like this; you makethe studious effort to appropriate its con-tents into your own teaching and preach-ing. There is much information that canbe used for modern ministry. Roman andJewish cultural views of abortion?Among others, see page 233. Divorcepractices? Page 205 and 216. Cultural dif-ferences about food and liquor? Page281. Work and welfare? Page 279. Lifeafter death? Page 238. There are manymore and fortunately they are listed inthe index. Professors routinely say thatwhatever book they’re talking about is abook you need to have. I don’t know. Itseems to me that the causes and conse-quences of Jerusalem ablaze in 70 wouldperhaps help our evangelism today if wewould take the time to read and reflect.One thing is for sure, Rome and Jerusalemreminds us that our zeal to witness isoften not matched by society’s eagernessto hear what we want to tell them.“Christians in the first generation weredifferent, espousing a proselytizing mis-sion which was a shocking novelty in theancient world. Only familiarity makes usfail to appreciate the extraordinary ambi-tion of Paul…” (493).

Dale A. Meyer

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS IN

SOCIAL AND THEOLOGICAL

CONTEXT. By Katharine J. Dell. NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 2006.224 pages. Cloth. $85.

Katharine Dell, Senior Lecturer (OldTestament) at the Cambridge UniversityFaculty of Divinity, has developed agrowing portfolio of works on WisdomLiterature and on specific wisdom books



(Job and now Proverbs). As complementto, and as extension of, her academicinterests, she also edits Guidelines, a quar-terly publication of the Bible ReadingFellowship, which provides study andresource materials for home and groupstudy of Scripture.

Though she does not describe thisbook as such, it has all the marks of adissertation, at least at one stage of itsproduction. As she presents and buttress-es her theses, Dell provides an impres-sively comprehensive overview of priorand alternative views. Her references,footnotes, and bibliography give the read-er a major bibliographical head start tofurther study.

Dell’s concern is to explore possiblesocial contexts for the varied materialsand forms in the Book of Proverbs,ranging from royal court, wisdomschools, and popular/folk culture. Thisinevitably brings wisdom traditions fromthe Ancient Near East into the discus-sion. That in turn leads to a discussion ofthe integrity of the theological characterof the Book of Proverbs and of specificreferences to YHWH in the Book ofProverbs.

Dell moves alternatively betweenstudying the Book of Proverbs itself(and other related ancient documents andtraditions) and presenting and weighingthe various approaches and proposals ofsecondary sources. As ponderous as thismay seem, her combination of attentionto detail and awareness of wider contextsgives credibility to her observations andconclusions. In a nutshell, Dell proposesand concludes that ethics and educationare the critical social contexts for Israel’sproverbial material. This allows a majorrole for family and clan in the develop-

ment of wisdom, while also allowing aplace for priestly and royal refinement ofwisdom. In any case, those elemental eth-ical and educational contexts are them-selves frameworked in another context,namely the theological context of faith inYahweh, which underlies the entire Bookof Proverbs, even where Yahweh is notspecifically cited. On this contextual basisDell pursues points of overlap andshared expression with other parts ofScripture (cultic, deuteronomic, prophet-ic, psalmic), which in turn leads to herfinal conclusion (challenge, actually),namely that since “in the book ofProverbs the wisdom tradition is trulyintegrated with its canonical bedfel-lows…[wisdom literature should] nolonger [be] regarded as an outsider tomore mainstream concerns” (199-200).

Though this book may seem a bitacademic (and expensive!) for the tasksof pastoral preaching and teaching, Dellhas significantly benefitted the exegeticaltask by underlining the theological signifi-cance of the Book of Proverbs specifi-cally and of wisdom literature generally,and thereby enriching both the faith andthe ministry of the people of God.

Henry Rowold

THE STRUGGLE TO RECLAIM

THE LITURGY IN THE LUTHER-

AN CHURCH: Adiaphora in

Historical, Theological and Practical

Perspective. By James Alan Waddell.Lewiston: Mellen Press, 2005. 415 pages.Cloth. $129.95.

