Concordia Journal | Summer 2008

Concordia Journal

COncordia Journal July 2008 volume 34 | number 3

a special issue

Where’s the Center?

What Are Ecclesiologically Challenged Lutherans to Do? The Trans-Congregational Church in the New Testament Thinking with Walther: Congregation, Synod, Church

COncordia Journal (ISSN 0145-7233)

publisher

Dale A. Meyer President Executive EDITOR

William W. Schumacher Dean of Theological Research and Publication EDITOR

Travis J. Scholl Managing Editor of Theological Publications EDITORial assistant

Melanie Appelbaum Student assistants

Carol Geisler Joel Haak Matthew Kobs

Faculty

David Adams Charles Arand Andrew Bartelt David Berger Joel Biermann Gerhard Bode James Brauer Kent Burreson William Carr, Jr. Anthony Cook Timothy Dost Thomas Egger Ronald Feuerhahn Jeffrey Gibbs Bruce Hartung

Erik Herrmann Jeffrey Kloha Robert Kolb Reed Lessing David Lewis Thomas Manteufel Richard Marrs David Maxwell Dale Meyer Glenn Nielsen Joel Okamoto Jeffrey Oschwald David Peter Paul Raabe Victor Raj

Paul Robinson Robert Rosin Henry Rowold Timothy Saleska Leopoldo Sánchez M. David Schmitt Bruce Schuchard William Schumacher William Utech James Voelz Richard Warneck Robert Weise Quentin Wesselschmidt David Wollenburg

All correspondence should be sent to:

Travis Scholl CONCORDIA JOURNAL 801 Seminary Place St. Louis, Missouri 63105 Issued by the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, the Concordia Journal is the successor of Lehre und Wehre (1855-1929), begun by C. F. W. Walther, a founder of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Lehre und Wehre was absorbed by the Concordia Theological Monthly (1930-1972) which was also published 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, New Testament Abstracts.Old Testament Abstracts, and Religious and Theological Abstracts. It is indexed in Repertoire Bibliographique des Institutions Chretiennes and Religion Index One: Periodicals. Article and issue photocopies in 16mm microfilm, 35mm microfilm, and 105mm microfiche are available from University Microfilms International, 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 selfaddressed stamped envelopes.

The Concordia Journal (ISSN 0145-7233) is published quarterly (January, April, July, and October). The annual subscription 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 Publishing House for use of the artwork featured on the cover. © Copyright by Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri 2007 www.csl.edu

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COncordia J ournal CONTENTS

EDITORIALs 149

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 CORNER Greek Participles, Part VII

BOOK REVIEWS 223

Highlights in Contemporary Ecclesiology: A Review Essay John H. Rhoads

230

Additional Book Reviews July 2008 volume 34 | number 3

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editoRIALS

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Editor’s Note As we are preparing this special theme issue of the Concordia Journal, the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are renewing their historic basketball rivalry in the 2008 NBA Finals. Much has been made of how Boston coach Doc Rivers has led his team to a marvelous turnaround season by rallying his players around the slogan of ubuntu. Ubuntu is the traditional African concept that personhood is most deeply realized in community. Hence, ubuntu is expressed in communal welfare, mutual high regard, unmitigated hospitality, and, yes, teamwork. It is expressed in 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 to ekklesia, to why God would gather his children together as one into the body we call church. It is why individuals find themselves (in more ways than one) in a congregation. It is why a congregation finds itself in a synod. It is why a synod finds itself 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 opposite holds sway. As part of his massive Pulpit & Pew research study, Jackson Carroll cites one of the central challenges faced by American clergy and their churches as “de facto congregationalism.” This reality confronts all of American Christianity, a reality intensified by our ever-growing consumerist society and economy. De facto congregationalism is seemingly unique to American religious life. It is rooted in the Enlightenment notion of religious communities as “voluntary associations” of autonomous 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 its impact on almost all American religious communities. To varying degrees they all have come to adopt the voluntary principle. Almost all practice what sociologist R. Stephen Warner has called “de facto congregationalism,” an organizational pattern that more or less follows the model of the Reformed Protestant tradition that defines the congregation as a voluntarily gathered community.... [T]his has important implications for pastoral leadership in their work of producing religious culture. (52-53) American Christians, including those of us who find ourselves in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS), have been living with these realities for generations. And this is all the more true in a denomination that understands its polity 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? These are important questions, and this isn’t the first time they have been asked. But with the publication of Congregation–Synod–Church, the study document of the Synod’s Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance, and in the advent of 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 little corner of it—intend to be, already eight years into a new century. For us in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod this conversation has direct and significant implications. But for the broader church, the implications are just as meaningful.

This conversation impacts many American Christians, indeed many global Christians. We enter into the conversation with the prayer that it may benefit the whole church throughout all the world. And if we are to speak to each other with integrity and charity, we must listen to each other openly and faithfully.

To that end, Concordia Journal submits the following voices to the conversation. Concordia Seminary President Dale Meyer opens the discussion with the provocative question, “Where’s the Center?” in the church today. Charles Arand follows up with “starting points” in ecclesiology, especially as it pertains to the Lutheran tradition, where ecclesiology is never cut and dried. Jeffrey Kloha then digs into the New Testament foundations for “church,” particularly church as conceived as what he calls a “trans-congregational” community. William Schumacher follows with a historical analysis of what one of the “founding fathers” of the LCMS, C. F. W. Walther, meant in his understanding of “synod,” how that culture has changed in the intervening years, and what the historical implications are for us in a radically different cultural context. Finally, John Rhoads provides a compelling review essay of “must-reads” in contemporary ecclesiology. All this is in addition to some of the usual things you see in Concordia Journal.

But we should add a quick word about something you do not see, namely the Homiletical Helps. In light of what appeared as a kind of kairos moment in the life of the church, we felt the church benefitted from as much space as possible to talk about it. For that reason, we made the difficult decision to cut the Homiletical Helps for just this one issue. Of course, the perception of kairos is often in the mind of the beholder. So, we invite you to visit www.ConcordiaTheology.org, for homiletical 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 is a 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 as two or three or more are gathered, he is there. We—living as we are in the midst of innumerable communities who are yet one body—live in that faith, expressed in hope 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 of the Concordia Journal. Through this issue the faculty of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, invites you to theological thought and conversation about the study document prepared by the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Synodical Structure and Governance.

So to the question, where is the Center of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod? 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 the thoughts of the baptized about church than they are now. Back then, whatever it was that commanded our loyalty to the Synod was commingled with other characteristics of our walking together. We were Americans, but largely a German ethnic church, often thinking in German categories even when we spoke English. We were concentrated in the Midwest, reflecting the demographics of early immigrants. The two-pocketed offering envelopes reflected our commitment to work at home and synod-wide efforts. From generation to generation we were loyal to our denomination. If you moved away from home, you sought out the LCMS church and asked for a transfer. All those and many other manifestations of our walking together have changed or gone. Today you can ask our 2.4 million members (a declining number which has us in a panic) about the Center of the Synod and they’ll tell you they 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 president when I told him that our church, a large congregation, didn’t really need the Synod. That was in the 1980s and it’s even truer today. Large congregations and associations of congregations can do what the Synod historically has done. Times change, 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 major qualifications. If a person is a “joiner,” any congregation may fit the need. When our members move, many do not automatically seek out an LCMS church but look for a congregation that fits what they like. Whatever compelled people to stay with LCMS congregations is not as strong as it used to be. We’ve been influenced by an attitude called “voluntaryism.” Senator Hillary Clinton expressed “voluntaryism” very well in the brouhaha over Senator Barack Obama’s pastor. “While we don’t have a choice when it comes to our relatives, we do have a choice when it comes to our pastors or our church.” There’s more going on than the lack of an inner compulsion to affiliate with an LCMS congregation. Who needs the bother of a congregation at all? You can get your spirituality from the TV, radio, internet, or athome reading. Individualism is in the DNA of Americans and unless you’re a joiner you 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 of Congregation–Synod–Church? The very first sentence in my inaugural address in 2005 was, “Concordia Seminary is all about Jesus Christ.” That is very close to articulating the Center, but it’s an insufficient answer for the task at hand. In the controversies of the 1970s we heard fearful talk of “Gospel Reductionism,” of reducing the church’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 our professors teach our students that there’s more than just “Jesus and me”). Where do our students pick up a Christianity that is robbed of the varied and far-reaching vitality of the living and active Word of God? Some argue that Synod’s public talk has gone the same way, scriptural talk about outreach, stewardship, harmony, and the like, with texts brought in for some predetermined purpose or program. Nature abhors a vacuum and a church that is not centered on deeper theological conversation leaves itself open to all sorts of influences, some good, some bad, but usually a surrender to American pragmatism. Many people dismiss the word “theology” as an 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 and homes of people. Our own Dr. Robert Kolb has written, “Biblical interpretation and application in the Wittenberg way operated within a different framework from its predecessors, specifically focused on pastoral care through proclamation… The Wittenberg way of exercising the office of public teacher of God’s Word presumed that this exercise took place within the struggle of the repentant life and that God’s disposition as the merciful Father placed the gift of Christ in the gospel at the center of the theological enterprise” (Bound Choice, Election, and the Wittenberg Theological Method [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 66).

There, I believe, is the Center: a theological enterprise centered in the Scriptures of Christ. Such a Center is manifest in congregations walking together because we talk together about our shared confession of the doctrines of the Gospel. There are very few reasons left to perpetuate the Synod except that we want to bind ourselves together around these doctrines and voluntarily hold ourselves accountable to one another for the theology we preach and teach. “Here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14). We need each other, not so much for structured work as for nurture and growth in the full Word that leads to salvation. The masthead of Der Lutheraner used 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 is dead or dying. The study document is subtitled “Basic Theological Principles Underlying LCMS Structure and Governance.” Theology can’t just “underlie”; it has to be our Center.

Dale A. Meyer President Concordia Journal/July 2008

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ARTICLES

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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 opportunity and privilege of assisting Dr. J.A.O. Preus, former president of the Synod, with his biography on Martin Chemnitz. While working through Chemnitz’s thoughts on the church, we began discussing the broader topic of church and ministry. During the course of that discussion he mentioned that at one time he saw Gerhard Forde wearing a button that said, “This man has no ecclesiology.” Jokingly, he quipped that he wanted one as well! Part of what he meant was that Lutheranism in America had long struggled with issues of church and ministry and would continue to do so into the foreseeable future.

Others have noted that Lutherans travel light on ecclesiology. Some might see this as a weakness. Historically, we do not insist on a particular polity or church government. 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 other wrong. Bishops? We can take them or leave them. Institutional mergers upon reaching 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 ecclesiologically challenged. Yet what some see as a weakness I see as a strength because Lutherans focus on the theological essentials of the church. The rest we leave to sanctified common sense about how to organize ourselves within the world for the sake of the Gospel. This should position us well to address the desire for genuine community 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 as PTAs, Lion’s Clubs, Kiwanis, book clubs and the like. These were places where we interacted with people other than family members and fellow employees. These were 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 Systematic Theology and Chairman of the Department of Systematic Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

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life together as citizens. Putnam notes that people still bowl, but increasingly not in leagues (hence the title of his book). Although Putnam suggested a variety of possible reasons for the decline in community involvement, he argued that the single greatest source of this decline was the presence of “virtual community” in our television sets and on our computer screens. This kind of “engagement does not require commitment.”1 What Putnam documents as a decline of involvement in public institutions and identification with community organizations can be seen also in our own synod. When the Missouri Synod was formed, its identity was tied more to a book called Concordia than to an institution or bureaucracy. Confirmation committed us to the Small Catechism not to the LCMS. Our synod grew rapidly during its first fifty years. By 1919, it was the largest Lutheran body in America. During the middle part of the twentieth century, we began to look increasingly like a denomination with the growth of a bureaucracy and the expansion of goods and services for congregations (things that went beyond providing pastors and doctrinally sound materials). Synodical membership and public confession went hand in hand.

Since the 1960s, we have witnessed a decline of identification with the national church body, fueled by an American individualism that separates spirituality from organized religions (partly inherited from the radical Reformation and partly from 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 the Synod even exists. When people do know of it, they are likely to identify the Synod with a corporate building and its bureaucracy. The Synod has become institutionalized. We speak of “us and the Synod.” In the process, many have come to see Synod (as corporate headquarters) at best as irrelevant to congregational life or at worst a roadblock to the mission of the church. This has in part prompted the Synod to consider proposals for restructuring itself at the 2010 convention. This raises a number of critical questions.

First, has the “Synod” become a para-church organization or an American version of a European state church? We have seen a growing separation of confessional fellowship and synodical membership as evidenced by the organizing of ‘confessional’ protests. Such groups may be in fellowship with each other but not with others in Synod. They remain in Synod in part because they need some institutional support. The Word Alone Network provides a good example within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. So, has the Synod become a para-church organization as a provider of goods and services? It still supplies pastors through seminaries and doctrinally sound materials from its publishing house. Beyond this, however, it has encountered increased competition from other organizations that supply hymns/songs, liturgies, sermons, and leadership training.

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

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

Third (and this semiotics question follows upon the heels of the preceding one), when a person comes to our church and requests permission to receive the Lord’s Supper, does that individual person come as a representative of their church body (and everything that that church body teaches), and does such an action constitute an act of church fellowship? Most people probably see themselves as individual Christians and not as official representatives of any denomination. Or is it possible to distinguish church fellowship (where congregations and pastors hold joint worship services) from individual participation (where an individual from one church body communes at the altar of another church body simply as an individual Christian on the basis of an individual confession)?

Fourth, is the category of membership meaningful anymore today? At a congregational 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 commitments and obligations? If membership does matter, how and why do we define it?

Traditionally, we speak of baptismal members, communicant members, voting members, active members, and delinquent members. At the denominational level, one wonders whether pastors at times identify more with others in trans-denominational movements (liturgical movement, charismatic movement, church growth movement, the emerging church movement etc.) than with fellow pastors in their own church body. These movements are generally not characterized by well-established, institutional structures.

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

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II. Basics of a Lutheran Ecclesiology The decline of denominationalism challenges us to rethink afresh what it means to be church in the twenty-first century. But in order to do that, we must consider the basics of Lutheran ecclesiology. To that end, I will start with (and focus on) the Small and Large Catechisms of Martin Luther.

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

The Large Catechism unpacks these intriguing connections. There we read that the Holy Spirit “has a unique community in the world, which is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God, which the Holy Spirit reveals and proclaims, through which he illuminates and inflames hearts so that they grasp and accept it, cling to it, and persevere in it” (LC II, 42).5 When was the last time we thought about the church as our “mother”? What might that mean for our understanding of church membership? Luther continues: “Through it [this holy 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). This has enormous consequences. Individual persons do not come to faith apart from contact with the church. “The church is both chronologically and logically antecedent to the individual Christian life and to the existence of particular congregations.”6 The church gives birth to new Christians.

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

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

In the Small Catechism, Luther drives home the bond forged by the Spirit between the individual and the assembly by using the same verbs to describe the Spirit’s work within the individual and within the church (“called,” “enlightened,” “sanctified,” and “kept”). But now the Catechism adds the word “gather” to the list. As the Spirit brings me to Jesus He gathers me together with others around Jesus. I like the word “gather.” The Large Catechism explores it at length. There Luther expresses dissatisfaction with the German word Kirche to describe the church. 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 to church.” Nor does Luther like Gemeinschaft (communion) as it is too abstract. The verb “gather” (sammelt) results in a concrete gathering, group, or assembly of people, 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 German translation of the Bible) so that we should think of a Christian gathering or assembly. “When you hear the word “church” understand that it means group [Haufe], as we 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 (holy Christian people—Luther uses this in the Small Catechism) and Christliches Volk (Christian people). And so the Small Catechism renders the creedal phrase communio sanctorum (communion of saints) as ein Gemeine der Heiligen (community of holy people) instead of gemeinschaft der Heiligen (communion of saints), which he considered too abstract and unintelligible in German. In the end, the Creed should read, “I believe that there is on earth a holy little flock and community of pure saints under one head, Christ” (LC II, 51).11 Speaking of the church in this way allowed Luther (and Melanchthon) to counter Rome’s claim to be all that there was of church. Rome thought of the church 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 a society “as visible and palpable as the community of the Roman people, or the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.”12 Thus one is a citizen of France if 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 was coextensive with the boundaries of the pope’s domain. People encountered that dominion 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) in order to merit salvation.

Luther considers this community or gathering by looking at what holds it together at its the center. The Small Catechism states on the one hand that the Spirit keeps the believer “in the true faith” and on the other hand that the Spirit keeps 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 rechten einigen Glauben; per rectam unicam fidem). Here the Spirit unites Christian lives at the center. The true faith is what we share in common. We are not simply a community of 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 kept with Jesus.

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

What is the advantage to considering this gathering of Christians from God’s work at its center? If the church were initially a human creation, “if it were a product of voluntary organizing, then the lives of people in it would be connected only tangentially, functionally, and not centrally.”14 In a voluntary conception of the church where people choose to sit next to each other in the pews, choose to help out in the potluck, support a missionary, and choose to serve on committees, it will appear that they are “involved only at the edges of their existence where a temporary act unites them.”15 But such a view can lead to all kinds of problems. A voluntaristic conception of the church allows one easily to dismiss the organized life as tangential 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 fact that they are fed with the forgiveness of sins that they have with Christ.

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

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the world by virtue of our activity whereby we serve the neighbor. Here our righteousness is active. The former is the basis for the latter. We seek both but for different purposes. As we saw with Luther’s Small Catechism, what applies to the individual also applies to the church. In some ways, this distinction parallels our distinction between the una sancta and local congregations. The assembly that gathers around the throne of the lamb (coram Deo) and is hidden from the world also gathers within this world and carries out activities in plain sight of people within the world (coram mundo). So just as the individual Christian lives in two relationships, so the church also lives in two inseparable yet distinct realms.18 The church coram deo lives from the Word of God, and coram mundo it lives to deliver the Word of God to others.19 Coram Deo: The Una Sancta The 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 who believe 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 the church because only He can see the faith that exists in hearts. As such, the church is an article of faith. We believe that it exists even though we cannot see it. It is an eschatological community that will be revealed when Christ returns.

Clothed with the righteousness of Christ, bound to its head, Christ, the gathering of believers is holy. Just as the believer is righteous by faith in Christ, so the church is holy and without blemish (Ap VII, 7). Luther does not hesitate to call this gathering a “holy Christian people,” a “community of saints,” and a “holy community” (emphasis added).20 “There is on earth a holy little flock and community of pure saints under one head, Christ.”21 By contrast, “all who seek to merit holiness through their works rather than through the Gospel and the forgiveness of sins have expelled themselves from the church.”22 Within this community of Christians, the believer not only receives a new identity as a child of God, but she acquires at the same time a new identity as a sister of other believers. God neither created human beings to be alone nor did he recreate them to be alone. To be alone is downright inhuman. That original human community created by God is now recreated in Christ. As faith receives the benefits of Christ it also makes me a co-participant with others who also have faith. “Of this community I also am a part and member, a participant and co-partner in all the blessings it possesses” (LC II, 52).

In this community we have brothers and sisters throughout the world. The catechism does not intend to alter the meaning of “catholic” when it renders catholicam with christliche.23 The term “Christian” explains catholic and emphasizes that this assembly 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 Concordia Journal/July 2008

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assembly of all Christians in the world.” It is not bound to the pope or Rome, to Luther 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 in one generation and then disappear for centuries. As a gathering of believers created by the Spirit and ruled by Christ, the church exists not only throughout the world but throughout all times. And so, the catechisms “look beyond the largeness or smallness of the local assemblies to the entire Christendom on earth for which the perpetuo mansura can be claimed” (AC VII).24 It is a community that lives from the promise. For Luther, “the church is the creature of the word” of Christ (WA 6, 551 Z1). In this way the reformers countered 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 ideal in the human imagination any more than the believer’s righteousness in Christ was a “legal fiction” or “pretend righteousness.” The church truly exists, even as the believer is truly righteous, because the Word creates it. God’s Word makes things happen. 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 Where the Word is, there the church is. That brings us to the location of the universal church (coram deo) within local assemblies within the world (coram mundo).

Coram Mundo: Local Gatherings If 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 characteristics that we can see (as opposed to something being an object of faith). Indeed, the phrase notae ecclesiae will become something of a technical term for Lutheran ecclesiology beginning with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Article VII).27 In sixteenth century Europe, Lutherans used the “marks of the church” over and against the Roman church’s assertion that the one holy Christian church was coextensive with the Roman government or the kingdom of the pope. In other words, they used it to reject the notion that the church was tied to a person (obedience 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 in Rome.28 In other words, Rome cannot kick us out of the church, nor have we left the church.

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

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

The emerging church movement’s reaction against mega-church structures and denominationalism in America suggests that for many, the church has become identified primarily with an institution (although anti-organized religion has always been a part of American life). At the same time, the impulse toward small, temporary, face-to-face relationships among Christians raises its own questions. Are such gatherings church? How do we know? What are the characteristics of an “authentic” church in the twenty-first century? How do such communities relate to other communities across time and space? Here the marks of the church might provide a starting point for addressing such questions.