The words “contemporary” and “tra-ditional” have limited worship debates toquestions of style and form. Lost is a


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theology of worship shaped by theLutheran Confessions. James Waddellseeks to correct that with a thoroughlyinvestigated answer to this question: ForLutherans, is there a required catholicityor is there unfettered freedom in regardto the forms of worship? Advocates ofthe contemporary, according to Waddell,too often have engaged in liturgicallicense reflected in theologically uncriticaladaptations of worship forms. Yet, advo-cates of traditional worship have trum-peted a liturgical repristination, insistingupon liturgical uniformity for thechurch’s orthodoxy (5). Evaluating these,Waddell investigates what the marks ofthe church’s unity are in the LutheranConfessions and what adiaphora arewhen used in freedom. With proper defi-nitions of unity and adiaphora, he cri-tiques the arguments of LutheranChurch-Missouri Synod (LCMS) tradi-tionalists shaped by the ecumenicalschool of Liturgical Theology, andprobes the inadequacies in the contem-porary camp’s arguments for completefreedom. Waddell’s examination of theConfessions affirms that historic liturgi-cal forms are to be defended, but cannotbe considered necessary for the church’scatholicity or unity. They are not of thechurch’s essence. What is necessary is jus-tification through the Word andSacraments. Beyond these divinely giventhings, liturgical traditions are humanlycreated ceremonies that cannot be madenecessary for the church’s life. Whilerejoicing in the received heritage of thechurch, liturgical forms should be cultur-ally embedded in ways faithful to thechurch’s marks: Word and Sacraments.

Waddell’s primary question was exis-tential. He had been formed by the dic-

tates of the Liturgical Theology schoolof thought which, as he seeks to prove,made historic liturgical forms necessary.On the other hand he serves in theLCMS, where making worship contem-porary often is considered an absoluteresponsibility on the basis of a perceivedunfettered freedom in worship. Waddell’sgoal was to work through this impasseon the basis of “a confessing evangelicalcatholic (Lutheran) theology of liturgy”(15).

To achieve his purpose, Waddelldivides his work into two parts: EarlyModern Clarity and The“Contemporary” Challenge. Following ahelpful introduction, the first five chap-ters trace the development of theLutheran Confessions’ position on adi-aphora within its historical context, iden-tifying what are the church’s marks, howliturgy is shaped within the parameters oforder and freedom, what it means forworship forms to be adiaphora, howforms are received without being neces-sary, and how the Confessions shape amove toward ecclesial harmony. Thechapters in the second section examinethe contemporary worship debate, char-acterizing the positions taken by the tra-ditionalists as legalistic and the contem-porary advocates as unfettered license.He concludes that the arguments of theLiturgical Theology school import a for-eign theology of worship into theConfessions. Waddell’s critique of thisrepristinatory position focuses upon itsappeal to liturgical tradition as normative.This perspective permeates, he claims,the theologies of worship of LCMSadvocates for an unchanging liturgicaltradition. The final three chapters pro-vide a formative response. Waddell posits



a hermeneutical methodology foraddressing the liturgical forms groundedin Lutheranism’s formal and materialprinciples. He argues for the benefits ofhistoric liturgical forms because they pro-vide a formative catechesis in the faith.He contends for the inculturation ofworship in local contexts. Lastly, he sug-gests, for the sake of good order, a desir-able, base “ordo” that is catholic andevangelical but which can adapt to cultur-al expressions, especially in songs andmusic.

Waddell successfully enunciates aLutheran theology of worship devoid oflegalism and license. He pinpoints howcontemporary advocates have abandonedcatechesis through worship forms. Thisabandonment reflects a shift away fromthe church’s marks toward an AmericanEvangelical theology. At times Waddell’sanalysis could have been more accuratelyfinessed. He frames Liturgical Theologyas a unified theological position whoseadherents express the same perspectives,positing a comprehensive school withoutproving its existence. Likewise, Waddelltreats Liturgical Theology as one“school” of thought in the LCMS, whichcan oversimplify the particular theologiesof LCMS theologians. Neither theirmethodologies or arguments are thesame, nor do they spring from the samesources.

Waddell’s analytical critique capturesthe wonder of being a Lutheran, liturgi-cally speaking; freedom for inculturatedworship in the midst of the liturgical her-itage’s treasures. As he proves, “there isnot . . . a catholicity of the [liturgical]form” (267). Lutherans neither makeliturgical forms necessary nor espouse ananti-biblical, anti-creedal license in con-

temporary, cultural expressions. Thatmakes this book necessary reading fortranscending the traditional-contempo-rary worship divide.

Kent J. Burreson

EVIL AND THE JUSTICE OF

GOD. By N. T. Wright. Downers Grove:IVP Books, 2006. 176 pages. Paper.$24.00.

In Evil and the Justice of God, N. T.Wright gives us a Christologically focusedtreatment of the problem of evil. Whilehis account will not convert all the skep-tics, Wright marshals the Biblical evi-dence into a coherent, compelling, andhopeful vision of what God is doingabout evil in our world.