In the sixteenth century, Luther might on occasion mention two, seven, or even ten marks of the church.29 The naming and numbering can vary. The list is not inviolable. Marks simply describe certain activities of the church by which it is identified. To that end, we will consider three groups of marks. In the process, I am going to distinguish between these marks by speaking of infallible marks and fallible marks. In other words, there may be a variety of identifying marks by which we identify the church. Some of them, however, guarantee the existence of the church at particular places. Others provide a good indication that the church might be 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 believers. In this regard, Luther’s concept of the Church bears some resemblance to “a group of people assembled around a camp fire in the wilderness. All the attention is centered upon the focal point around which they gather, not upon the shadowy fringes of the group and the comings and goings at the margin.”30 Here we might also draw on images from Scripture where people gathered at Sinai (Ex. 19), the Water 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 it something other than a club. In turn the assembly of believers “is defined by what is done in their midst.”32 And so the proclamation of the Word is the preeminent mark of the church for Lutherans. This includes the Word in all its forms (however ordinary): 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 creates new 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, Baptism incorporates 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 the faithful around the table. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a koinonia in the 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 and blood we commune with Christ and are united with one another. “The prayer recorded 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 to the Word. The confession of faith as set forth in the ancient creeds, the Apostles Creed and Nicene Creed, provided an ecumenical thrust to Luther’s understanding of the church. It showed that Lutherans were no heretics. Similarly, Luther contended that the catechism made the Word accessible to the populace. And so the catechism could be considered a mark of church within each household. He could also identify persecution as a mark in that it involved suffering on account of one’s confession of the Word. Because the life of the church, the very existence of the church, depends upon the Word, the church must attend to the Word. The call into the 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 us before 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 must not look for a church in which there are no blemishes or flagrant faults, but for one where the pure Word of God is present, where there is the right administration of the Sacraments, and where there are people who love the Word and confess it before others. Where you discover these earmarks, there you may be sure the church exists, whether the number of those who have and observe these earmarks is small or whether the number is large. We are certain that there will always be some who are members of the church. (LW 13:90)36 Although the Word is the preeminent and infallible mark of the church’s existence, it is not the only mark. And so we move on to take into account the bond 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 are my disciples, that you love one another”) prompted Luther to consider love also as

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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 the Gospel with the Lord’s Supper, confession of Christ and Baptism, that is, the characteristic markings. The second is foot washing, not simply externally but even more excellently everyone as servant to the other. These are inborn in Christians from birth. Christian things are not recognized by their hats but by these two signs: where Christians believe in Christ as saved by faith and where they humbly give themselves to one another.37 This does not mean that love is as primary or preeminent as Word and Sacrament, or a guarantee of the church’s presence. But it is important. As a campfire song from my youth goes, “They will know we are Christians by our love.” The mark of love provides a very good indication that church exists in a particular place even if it does not guarantee the church’s existence.

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

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession develops these themes of love nicely.

Commenting on Colossians 2, Melanchthon notes: In all families and communities harmony needs to be nurtured by mutual responsibilities, and it is not possible to preserve tranquility unless people overlook and forgive certain mistakes among themselves. In the same way, Paul urges that there be true love in the church to preserve harmony, to bear with (if need be) the crude behavior of the brothers [and sisters], and to overlook certain minor offenses, 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 Donatists believed. They insisted on establishing their own pure bishops rather than receiving those 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 not upon the moral purity of any person. Instead, the church consists of forgiven sinners. Wengert suggests that a variation on Donatism arose in seventeenth century England with Puritanism, which made moral purity (ministerial and congregational) the “watchword of the true church.” The views it promoted “came to dominate American church life.”39 They remain the greatest temptation to church life in America.40 Structure/Order/Polity Human gatherings cannot exist without some kind of organization, arrangement, or working agreement. Which rituals do we use? What kind of practices do we develop? When do we gather? Where do we gather? Who does what? What do we do when we gather? The church cannot sustain or fulfill its mission without some “stable organizational features.”41 The development of these arrangements, orders, or agreements are a function of the assembly. The community agrees to function 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 And so from the beginning of its existence the Christian community had certain agreed upon features. It had recognized ministers and bishops, accepted creedal statements, and established certain forms of worship. Structures, whether they be churches or businesses, inevitably undergo a transformation over time. When they are new and small, they can operate more informally and adapt to new situations quickly. As they grow larger, they require more formal arrangements and change becomes more problematic. After a number of years, those who enter the church often discover that they inherit a structure with practices that have become ossified and difficult to change.43 Generally speaking, the church has taken two approaches to the matter of churchly practices.

On the one hand, the church is conservative when it comes to its center, that is, the Word. The church exists to preserve and perpetuate the proclamation of the Word by which the church is gathered to Christ. For Lutherans, structures (seminaries, church orders, etc.) serve to maintain a sustained orthodox witness to the Gospel. Apology XV stresses this strongly: catechesis, singing of Psalms, and lectionary all are to serve the teaching of the Gospel. Similarly, arrangements are made for the sake of mutual love and looking after each other (monasteries, hospitals, visitations, schools). And so Melanchthon stresses that they have gladly received many of the ancient traditions because they serve good order and tranquility (causa finalis) (§37-48). In fact, he goes on to boast that with regard to church orders 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 issue of 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, the way a Christian gathers structures often reflects the dominant ways of arranging life within society. For example, the ancient Roman Empire provided the church with an episcopal form of church government that not only reflected societal theories of organization, but also fit into the missionary situation of the church.

Geneva’s aristocratic social structure provided a Presbyterian model that had the potential of putting the abilities of the rising middle class at the disposition of the Gospel. Lutheran consistorial government reflected the early modern reliance of German and Scandinavian rulers upon the new bourgeois bureaucratic form of secular government (Kolb). In North America, congregations order themselves according to congregational voters’ meetings or boards of directors.

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

Unfortunately, within the history of the church, certain fallible marks have been made primary. Rome tended to elevate the institutional side to the point where it obscured the proclamation of the Word or rendered the Word less relevant to being the church. Mainline Protestant denominations may elevate mutual love, getting along, and being tolerant of each other above the other marks. But other groups have that as well. Lutherans stress the Word alone. For the Word alone bestows the forgiveness of sins and righteousness of Christ that renders us acceptable and pleasing to God. Endnotes 1 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: Augsburg Fortress, 2004), 10-11.

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2 See Stephen Prothero, The American Jesus: How the Son of God became a National Icon (New York: 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 the Word. 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] communio sanctorum, which in German means a congregation of saints, that is, a congregation made up only of saints. ‘Christian church’ and ‘congregation of saints’ are one and the same thing. In other words: I believe that there is a holy group and a congregation made up only of saints. And you too are in this church; the Holy Spirit leads you into it through the preaching of the Gospel. Formerly you knew nothing of Christ, but the Christian church proclaimed Christ to you. That is, I believe that there is a holy church [sanctam Christianitatem], which is a congregation in which there are nothing but saints. 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 TwentyFirst 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 crux of 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 the vernacular to Carolingian times” (ACP, 730).

24 Harding Meyer and Heinz Schütte, “The Concept of the Church in the Augsburg Confession,” 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.

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 on Psalm 90 he identifies ten marks.

30 Jonathon Trigg, Baptism in the Theology of Martin Luther (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 176.

31 Lathrop, 7 32 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, 66 40 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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The Trans-Congregational Church in the New Testament Jeffrey Kloha

What we label a given item impacts how we understand it. So basic an issue as how we perceive color is affected by language labels. The English language, for example, distinguishes blue from green, but most languages do not. Such languages, however (Russian, as one example), typically have distinct terms that distinguish shades of blue (of which “green” is considered a part), whereas English does not.

Recent study has confirmed that English speakers were able to perform complex tasks more quickly when those tasks were connected with distinguishing blue from green, but less successful when the same tasks distinguished shades of blue.

Russian speakers, on the other hand, accomplished tasks more quickly when coupled with distinctions between shades of blue than the same tasks coupled with distinguishing blue from green.2 While not experimentally demonstrated, most of us have experienced the fact that the labels that we apply to a given speaker, author, or theologian will affect how we view that individual’s statements. If our political leanings are Democratic, we will tend to view unfavorably a proposal labeled “Republican,” often regardless of the merit of the proposal itself. Similarly, when using biblical commentaries for sermon or Bible study preparation, seminary students and even pastors have difficulty trusting an author who can be called a “historical critic,” even if a given comment or conclusion is not in the least based on those principles. Likewise, a “conservative” commentary, such as the classic series by R. C. Lenski, will often be trusted implicitly, even when its argumentation is based on a faulty understanding of 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 gatherings and 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 congregation, as in, e.g., “St. Paul Lutheran Church.” “Church” is also regularly applied to a collective of individuals who share a belief but have no socially recognizable structural 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 —

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

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though a still intangible subset — of the una sancta, such as the “Lutheran Church.”3 However, in our circles we are reticent to apply the label “church” to any socially or structurally identifiable entity beyond the local congregation. Instead, we use terms like “district” and “synod,” terms which (as we use them) are foreign to the New Testament—and intentionally not “church”—to refer to the organizations and structures beyond the local congregation.4 This is not the place to rehearse the reasons why our tradition typically reserves “church” to designate only the local congregation or the una sancta.5 However, 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) several (or many) local congregations conceived of corporately, that is, a “trans-congregational church”; and 3) the church universal, or una sancta. Second, it will argue that the New Testament’s labeling examples of trans-congregational manifestations of 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 the ways that congregations, clergy, and laity should relate to one another within these trans-congregational structures precisely because they are “church.”

1. The New Testament: Churches and Church The 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 “regularly summoned legislative body,” (entry 1) or to “a casual gathering of people” (entry 2), two usages which do not concern us here. The third entry, “people with a shared belief,” is subdivided by usage according to context: sub-entry 3a, listing examples in the LXX referring to gatherings of Israelites; and sub-entry 3b, listing contexts where evkklhsi,a refers to “Christians in a specific place or area.” This general usage is further divided into references to gatherings “of a specific Christian group . . . involving worship and discussion of matters of concern to the community” (entry 3ba) and to “the totality of Christians living and meeting in a particular locality or larger geographic area, but not necessarily limited to one meeting place” (entry 3bb). It is the subdivision of this entry into, essentially, evkklhsi,a as a local gathering for worship and evkklhsi,a as a larger “totality” of congregations that will concern us in this section. The third sub-entry (entry 3c) for evkklh si,a in BDAG is its use as “the global community of Christians,” further defined as the “(universal) church.”

As outlined above, the typical usage within our circles is to use “church” to refer to local congregations (BDAG entry 3ba) and the universal church (BDAG entry 3c), but we have avoided the use of “church” as referring to any socially or Concordia Journal/January-April 2008

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structurally recognizable instantiation of “church” beyond the local worshipping assembly (BDAG entry 3bb). The avoidance of this usage has not only led us to misread the use of evkklhsi,a in certain New Testament texts, it has also resulted in a failure to recognize the larger unity of the church beyond the local congregation in 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 transcongregational dimension of the church. On the day of Pentecost 3000 were added to 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 clusters 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 participated in some form of food distribution for the widows (6:1-7) which “pleased the whole multitude (plh,qouj)” (6:5). No doubt these smaller gatherings in people’s homes reflected to some extent the life of the synagogue in Jewish practice, and they 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 part of a larger body which shared oversight (by the apostles), pooled their financial resources to carry out its work, and carried out evangelism (“the Lord added to their number daily” 2:47).7 They could also be described collectively, as in the use of the singular to describe the collective “whole church” in the account of Ananias and Saphira (evfV o[lhn th.n evkklhsi,an, 5:118). Communication about this event reached all the individual “churches” (worshipping communities), again indicating some kind of relationship among them. Hence, there is an organizational structure that corresponds to “something” that is “church” but is neither a congregation nor the una sancta.9 To return to the categories used in the BDAG lexicon, evkklhsi,a in Acts 2 refers to “the totality of Christians living and meeting in a particular locality or larger geographic area, but not necessarily limited to one meeting place” (entry 3bb).

Just as the “church” in Jerusalem was made up of multiple worshipping communities but still called “church,” the singular of evkklhsi,a is used elsewhere in Acts to describe the church as a trans-congregational reality. The most explicit reference is in Acts 9:31: So the church (h` evkklhsi,a) throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace (ei=cen eivrh,nhn) and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied (evplhqu,neto).

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In this passage a textual problem highlights the issue. The question is whether evkklhsi,a and the verbs of which it is the subject should be singular (“the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria“) or plural in form (“the churches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria“). The singular, found in the standard text, is likely the archetypical reading.10 Significantly, this reading was unknown to the editors of the Textus Receptus and hence both Luther and the translators of the King James Version. Had the correct reading been available to postreformation theologians, perhaps the use of “church” in a trans-congregational sense would not have seemed so foreign. In any case, here again the narrative of Acts 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 the narrative of Acts. As the church grows beyond Jerusalem, a connection is always maintained with the Christians in Jerusalem. When Peter preaches to Gentiles in Joppa, some of the “circumcision party” (11:2) in the Jerusalem church questioned whether the Gospel could be for the uncircumcised. After hearing Peter’s description of the work of the Holy Spirit, they “praised God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’” (11:18). As the persecuted Christians scattered to Antioch and preached the Gospel there, more people “turned to the Lord.” (11:21). Upon hearing of this, the Jerusalem church sent Barnabas, 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 an entire 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 individual clusters of congregations, share a concrete form of fellowship with one another.

Furthermore, when Agabus predicts a famine in Judea, the financial resources of the church in Antioch are pooled and sent to the church in Judea, further evidence of 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 multiple interpretations12) as a model for the functioning of the church. Walther, as a notable 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 approach is not the best way to handle narratives. Nevertheless, what the passage does show is that the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, carries out its work as a trans-congregational church in action. To describe the text briefly: There was division within the church regarding the necessity of circumcision for the Gentiles. Some “from Judea” taught that it was necessary; Paul and Barnabas (from Antioch) did not.

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of a larger unity of the church that extends beyond that of the local assembly. In order to maintain this larger unity, and to ensure that each church was teaching the true faith, those involved gathered together and submitted their understanding of the Scriptures in the matter. It should be noted that there was not a call sent out to all the evkklhsi,ai to gather for the discussion, only those directly involved met with the leaders in Jerusalem in order to discern God’s will. The congregations founded by the activity of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13 and 14 were not involved. Neither was every evkklhsi,a in Jerusalem involved; the “apostles and elders” alone met and discussed 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.” This highlights that not everyone’s voice was heard; perhaps oddly to us, no Gentiles were brought in to plead their own case, and whatever specific role the elders performed, 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 the council.15 In the end, consensus was reached under the guidance of the Spirit and the study of Scripture, as well as the example of the Spirit’s obvious work through Peter, Paul, and Barnabas. Once the issue was settled, all sides agreed to submit to the shared understanding of God’s will. This passage relates a major event in the narrative of Acts, one with significance beyond what is discussed here. But for our purposes, it does show that the congregations functioned in real and significant ways as a larger “church.” Wayne Meeks draws three conclusions from this account regarding the “organization” of the early Christians: First, we see that within two decades of Jesus’ death the community of those who believed in his messiahship and resurrection had become a distinct sect among the Jews . . . Second, we see a concern for unity and conformity. What happened among Christians in Antioch mattered to those in Jerusalem, and vice versa. . . Third, the primary means for resolving conflicts seems to have been meeting and talking.16 In this episode, therefore, there was communication among congregations, even though geographically distant; there was a desire to meet for resolution on a difficult matter of teaching and practice; there was the assumption, indeed the necessity, of sharing the same confession and practice, even though the congregations themselves were located in very different cultural contexts (Jewish for the church in Judea; Greco-Roman for the church in Antioch); and, likely the main point of the narrative, the resolution, based on the Scriptures, showed that the Holy Spirit was continuing to guide the church (both the individual congregations and the transcongregational church) as it made witness to Jesus Christ.

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

1b. Church in the Pauline Letters A similar conception of “church” as both individual congregation and as a trans-congregational reality is found in the Pauline letters. The congregations of the Pauline mission were composed of clusters of Christians that gathered for worship in “house churches.” For example, Paul praises the congregation that meets in the house of Prisca and Aquila (Rom 16:3-5), and sends greetings to the “church” that meets in the house of Nympha (Col 4:15). These “house churches” seem to correspond to the conception of “church“ or “local congregation,” as defined by the Lutheran Confessions: a social unit that gathers together around Word and Sacrament. Yet these Pauline “house churches” do not remain isolated from each other, either theologically or socially.

Two very specific phrases in Paul’s letters indicate that local house congregations gathered together for certain activities, and that both an individual house church as well as several house churches meeting and described together could be called “church.” First, Paul uses the phrase evkklhsi,a . . . evpi. to. auvto, to describe the Corinthian house-congregations physically gathering together in the “same place,” whether for worship (VEa.n ou=n sune,lqh| h` evkklhsi,a o[lh evpi. to. auvto,, 1 Cor 14:23), or for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (sunercome,nwn u`mw/n evn evkklhsi,a| . . . sunercome,nwn u`mw/n evpi. to. auvto,, 1 Cor 11:18, 20).18 The second phrase Paul uses is h` evkklhsi,a katV oi=kon (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:9; Phlm 2; Col 4:15), 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 one particular evkklhsi,a from other evkklhsi,ai which are in the same city.19 In fact, at 1 Cor 16:19 “all the churches in Asia” send greetings, along with a single house church within the larger collocation of the churches of Asia, the one that meets in Prisca’s and Aquila’s house (su.n th|/ katV oi=kon auvtw/n evkklhsi,a|). Similarly, in both Rom 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=kon appears only in greetings there is no clear indication of the activities that took place in 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 house churches in which most of the activities and life of the church took place.”21 Combined with the evidence of the phrase evpi. to. auvto,, it can be concluded that in Concordia Journal/July 2008

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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 multiple worshipping communities enlightens Pauls’ argument in key passages. Twice in 1 Corinthians Paul urges the Corinthian church to be what they are: part of the transcongregational “church.” First, in chapter 11 the Corinthian Christians are rebuked for their celebration of the Lord’s Supper. They gather as evkklhsi,a in order to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:20), but their practices of showing social distinctions and distinguishing between Christians “shame those who have nothing” (11:22). In creating these divisions, the Corinthians not only destroy the unity of the 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 Corinthian assembly itself, but to the wider church (as discussed above). H. J. Klauck points out that by contrasting the Corinthian evkklhsi,a with the evkklhsi,a tou/ qeou/, Paul rebukes the Corinthians for not truly living as “church”: Both words [in 11:20 and 22] in the Greek are only evkklhsi,a. The Corinthians must let their own existence be held up as a mirror. They are evkklhsi,a, but they accomplish in their church assembly only a caricature of this evkklhsi,a. When this present church fails, the ideal image of the church is turned critically against it.23 This use of “church of God” to compare and contrast the Corinthian church is very similar to his exhortations for the Corinthians to follow the practices of “all the churches” (discussed below). Here, however, evkklhsi,a is used in the singular to denote the totality of other congregations; the trans-congregational church can rightly be called “church.” Furthermore, the point made by Paul deserves emphasis.

When the local church fails to conduct itself properly as church, it reflects poorly upon (i.e., “shames”) the entire trans-congregational church. Conversely, the local church 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 is in 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). Now sw/ma is used, as it had been in 10:14-22, in a non-literal sense to emphasize the unity that should exist among the Corinthians. Though there are many “parts,” the Corinthians are all “one body” (12:12). God has arranged the individual parts “as he 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 is used in its trans-congregational sense, since the offices of apostle, prophet, and

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teacher transcend the local congregation.24 Once again Paul calls the Corinthians to specific 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 it should go also in Corinth.

In addition to this usage of evkklhsi,a and evkklhsi,ai to refer to individual congregations and collections of congregations in a larger geographic area, at the same time Paul applies evkklhsi,a to the entire Christian movement. The “church of God” can be conceived of socially as a group distinct from “Jews and Greeks” at 1 Cor 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 to his conversion, as one who “persecuted the church of God” (15:9) which cannot be a reference to a single congregation, nor to the una sancta, but to the church in a collective sense. Meeks notes that Paul’s usage of evkklhsi,a to refer to something other than its typical Hellenistic usage of a town meeting of free citizens “must have been puzzling to any ordinary Greek” because it “names not just the occasional gathering but the group itself.”25 That evkklhsi,a is stretched beyond its typical Hellenistic usage is seen at 1 Cor 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 Corinthians on notice that they are part of a larger body of those made church by God. This is reinforced by the greetings “with all who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place” (1:2). According to Anthony Thiselton, this greeting reinforces the thought that the church in Corinth is not a self contained autonomous entity: they are not a self-sufficient community; they are not the only pebble on the beach. Their lifestyle and practices are monitored by translocal “fellow workers” of Paul’s (notably by Timothy, 1 Cor. 4:17). And they are required to follow patterns of thought and lifestyle which characterize traditions or “order” (diata,ssomai) “in all the churches” (evn tai/j evkklhsi,aij pa,saij, 1 Cor 7:17).26 The Corinthians are to view themselves in very concrete ways as “church” connected to the “church” throughout the world.

Therefore, the New Testament evidences social and practical connections between 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 congregations of a given province (ai` evkklhsi,ai th/j Asi,aj, 1 Cor 16:19; h` evkklhsi,a kaqV o[lhj th/j VIoudai,aj, Acts 9:31) and the entire Christian movement (evkklhsi,a Concordia Journal/July 2008

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tou/ qeou/, 1 Cor 10:32). All of these are labelled “church” (evkklhsi,a) in the NT because 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 relationships between the local congregation and other congregations–as church–are to be explored next.