Three points set Wright’s treatmentapart from others. First, in Wright’swords, “the problem of evil as classicallyconceived within philosophy is not solu-ble as it stands, not least because it tendsto postulate a god other than the Godrevealed in Jesus Christ” (164). Second, itis ultimately a practical rather than anintellectual problem—it confronts us inthe banal evils we encounter every day aswell as horrendous acts of violence suchas 9/11 and natural disasters likeHurricane Katrina and the tsunami ofDecember 24, 2004. Finally, “what theGospels offer is not a philosophicalexplanation of evil, . . . but the story ofan event in which the living God deals withit” (93).

What God does, Wright argues, is setall things right through a head-on con-frontation with evil in the death of HisSon, Jesus Christ. “The power of deathitself, the ultimate denial of the goodness


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of creation, speaks of a force of destruc-tion, of anti-world, anti-God powerbeing allowed to do its worst. TheGospels tell this whole story in order tosay that the tortured young Jewishprophet hanging on the cross was thepoint where evil had become truly andfully and totally itself ” (81-82). In otherwords, the Gospels take evil seriously,because God took evil seriously by send-ing his Son to suffer it in its most con-centrated form.

Forgiveness becomes the linchpin inGod’s action. “When we understand for-giveness, flowing from the work of Jesusand the Spirit, as the strange, powerfulthing it really is, we begin to realize thatGod’s forgiveness of us, and our forgive-ness of others, is the knife that cuts therope by which sin, anger, fear, recrimina-tion and death are still attached to us.Evil will have nothing to say at the last,because the victory of the cross will befully implemented” (164-65). This chap-ter is worth reading in its own rightbecause of its powerful understanding offorgiveness.

Certain readers may quibble withparts of Wright’s argument—his treat-ment of the atonement, for example, orhis remarks regarding political power(although this reviewer finds the latterboth timely and trenchant). Wright’sbook is nevertheless an important andrefreshing treatment of the problem ofevil in a literature that is often quite ster-ile. Wright shows great sensitivity to thehuman propensity for evil and the depthof the problem of evil. He provides anintellectually rigorous account of God’sanswer to evil. Most of all, he proclaimshope for God’s people in the face of evilwithin and evil without. The book is a

gem for any pastor or theologically inter-ested lay person.

David LoyBolivar, Missouri

THE BLESSINGS OF WEEKLY

COMMUNION. By Kenneth W.Wieting. St. Louis: CPH, 2006. 304 pages.Paper/Cloth. $23.99.

The Blessings of Weekly Communioncomes from the pen of a pastor, for it isthe revised D.Min. thesis of the author,who is the pastor of Luther MemorialChurch, Shorewood, Wisconsin—and itshows! As the chapters progress, onesenses the presence of an undershepherdwho writes out of love for Christ’s peo-ple and devotion to the Lord’s gospelpromises found especially in theEucharist. This is perhaps one of the(though not nearly the only!) chiefstrengths of Wieting’s work; it proclaimsLutheran theology for the sake of pas-toral care. The work is dedicated to a layaudience, and is accessible to both layand clergy readers alike.

Though it seems odd to do so, Ibegin by directing attention to chapterssix (“The Lord’s Supper in the LCMSToday”) and seven (“TreasuresAbound”), for they are the heart and thegreatest contribution of Wieting’s work.Chapter six presents the results ofWieting’s survey of LCMS congregationsas to (1) the frequency in offering theLord’s Supper, and (2) the pastoralresponses that explain why the Lord’sSupper is not offered at each Sundayservice. The chief explanations given bysurvey respondents for “less than week-ly” communion are: (1) the Sacrament



will become “too common”; (2) theSacrament will take “too much time”; (3)Christians do not understand the church’switness to every Sunday communion; and(4) “occasional Communion” is viewedas the norm of Lutheran practice. Afteroffering reasonable responses to theseobjections, Wieting then thoughtfullysuggests that both “anti-Catholic” and“pro-Protestant” sentiment in theMissouri Synod’s history might help toaccount for the tradition of less frequentEucharistic celebration. This chapterdescribes the current situation in theLCMS.