2. The Trans-Congregational Church of the New Testament 2a. Shared Communication In our day communication occurs instantly via text message, cell phone, and e-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 the fact that communication should not be taken for granted, and was carefully encouraged and maintained among the NT congregations. The Pauline congregations had extensive communication and social interaction with one another, encouraged by the Apostle himself. For example, Paul reported the faithfulness of one congregation to another. He greets the congregation at Thessalonica: “Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring” (2 Thes 1:4). He also praises congregations for their example, which has become known to other–at times quite geographically distant–congregations (Rom 1:8; 1 Thes 1:7-8). Paul also praises the Thessalonians because they “became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea” (1 Thes 2:14). What goes for one church (in this case, persecution) goes also for another church, and Paul encourages the Thessalonians to see themselves as sharing in the same reality of being in Christ as churches that were located half a continent away.

Practical connections between congregations are also evident. In his letters Paul frequently sends greetings from one congregation to another. At 1 Cor 16:9 a greeting is sent from “all the churches of Asia” to the church in Corinth. The greeting is doubly significant. Not only are greetings sent across the Bosporos between congregations, but a collection of congregations, all those of the province of Asia, send greetings together. There must have been some relationship among those congregations–beyond mere geography–that allowed Paul to conceive of them 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 Paul had in mind are not clear, it must refer to actual congregations, again conceived of as a whole and in some real relationship among them. Further connections are seen in 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 greeting in Rom. 16:1-2, which commends Phoebe from the “church of Cenchrae (a

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port town of Corinth) establishes a direct link between Christians in Greece and Rome. When Paul sends greetings “from all the saints” (Phil 4:22), he is referring to specific congregations sending greetings to other specific congregations. Paul not only sent greetings himself, but also arranged for individuals to visit other congregations and convey information about their home congregation. Most obvious in this regard is Col 4:7-9, where the Colossians are told that Tychichus and Onesimus will arrive and “tell you of everything that has taken place here.” In this way relationships among congregations – not only between Paul and the congregations–are created and maintained. Indeed, the very purpose of Romans seems to be to strengthen a relationship between congregations founded by Paul and the church(es) in Rome, which Paul had not founded.28 That these greetings were intended to draw congregations together in very concrete ways is seen by the frequent exhortations to hospitality in the Pauline letters (Rom 12:13; 1 Tim 3:2; Tit 1:8; 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 the church when they arrived at a new place . . . By welcoming such guests the host could receive fresh information about other churches and about people from their own church that had moved to other places.”29 No congregation was an island unto itself, and these connections could be called upon by individual members as they traveled about and conducted business in the Pax Romana.

2b. Shared Practice The purpose of this communication and interaction among the early Christians was not merely for social purposes. These relationships could be called upon to encourage in the local congregation the beliefs and practices that were shared 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 also read in the church of the Laodiceans and that you in turn read the letter from Laodicea” (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 intended to apply to more than one congregation. Most scholars note that even 1 Corinthians, perhaps the most situationally specific of Paul’s existing correspondence, was intended to be read by other congregations as well.31 Lars Hartman draws together evidence from the Greco-Roman world as well as the Pauline Letters and concludes, “Paul wrote his letters to be more than occasional correspondence. He intended them to be read more widely.”32 In this way the teachings and 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 there is controversy—perhaps even especially because there is controversy—Paul appeals to 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 marriage and divorce (7:17), head coverings (11:17), and worship practice (14:33): “If anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.” More broadly he does the same in 4:16-17, where he tells the Corinthians that he has sent Timothy “to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.” That is, the practices of other congregations must inform and shape those of the Corinthians. The Corinthians’ relationship to other congregations is not simply that they have the same founder, or that they have voluntarily agreed to do certain things together because it is expedient,33 but they are bound together in order to reflect the body of Christ himself. When one congregation (or, in the case of Corinth, the congregations of a given city) deviates from those of other congregations, the erring congregation is challenged to return to the shared practices of the broader church.34 This is not mere submission to Paul because he is apostle to or founder of these churches, for Paul commands them to “submit” to the household of Stephanus 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 instruction by appealing to the broader church, if there was not a genuine unity of the church that is trans-congregational in nature.

2c. Shared Mission & Confession Though “mission” and “theology” are often separated, as if one simply masters theology and then carries out mission, in terms of the work of the church “mission” and “theology/confession” are inseparable. A key purpose of the church, as expressed by the NT, is to help its members make the proper confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, who builds up his church. With “one Lord one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all“ the church together, “speaking the truth in love,” is to “grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the 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 the most dramatic is in Acts 15, where different churches taught different things about how the Gentiles could be a part of the church (teaching). But because they recognized that the church is bigger than their congregation, and that they in fact might be wrong, the Judean church and some from the party of the Pharisees, as well as Antioch, submitted to the wider church as it gathered in Jerusalem. This meeting could only take place if the participants recognized that true confession is an essential mark of the church, and together they carried the Gospel to the Gentiles.

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

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

The unity of the trans-congregational church is further reflected in the sending out of missionaries by several churches jointly,35 and by Paul’s request to the church in Rome that he be received by them and “helped on the way” as he continues his mission work in Spain – essentially a missionary of the church in Antioch applying 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 the church in Jerusalem. This was, at its core, a trans-congregational effort. Here several individuals were “appointed by the churches” to accompany Paul (cf. 1 Cor 16:34; 2 Cor 8:19 which brought together the collection from multiple churches for the church in Jerusalem). The list of those participating, given in Acts 20:4, shows broad participation: “Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus.” The theological foundation given by Paul for this effort shows that all the churches, no matter their ethnic background or location, 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 knowledge about and communication among even geographically distant churches, through shared practice, even among churches in culturally diverse settings, and through shared mission and confession. Somehow this could only have been accomplished (on a human level) if a structure of some kind existed, was maintained, and even encouraged among the churches.

3. Implications for Life Together as Church The NT writings do not command a specific church structure, neither for an individual congregation nor to concretize the larger unity among Christians. They do, 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 we have historically viewed these offices as adiaphora, and so do not use them.36 That is not to argue that Scripture mandates such offices and a hierarchical structure, but it should be noted that in our circles we have chosen to ignore clear NT descriptions of church structure in favor of different structures. How, then, do we legitimately read the NT in order to understand “church,” its nature, and in particular its Concordia Journal/July 2008

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structure? The emerging church movement, for example, claims to use the NT model of the church as its basis as well. However this movement comes to radically different understandings of church. In this model, the church is typically defined as lacking any structure, it is simply “living as community.” There is a lack of a transcongregational understanding of church, and in fact emerging communities frequently define themselves against traditional structures. Even more problematic is the danger of this movement losing a connection with the una sancta, since the individual, autonomous, self-defined group of authentic followers of Christ is all the church one needs.37 It may be that one reason the “emerging church movement” is gaining traction in the LCMS is because many pastors and congregations likewise view the “church” as properly only the self-defined cluster of those seeking to live Christ-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 a congregation into an emerging model is a good idea.

The early fathers of the LCMS also used the NT to understand and structure the Synod, though of course they came to a very different model than those in the emerging church movement. In particular, Acts 15 is used as the “example” upon which “synod” is based. Given the description of Acts 15 laid out in this essay, the case 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 of the work given it to do by consensual authority of the local congregation.38 At the same time, however, Walther and the early LCMS framers of the synodical structure chose not to use other passages. For example, Acts 1 and the choosing of Matthias 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 1 should 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 church can and should be clear. This essay seeks to lay out implications by moving from text to context as follows: First, the NT describes a “real thing” (the church) that is manifest in various ways in the NT period. That same “real thing” (the church) still exists today as “the synod,” though today it is expressed in different structures and organizations. Second, we participate in the same reality of church that existed among those who saw Christ, the apostles. To be avoided is allegorizing the NT to come 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-congregational manifestations as described in the NT to what the church (local and transcongregational) should look like in our day. In drawing out these implications, based on the previous discussion, this essay does not intend to be exhaustive or directive, only suggestive. Pastors, congregations, and church leaders are encouraged to reflect on the NT depictions of church and consider how they ought to live as part of the church.

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3a. Pastors and Congregations in Relation to Others Perhaps the most overlooked aspect of the life of the NT church is the fostering and maintaining of relationships among geographically distant congregations.

How it goes in Judea is how it goes in Antioch, and Corinth and Rome cooperate in mission work together. As individuals travel, either as representatives of their local church or even apparently as they conduct business they are welcomed by their brothers and sisters in other cities. Hospitality is encouraged. In our day of internet-booked hotels and self-guided tours such hospitality seems not to be needed. But is it to be avoided? And why not encouraged? As individuals travel over weekends should they not be pointed to a sister congregation? If possible, the host pastor having been informed of their visit might even arrange a meal with individuals from the host congregation. Worshipping together, sharing the Lord’s Supper together, even eating a meal together makes real on a personal level the fellowship among congregations that can and should exist. Conversely, congregations and pastors that refuse to celebrate the Lord’s Supper with their brothers and sisters in the (trans-congregational) church destroy the very fellowship which together “proclaims the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26).

A second significant aspect of the life of the NT church was the relationship among 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 jointly sent out missionaries. While of course “house church” does not correspond exactly to our constitutionally organized congregations, shared life together among congregations in a given city or area should be encouraged. Cooperation in areas as diverse as shelters for the homeless or abused, food pantries, health services, youth activities, and even days out for retirees reflect the unity that exists among local congregations. Gathering for joint worship on such occasions as Reformation Day, or for mid-week Advent or Lent worship, or for mission festivals all reflect the unity 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 examples of situational cooperation, some congregations today are hearkening back to an earlier model of church structure. The Gesamtgemeinde in St. Louis, a “church” of seven local congregations with C. F. W. Walther as their pastor, is now paralleled in many situations where the ministries, budgets, and pastoral leadership of several locations are combined into one structure. Whether intentionally or not, this reflects 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 small step to the “bishops” of the second century and beyond in the history of the church. Nevertheless, these trans-congregational entities, not a single congregation nor a circuit, district, or synod, face their own set of challenges: That with the creation of a larger structure the tendency may be to become isolated from other congregations and the trans-congregational church.

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Third, the council in Jerusalem (Acts 15) and the collection for the church there, as described in Paul’s letters and Acts 20, shows that the local churches participated in shared mission and work. Certainly congregations carried out their own works of mercy and gave witness to their neighbors about Christ. But at the same time they participated with other congregations. In our day this is appropriately reflected in such efforts as human care, where individual congregations (and members of congregations) meet needs in their community, but also participate with other congregations in getting aid to locations worldwide.

Fourth, there is unity in confession and practice. One temptation for a local congregation is to see itself as “autonomous” and therefore able to do whatever it sees fit as it carries out its work. At times these activities correspond to those of none of its neighboring congregations, let alone of the larger worldwide fellowship of congregations. In such cases, perhaps American individualism and pragmatism has affected our thinking. Nevertheless, the NT church went to great lengths to insure unity of confession and practice. Again, Acts 15 is a prime example. Both congregations reaching out to Jews and congregations reaching out to Gentiles willingly met together in order to reach consensus regarding right teaching, practice, and mission. Corinth had good reason to think that its cultural context was unique and required unique practices. Paul, however, reminded them in four passages in 1 Corinthians alone that their practices were to be the same as those of the other churches. And even Paul himself submitted himself to others in order to make sure that he “was not running or had not run in vain“ (Gal 2:2). If pastor or congregation is teaching or practicing differently from other congregations in their fellowship, the reaction should be that of Paul, the Judean church, and Antioch: to seek conversation, prayer, study of the Word of God, and consensus.

3b. The Trans-Congregational Church Although little specific is said, and even less commanded, regarding the structures of the trans-congregational church in the NT, the larger church beyond the local congregation is not free to organize itself in any manner it chooses. Its structures must reflect and contribute to its life as genuine church. It participates in the same reality of being church as the local congregation. In this context, “transcongregational church” refers to any structural entity beyond the local congregation, be it circuit, district, synod, even international church organizations. A few examples may be brought forth for consideration.

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

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ter position than a local congregation to identify those places of need, though the local congregation certainly does its work as it identifies need. In addition, the trans-congregational church calls and sends out missionaries, again because as it acts with the local congregations it is able to coordinate a broader perspective of need and opportunity. Furthermore, a major NT theme is that the trans-congregational church works to maintain unity of confession and practice, and serves as the locus for gathering together local congregations as they strive to maintain unity with one another. This seems to be one area where the churches in America, whatever their denomination, are having difficulty. Local congregations may be unwilling to submit to one another, and trans-congregational entities may be unwilling (or unable), 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 the law 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 and relate to one another in the church.40 The trans-congregational church in our day must follow corporate regulations. It does not follow from this, however, that the church should act like a soul-less corporation when its representatives must deal with matters of call, employment, and compensation. The synod is its pastors and congregations, and we together are the synod. Though many today view trans-congregational entities as extraneous to the life of the local congregation, the NT speaks otherwise. Circuits, districts, and synods, however they may be constituted and arranged, are church. Local congregations are also that church. The current conception of synod that many seem to have today, that it is a voluntary association — and nothing more — cannot be supported from the NT. By ignoring the NT understanding of the trans-congregational nature of the church we have weakened the bonds of fellowship, mutual concern and support, and unity in doctrine and practice which should inform and indeed define our life together as church. By turning again to the New Testament we might sharpen our understanding of church and apply that understanding to our structures. The goal is that the church so structured and blessed by the power of the Spirit might all the more clearly confess Jesus Christ as Lord, so that every tongue might make that same confession here in this life and again finally at their resurrection on the Last Day. Endnotes 1 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 York Times, 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 On Basic 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 sacraments. These are not two different churches or two kinds of churches, but are rather the one, holy catholic, and apostolic church we confess in the Nicene Creed. Local congregations are therefore regarded as divinely instituted by our Lord through the Holy Spirit and therefore as possessing spiritual authority."

4 Again, as evidenced in Congregation—Synod—Church, 2: "Although we sometimes speak of our Synod as a "church," it is, in fact, a human association of congregations and ministers, organized to 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 only advisory 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 of 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,troj P de,). The reading of D sy and the Byzantine tradition, though incorrect, matches the usage of the singular of evkklhsi,a in Acts to encompass multiple congregations: o` de. ku,rioj proseti,qei tou.j sw|zome,nouj kaqV hvme,ran th|. ejkklhsi,a|. VEpi. to. auvto. de. Pe,troj ("But the Lord added daily those who 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 between the 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. Not only is the number of the noun altered (ai` evkklhsi,ai) but the number of the verb (ei=con) and the participles (oivkodomou,menai and poreuo,menai) is also altered. This is not exclusively a Majority Text reading, but is found also in the Old Latin and in E (which is a copy of Codex Bezae; Bezae is damaged here and so cannot be cited). So this is an early “Western Text” reading that has been adopted into the Majority Text, likely because it makes more sense to use the plural when referring to numerous congregations. However, one of the editorial characteristics of the Western Text is harmonization to the near context; if the witnesses were reversed and the Western Text went against its tendencies here there might be a slight chance of argument, but because the plural form is both the easier reading and characteristic of the editorial practices of its witnesses, it is most likely secondary. Eldon Epp suggests that it reflects a further tendency of the Western Text to highlight the unity of the congregations, but that seems to be an over-complicated explanation in this case; see his The Theological Tendency of 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 Acts 20.28 and 9.31," New Testament Studies 31 (1985), 135-42. Giles argues that the plural should be read here, though with questionable argumentation. For example, he rules out comparison to Acts 20:28 as a non-Lukan usage; that the singular evkklhsi,a refers not to congregations in Judea (as it does in Acts 15) but to the single "church" in Jerusalem which had been dispersed by persecution; and reqiures a sequence 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 narrative in J. W. Voelz, What Does This Mean? Principles of Biblical Interpretation in the Post-Modern World, 2nd edition (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1997), 330-1.

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

14 Not least is the difficulty of whether the usage in Acts is derived from Judaism or from that of the Gentile congregations and whether there is overlap between the two in NT usage; in the Hellenistic congregations the duties of the "elders" included "exhortation and preaching in the church services" (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 of the origin of the use of the term "elder," that "the elders mentioned in Acts 15 may well have been men who originally led house churches."

15 Hence, contra Walther in his first presidential address (see note 12), there were likely no lay people present for the discussion and deliberation of the meeting at Jerusalem. However, as at Acts 9:31, the text known to Walther differed from the standard text used today. At Acts 15:23, which relates the content of the letter sent “to the brothers from among the Gentiles," the "Byzantine" witnesses read "The apostles and elders and brothers (kai. oi` avdelfoi,) . . . to the brothers among the Gentiles" The standard text reads "The apostles and elders, [who are] brothers (avdelfoi,) . . . to the brothers 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 the instruction is to a specific group of elders, each of whom are to care for a specific "church" which is a part of the larger Ephesian "church," and these all together along with other churches located beyond Ephesus compose the "church of God." Paul is not instructing the Ephesian elders to watch over 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 house church.

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). As many commentaries point out, the "which is in" is grammatically superfluous. It may in fact relate to the Pauline ecclesiology described in this essay, that "church" is "church" no matter its size, composition, 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, for example 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 lokale Gemeinde 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 11,1714,40, 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 Acts 19:32.

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

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This confirms the description of the NT use of evkklhsi,a in BDAG; see note 6 above.

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 the congregations themselves. See Hvalsik, pp. 130-31.

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

30 Though Marcion labels what we know as Ephesians as the letter to the Laodiceans, it is not possible 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 sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord 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 his desire for unity in confession and practice; in 1 Cor 9 his freedom is to give up what one would prefer to 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 church among many others, one outcropping, as it were, the one that happens to be in Corinth. . . .They are to 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,stoloi evkklhsiw/n), the glory of Christ."

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

37 Defining "The Emerging Church" is virtually impossible, as many observers note. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger (Emerging Churches. Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures, Grand Rapids: 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 give way 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 without ceasing" (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 parallel the "synod in convention" is mistaken, it is appropriate to see Acts 15 as calling the church to gather in order to define true teaching and practice is appropriate.

39 Such a discussion is highly desirable, however, for there is not always agreement regarding how 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 1 Cor 6:1-8.

27 28

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Thinking with Walther about the Church Congregation, Synod, Church William W. Schumacher

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

In the history of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, as in the histories of other church bodies, discussions of structure and governance always move in a theological dimension as well as a practical one, and these discussions involve sensitive, central questions of the church’s identity. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the theme of ecclesiology dominated the Missouri Synod’s early history and shaped its theological self-understanding. As the Synod wrestled with questions of what it means to be church, C. F. W. Walther’s theology decisively influenced decisions about the Synod’s polity and structure from the very beginning. Walther’s engagement with questions about what the church is and how it orders its life began in the early 1840’s — that is, even before there was a Missouri Synod — and continued throughout his life as one of the most important theological voices in 19th century American Lutheranism.

Walther’s best known work for many students today is probably his lecture series on The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel. But his essays and discussions William W. Schumacher is Mission Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, where he has taught since 1998. He also serves as Dean of Theological Research and Publication.

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of the church constitute arguably his most important theological work. His creative contribution in the area of ecclesiology came about precisely because he seized upon the American context as a unique opportunity to re-think the church from the ground up in a way that is thoroughly informed by Lutheran (and especially Luther’s) theology. In this study we will explore how Walther’s ecclesiology came to emphasize the importance and centrality of the local congregation, but we will also comment on important ways in which Walther pointed to a visible reality of the church which transcended the local parish and bound confessional Lutheran Christians together. It will be argued that while more recent practice has tended to lay claim to Walther’s congregational emphasis, there is a need to recover his insights about the trans-congregational or trans-local character of the Lutheran church 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 occasions. The first of these will be the Altenburg Debate in April of 1841. The next will be his famous Kirche und Amt, the theses on church and ministry, written about ten years later and clearly a further development or refinement of the same thoughts expressed in the Altenburg Debate. It is necessary to review those earlier documents in order to appreciate a third important writing on the local congregation, The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Local Congregation Independent of the State (often referred to by its short German title, Die Rechte Gestalt). These three writings clarify the basic structure of Walther’s thinking about the local church, and also let us observe him develop a set of connected ideas about the church as the situation in America (and his understanding of it) developed. After examining what may be called Walther’s congregational ecclesiology in these texts, we will turn to his 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 different conception of the “visible church” as a confessional fellowship which is not limited to a local setting and helps local churches remember their ecumenical responsibility. For convenient reference, the theses from each of those documents are appended to this essay.

Walther in the American Context The context out of which Walther came had not traditionally fostered creative reflection on church polity. Lutheran churches in Europe had largely retained inherited structures which depended explicitly or implicitly on the existing political authority structure. In other words, such churches represented various applications of the principle cuius regio eius religio by which the ruler of a territory was understood as having the legitimate authority to determine religious life within his domain. 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 supporting 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 that European operating framework. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibited government sponsorship of any church, and at the same time prohibited the government’s interference in religious practices. This meant that churches were no longer able to lean on political authority for structure and support, but were free to (and, in fact, were required to) organize themselves in whatever ways they deemed most appropriate. When the civil authorities were intentionally disengaged from church governance, Old World structures such as consistories simply could not be reproduced 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 the Emigration Society that came to Missouri under the leadership of Martin Stephan.