Chapter seven contains the book’smain positive contribution, Wieting’s the-ological and pastoral reflections on theblessings that the Eucharist offers. Hereis substance for both lay and pastoralreaders alike. The kind of sustained theo-logical reflection found in this chaptercould help a pastor broaden his congre-gation’s appreciation for the Eucharist,while also promoting a genuine hunger toreceive the Lord’s body and blood morefrequently. Too often the benefits of theEucharist are confined to the Lutherancatch phrase, “the forgiveness of sins.”Wieting invites a broader, wholistic, andeven eschatological appropriation of theblessings of the Supper. Though noteveryone will agree with every way thatthe author extends and applies the bless-ings of the Eucharist, the chapter is awonderful resource, not least for teachingthe laity. Chapter eight, titled “TheseThings Matter,” discusses a number ofissues that are closely related to the doc-trine of the Eucharist per se, including(of course) the practice of close orclosed communion. Chapter nine, “Intothe Future,” is the book’s conclusion.

I return now to the actual order inwhich the chapters are offered. In a way,the work in its present form has a slightlymisleading title; a more accurate headingmight be something like “WeeklyCommunion: History, Teaching, andPractice.” After an opening chapter(“Foundational Thoughts”) that brieflyexamines key Scripture passages, the nextfour chapters rapidly survey aspects ofthe Early Church, the Middle Ages, theReformation Era, and the ModernPeriod. These chapters of historical sur-vey account for more than one hundredpages of text. If I have a criticism ofWieting’s work, it would be that he per-haps tried to accomplish too much withsome of the historical survey. To be sure,the chapters contain much significanttruth and reflection; Chapter Four on theReformation Era is particularly helpfuland marked by a carefully balanced dis-cussion. It’s just that the time periods areso vast that inevitably material had to beomitted. In particular, in this reviewer’sopinion, the chapter on the Early Churchand its practice might leave the readerwith the impression that we know moreabout the early period than we actuallydo. As an example, Wieting cites the well-known passage from the First Apology ofJustin Martyr in which Justin brieflydescribes Christian worship. But to con-clude that Justin’s comment, directed to apagan audience, “...demonstrates that themain features of the eucharistic celebra-tion were fixed as early as the secondcentury” (57-58) runs too far with theevidence, as important as the quote fromJustin is. Justin does not claim to give acomprehensive or ecumenical commenton Christian worship practices. It seemsunlikely, on the face of it, that Justin


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would even know what practices werecommon in different parts of the Empirefar away from Rome.

As mentioned above, I appreciatedthe author’s gentle and pastoral tonethroughout. Wieting writes with a bal-ance that all would do well to imitate. Hecarefully avoids pitting the Eucharistagainst the Sermon, for instance. Theauthor also writes with a generous spirit,especially when describing the practicesof past generations. Pastor Wietingwould never become a “star” on talkradio, nor is he likely to become the dar-ling of the bloggers of the world—and Imean that as a sincere compliment.

One is always limited when writing aparticular work, and Wieting cannot befaulted for not writing everything I wishhe had. If I could have wished for oneaspect of this discussion to be more fullydeveloped, however, it would have beenmore interaction with the spirit of thispresent age in which Wieting seeks topromote every-Sunday Communion.What aspects of North Americans’mindset would be most likely to take theblessing of weekly communion andabuse it? Both as parish pastor and alsoas seminary teacher, for instance, I havefound myself marveling that week afterweek, Sunday after Sunday, virtually everymember of the congregation presentgoes to the Lord’s Supper every time it isoffered. Is no one unrepentant? Is noone ever convicted of their need torefrain from communing until they havereconciled with their brother? At the timeof the Reformation, as Wieting notes, the

Reformation offered the Eucharist often,knowing that the people would not allcome, even when they should. In our day,one wonders if the problem might be theopposite, namely, that there should besome who refrain because they haveunrepentantly violated the law of loveand forgiveness presupposed by theSupper. Here is where an increase inteaching and catechism is a necessarycomplement to more frequent com-muning.

In addition, although there was dis-cussion of some of the objections to thepractice of closed communion, I suspectthat Wieting’s defense of this historicpractice will make sense only to thosewho are already so convinced. This is agenuinely difficult issue in the society inwhich we live and move and have ourbeing. Many Christians, I suspect, gen-uinely do not understand the rationalesthat are given. A more full discussion onthis important topic would have beenhelpful—but once again, one cannotaddress every issue in one piece of schol-arship.

In sum, The Blessings of WeeklyCommunion is a fine piece of pastoral the-ology and could be used with profit bypastors and congregations. It is impor-tant to note that each chapter ends with alist of excellent discussion questions.These questions enable the book to beused in the context of an on-going studygroup format, both to reinforce the mes-sage of each chapter and to promotepositive discussion.

Jeffrey A. Gibbs


Documents

Concordia Journal | Summer 2008