He was ardently and sincerely devoted to Bishop Stephan, since the older man had helped rescue him from his spiritual doubts as a pious but confused university student. Walther signed the document that named Stephan as bishop, in which Stephan was called “the last, unshakable pillar on the ruins of the now devastated Lutheran 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 others, had promised to Stephan their “sincere, complete, and childlike obedience.”1 Anyone who knows how events played out immediately afterwards must hear those words with a sense of impending doom, like something out of a Greek tragedy. In a classic case of hubris, Bishop Stephan’s authority was taken to be absolute and unquestioned; his subsequent fall was swift and traumatic. The investiture document from which the words in the last paragraph were taken is dated January 14, 1839, and by May 31 the same year Bishop Stephan had been removed—not just removed from office, but also physically removed from the community and rowed across the Mississippi River to Illinois into exile. What followed was much worse than a pastoral vacancy, or a leadership vacuum. The Saxon immigrants 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 hallmarks 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 extent that they were associated with Martin Stephan.

Of course, this allegiance to a strong, trusted leader turned out to be an inadequate basis for ecclesiology! As soon as Stephan was gone, the rest of the community could not avoid the question of legitimacy. If Stephan was no longer the basis for their connection to the true church, what was? How could the community’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 been ordained by the Lutheran Church in Saxony, but they had also condemned that church as theologically bankrupt and heterodox and had severed their connections to it, so that Saxon ordination hardly seemed like a solid foundation on which to build. If this group of immigrants on the Missouri frontier were not really a church, then an immediate corollary was that these men were not really pastors either. If they were not church, and they did not have pastors, then they could not be sure about absolution, or baptism, or the Lord’s Supper. Suddenly, and in a way they 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, but shared them and suffered great anxiety and guilt over his role in the whole sad business. The uncertainty and insecurity lasted for nearly two years. In the winter of 1840-41, Walther became ill and spent his convalescence reading Luther. It was Luther who armed Walther with the insights he needed to challenge the lawyer Adolph Marbach, in the spring of 1841, to a public debate over whether the Saxon community could legitimately lay claim to being a real “church.” The debate was held in the tiny village of Altenburg at the log cabin they had built for their “college” (seminary).

It will not be necessary to discuss each thesis in detail in order to summarize Walther’s argument. But the shape of that argument is nevertheless instructive, because Walther does not simply give the “right answer” on the doctrinal question at hand, but his approach exemplifies how one idea is connected to and leads to another. At Altenburg Walther begins by talking about the invisible church which embraces and includes all believers of all times and places who are united with one Christ 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 constitutive factor which makes the person a member of the true church. What we can see and observe is the word of God being preached and the sacraments being administered. These are the visible marks of the church, because through these objective means of grace, the Holy Spirit has promised to be at work to create and sustain faith in those who hear the gospel. And where God’s Spirit is thus at work making believers through the gospel, there we can be sure the true church is being built and established. The una sancta ecclesia, the one holy Christian and apostolic church which is confessed in the creed, is constituted by saving faith in Christ, and that faith is the work of the Spirit through the word of the gospel in all its forms. So there is not only an invisible church but also a true visible church, namely the assembly or gathering of people where the gospel is preached in its purity and the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution.

It is very important for our considerations that we appreciate how Walther’s approach 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 means of grace are being offered and given, where there is preaching and teaching and baptizing and absolving and communing. Such activity describes a real, tangible, local congregation, where these means of grace are regularly employed. It was important to start with the invisible church because that helps us remember that the 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 as one talks about faith one must also talk about the way we obtain such faith, namely the external word of the gospel. The true church is visible because the means of grace are visible, audible, tangible, and observable especially where God’s people are gathered around the gospel on a regular basis. An orthodox local congregation is therefore the primary and clearest manifestation of the visible church, in spite of the fact that every actual, real-life visible church has some people in it who are not genuine believers. Those unbelievers are therefore actually not members of the una sancta; these “godless men, hypocrites, and heretics” (as Walther calls them) maintain their visible, external connection with the church, but they do not constitute the 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 he does not stop there by proving that a true, orthodox local congregation (where the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly administered) is really “church” in the fullest sense of the word. When the circumstances leading up to the Altenburg debate are kept in mind, it will be clear that he still had not answered the burning question in the minds of all the Saxons: are we church or not? To answer that, Walther moves on from orthodox congregations to companies or groups or assemblies that gather around defective doctrine, who have departed in some degree from God’s truth and “have united under the confession of a falsified faith.” Walther pushes the point that such groups or gatherings or “visible companies” are also true visible churches because, and to the extent that, the saving of gospel of Jesus Christ can still be heard there, so that the Holy Spirit can still work justifying faith in those who hear the gospel. If the gospel is still there, even if it is obscured and partially buried under human error, then the Spirit still does his work so that “children of God may thereby be born.”

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

The local congregation, where the gospel is regularly at work in preached and sacramental 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, especially to the Saxon colonists in Missouri in 1841. It mattered to them because it meant that they could be saved as members of Christ’s church in spite of their errors and mistakes. They had not been cut out of the body of Christ when they severed their ties with the Lutheran Church in Saxony. Their assembly—confused, misguided, perhaps even schismatic—could now with full confidence do things that only a real church can do: administer the goods of the church, establish the ministry, call pastors, administer real sacraments, etc. What Walther did for the Saxons at Altenburg was make it possible for them to live as a church, and that meant first and foremost to live as a local congregation where the means of grace are at work making people into Christians.

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

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

The Altenburg theses have commanded our attention here because the line of 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 abandoned his initial clarity about invisible church constituted and defined by saving faith in Christ; about visible church as a mixture of true and false Christians; and about churches that are heterodox but nevertheless churches. His reasoning from faith, to the means of grace, to the local congregation where those means are at work became the common frame of reference for all Missouri Synod ecclesiology, and has lastingly anchored our thinking about the church at the congregational level. This has to be seen against the backdrop of urgent needs in a bewildering American situation, but we should not imagine that Walther was just “Americanizing” or “democratizing” his Lutheran ecclesiology. It is probably more accurate to say that the new and unfamiliar situation he confronted in America, so devoid of any existing church structures on which to build, forced Walther back to his roots. He studied Scripture, the Lutheran Confessions, and especially Luther (perhaps more intensively than any other Lutheran in America in the nineteenth century) and came to understand the gospel core of Lutheran ecclesiology. Then he set about expounding an ecclesiology that faithfully reflected that core. His efforts at constructing church structures, at both the local and Synodical levels, followed on that ecclesiology. The American context of religious liberty and government non-involvement in church life created this opportunity to “start from scratch” and order the life of the church in a more thoroughly Lutheran way than had ever been possible in Europe, where the inherited church structures and historical connections between religious and secular authority necessitated a series of compromises and 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, challenge presented by the complex and unfamiliar conditions in America. Very soon after the Altenburg Debate had cleared the air for the Missouri Saxons, they had to respond to Pastor Johannes Grabau from Buffalo, New York. Grabau was a Lutheran who had left the church of Prussian Union and had come to America about the same time as the Saxons came to Missouri. In December of 1840 he wrote his famous (or infamous) Hirtenbrief (“Pastoral Letter”), in which he insisted on adherence to the old Lutheran church orders. Such conformity, he argued, was not only supportive of good order but also literally necessary for the real life of the church and the validity of the means of grace.

Walther and the other Saxons read Grabau’s letter with alarm. In spite of the fact that Grabau, like them, wanted to approach the topic and conduct his ministry out of a deep and sincere commitment to the Lutheran Confessions, the Saxons detected in Grabau’s argument an error all too close to their own mistake with Martin 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 seemed to presuppose the existence of some authority over the local congregation, embodied in the clergy collectively, which alone could validate the local congregation as a real “church” in the proper sense. The divine authority resided, in Grabau’s understanding, not with God’s word itself, but with the office which proclaimed that word. Such a view the Saxons rejected in no uncertain terms, and a permanent rift resulted between two groups of conservative German-speaking Lutherans.

The controversy with Grabau seemed primarily focused on the ministry, but Walther realized that the doctrine of the ministry cannot be properly understood or explained apart from the doctrine of the church. He collaborated with pastors Loeber and Gruber on an initial response to Grabau in 1843,2 but his classic and most profound answer to Grabau came in the form of his Kirche und Amt [Church and Ministry], published in 1852.3 Walther’s introduction to the volume makes clear the context in which his theses are set, against the backdrop of Grabau’s virulent criticisms of the Missouri Synod. Walther is clear that the issues at stake are not simply questions of organizational structure or pragmatic concerns with the Synod’s constitution, but rather foundational doctrinal points about the nature of the Christian church and its relationship to the office of the public ministry. “In order to avoid misunderstanding,” writes Walther, “we declare expressly that in this monograph we are not so much concerned about how the church is to be constituted as rather with its essence and the principles according to which its manifestations [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 the particular form or shape the church takes on in the world.

Starting with the church’s essence leads Walther to retrace his steps from Altenburg. The invisible church consists in all believers, and only believers; the visible church is identified by the marks of pure preaching and right sacraments. This implies that the visible church is externally a mixture of true Christians and false and ungodly persons, but the visible church nevertheless retains all true church power. One important implication of these truths is the further fact that the true church exists also in heterodox and heretical churches. All of this echoes exactly the 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 unpacks rather than changes his argument from 1841. The “visible church” he has in mind is first and foremost a local congregation, precisely because it is in that setting that the means of grace, which are the marks that make the church visible, are most in evidence. However, Walther puts much less emphasis on finding the church among the heterodox in Church and Ministry, because it was no longer the pressing pastoral issue 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 but reformed and renewed. By contrast, in Church and Ministry he urges that all Christians, for the sake of their salvation, must be careful to avoid false teachers and 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 ministry which were connected to this rehearsal of his Altenburg ecclesiology. It is enough for our present purposes to recognize that the theses on the church are unchanged in their essential shape, in the line of the argument, from the Altenburg Debate, although the changed context has led Walther to add a more polemical edge about the dangers of false teaching in heterodox congregations.

His work Kirche und Amt [Church and Ministry], first published in 1852, is the only work of Walther which our Synod has definitively and repeatedly identified as presenting our official public teaching, most recently at the 2001 Convention. It was for Kirche und Amt that the theological faculty of the University of Göttingen offered Walther an honorary doctorate (which he turned down, but that’s another story).

The Proper Form (1863) Walther was a pastor, a teacher, a theologian—and an organizer. His importance in the history of American Lutheranism, and of the Missouri Synod specifically, is connected to all these roles. His influence is felt today as much in the way local congregations write their constitutions as in matters of national or Synodical structure. To see this influence, we could examine the constitution of Trinity congregation in St. Louis,5 which became the model for thousands of church constitutions throughout the Synod. But we turn instead to the third of the documents which develop the idea of the local congregation as church in a true and theological sense. Walther’s extended essay entitled “The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Local Congregation Independent of the State.” As many of Walther’s works, this began life as a series of convention essays, and was first published as a book in 1863. (Note that the summary of the theses you have is not the complete set, but only the theses in which Walther defines the rights and duties of a congregation. His large third section, in which he discusses a whole series of practical ways in which these rights and duties may be exercised, has been omitted.)

Of significant theological weight in this essay are the first eleven theses, in which Walther lays out his understanding of the rights and duties of a congregation. He does not rehearse the whole line of logic from the earlier works, but begins in his introduction (theses 1-3) with a definition of a Lutheran Ortsgemeinde or local congregation. That definition hasn’t changed from Altenburg: it is still the assembly of people among whom the gospel is preached and the sacraments are administered, 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 truly church 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 of grace there to create and sustain faith in Christ. What makes it independent of the state is the fact that this local congregation has the freedom and opportunity “to rule itself in all things.”

Walther does not point out what he and all his hearers knew: that such independence from the state and such freedom of self-rule has been the exception rather than the rule in the church’s history. Most congregations, in most times and places, have been constrained by their political or historical situation in ways that limit or even eliminate this freedom of self-rule. Even in Lutheran churches in Germany since the Reformation, local churches did not have the freedom to order their own lives in independent ways based on nothing but their theology and confession. But in America the situation was quite different. What happened in America with the ratification of the Bill of Rights (and its subsequent application also to the legislatures of the states) was and remains a daring political experiment that guaranteed the non-interference by government in the life of the local congregation.

Since most readers of this essay have grown up in this context of individual religious liberty and government non-interference, we may take it for granted or assume that it is the normal situation. But that would overlook the really exceptional nature of the American experiment and therefore underestimate both the opportunity and the challenge that faced men like Walther. For freedom and liberty cut both ways. The local congregation which enjoys such freedom has the opportunity to express its true essence and character in whatever way will best embody the word of the gospel at work in it. But that freedom and opportunity also immediately create a new necessity for the church to re-think and re-establish its own ordered life, since nothing is imposed and nothing can be taken for granted.

What are the principles or essential foundations on which a church can properly develop its form and structure? In other words, what are the rights of a local congregation in this new situation of religious freedom? Walther, of course, is not particularly interested in the legal or political rights of congregations, whether as institutions 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 theological question, not a political one. The fundamental right of a church (that is to say, a local congregation) is the divine authority of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, namely the power and authority to forgive the sins of penitent sinners and to retain the sins of the unrepentant. Walther asserts that the local congregation has all the ecclesiastical power it needs when it is recognized that it has the power to 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 it therefore does not depend on or derive from any other source. The congregation does not receive its authority of the keys from a hierarchy or denominational structure. It is not dependent for this supreme, divine authority on the presence of an externally recognized ministerium. The authority to forgive sins belongs to the congregation by right and by divine command, regardless of the external circumstances of the church, whether the congregation be large or small in number, richly gifted or 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 the Word as the lifeblood of the church; (2) care for doctrinal purity and Christian life of its members (including the duty of church discipline); (3) care for the bodily needs of members; (4) provision for decent good order in the church’s life; (5) pursuit of unity with other orthodox churches in other places; and (6) building up the whole Christian church as much as possible. Brief comments on these duties are in order.

The first duty, that “the congregation should see to it that the Word of God dwells richly and has free course in its midst” (thesis 6), includes but is not limited to the establishment of the public ministry and the proper call of a pastor. The church’s life in the word of God is not to be seen as restricted to the public ministry of the pastor, but rather as the reason and goal of that ministry. Closely related to the centrality of God’s word is the next duty of pursuing and fostering purity of doctrine and life in the congregation. This serves as a powerful reminder that the supervision of doctrine is not primarily a task for an external ecclesiastical policeman, but an internal duty of the congregation itself. The doctrine of a pastor’s sermons is subject to the careful scrutiny of the Christian people of the congregation. The confessional position of a congregation is a matter for all its members 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 the content of their faith, simply because they do not want to depart from the truth of the 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” belong together, 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 individuals, but rather refers to all the ways our faith and confession express themselves.

Any discussion of the duties of the congregation according to Walther would be incomplete without mentioning what might be called the “ecumenical” responsibilities of each local congregation. It is well known, and often invoked today, that Walther and the Missouri Synod have, from its earliest constitution, ascribed a large degree of autonomy or self-governance to congregations. This was and 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 of Walther’s position to conclude that congregational self-governance meant that congregations were simply free to “do their own thing” without consideration of any other churches anywhere else. First and foremost, says Walther, it is a duty of every Lutheran congregation to work at building the unity of the Spirit with other orthodox congregations. This is the duty that gives rise to this thing we call a synod: each congregation is really church in the truest sense of the term, but all those churches belong in unity with all the other congregations that share this same orthodox confession (thesis 10). Later on he says that each congregation should regard another congregation’s need as its own. Congregations (and their pastors) are not meant to be “free agents” and totally disconnected from each other. Just as individual members of a congregation are and want to be held accountable to their confession and doctrine, so Lutheran congregations are and want to be (have a duty to be, in Walther’s terms) held accountable by other Lutheran congregations.

This duty of “ecumenical responsibility” that connects Lutheran congregations to each other also makes them take seriously the needs and interests of the whole Christian church (thesis 11). The duty of the local congregation extends beyond its own boundaries, not in the sense that every local congregation or every pastor should insert themselves into the affairs of their neighbors, but in the sense that the congregation should look for ways that will build up and strengthen the whole Christian church, including the Lutheran congregation in the next town and the 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’s ecclesiology is developed with a strong congregational emphasis. Indeed, one might be tempted to conclude from the material discussed above that for Walther the 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 affirmation that the local congregation, gathered around the Gospel and the sacraments, is truly church and possesses all church power and rights, although he does strongly affirm those things. The works we have considered to this point might be read as tending toward an exclusively congregational focus, as if each local Ortsgemeinde was to be understood as an isolated unit, connected to the invisible una sancta, but with no necessary involvement in a visible church beyond its own local boundaries. We have 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 “ecumenical responsibilities” among the duties of each local congregation. Yet a pervasive individualism in American culture and life tends to color our understanding of church with a bias for autonomy and against mutual accountability.

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

The most significant new insight which Walther brings to bear in his treatment of the “true visible church” is a way of conceiving of the visible church which cannot be reduced to or simply identified with a local congregation. This is the Evangelical Lutheran Church, defined by Walther as “the sum total of all of all who without 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” (thesis 10).

Both Walther’s concepts of the local congregation as visible church and of a much more comprehensive yet visible Evangelical Lutheran Church are aspects of an ecclesiology of the Word. Walther knew what Lutherans are ever tempted to forget: that the church in its essence is not defined by forms or institutional structures, or by the behavior of its members, but depends entirely on the Word of God. Walther’s complementary approaches to understanding the church reveal some implications of this Word-centeredness. Viewed as the “means of grace,” the proclamation of the Word focuses our attention on the local congregation as the surest and clearest embodiment of the church. On the other hand, when the proclamation of the Word is viewed as “public confession” the church becomes visible in a trans-local dimension, namely as all those who join in a common confession and are united in fellowship with each other by that confession. What emerges is not a different doctrine of the church, but multiple facets of the same doctrine, as we grasp what it means for the church to be visible in the world by the Word alone.

It is important to bear in mind that Walther is not describing some kind of abstract 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 Word and the administration of the sacraments, the Evangelical Lutheran Church is marked and located wherever and whenever this true doctrine is confessed. Such confession takes place in space and time, in specific contexts of culture and history.

Yet the Evangelical Lutheran Church which Walther celebrates as “the true visible church of God on earth” cannot simply be equated with the Missouri Synod, or with any other denominational organization. It is defined not by organizational membership but by confession and doctrine, and confession is not the sole property of any institution. For Walther, the “Evangelical Lutheran Church” is much more comprehensive than the Missouri Synod or any other church body. What the Missouri 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 ambivalence about 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 the Synod as church. The Synod’s name was changed in 1947, and then included for the 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 never been entirely comfortable referring to our church body (or denomination) simply as the Lutheran Church. While it is wrong to claim that the Missouri Synod can simply be equated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church, it is also wrong to argue that the true visible church exists only in the form of local congregations, and not also in a trans-local confessional fellowship.

The question of whether we acknowledge the visible church in ways that are not limited to a local congregation has a fresh urgency in Missouri Synod circles today. 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 another have become somewhat problematic in places, and congregations (and individual members) do not always see themselves as accountable to each other in meaningful ways.

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 congregation’s churchly authority and the public ministry in a long essay entitled The Congregation’s Right to Choose Its Pastor, which was printed serially in Der Lutheraner in 1860–61.7 He was concerned with thinking through the relationship of these local Lutheran 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 writings allows us to recognize the outline of Walther’s evangelical and Lutheran ecclesiology, which is grounded in the means of grace and therefore anchored in the life of the local congregation. The promise and peril of American freedom were the context that made possible Walther’s fresh yet faithful recovery of the treasures of the Lutheran tradition in ways that had not been possible in an earlier context in Germany. We are also heirs of that same rich doctrinal heritage, and nourished by it we confidently face our own set of threats and opportunities in twenty-first century America.

Contemporary discussions about the church, as those in Walther’s day, can be clarified by starting concretely with the local congregation. We live at a time when many common assumptions and traditional understandings about the nature and mission of the church are being questioned or rejected. Many people talk about the twenty-first century as a “post-denominational” age, and there is little doubt that denominational membership does not mean exactly the same thing in people’s minds as it once did. Denominational structures and institutions (such as The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) are viewed by some as more or less useful para-church service agencies, but not really as churches. Amidst such assumptions it is not helpful to start with a denomination or church body as a self-evident fact. If we expect to come to greater clarity about the church, we are better off starting with the visible, local, specific congregation. But our reflection on the theology of the church cannot stop at the local congregation, but needs to reclaim an appreciation of visible (i.e., confessional) fellowships which transcend local autonomies and bind Christians together by a common confession of the Gospel. Lutheran Christians need to think together about what it really means to be the church, to be a Lutheran church, and to be a synod of the Lutheran church. That project will likely extend over a period of many years, far beyond our current debate over various specific proposals for modifying our structure and governance. Walther will help us in that long-term ecclesiology project, both by his grasp of the concrete reality of the local church centered in the proclamation of the Gospel and by his recognition of the way our shared confession binds us to a visible church which is not limited to the local setting.

Endnotes 1 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 Robert Kolb [n.p.: n.d.], 141-176.

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

4 Ibid., 9.

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Cf. the excerpt in Moving Frontiers, 166-170.

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 version, 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 with discussion questions by Wilbert H. Rosin (St. Louis: Concordia Seminary, 1997). It is very significant that 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.

II.

III.

IV.

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.

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.

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 of a partial departure from the truth; provided they possess so much of God’s Word and the holy Sacraments in purity that children of God may thereby be born. When such companies are called true churches, it is not the intention to state that they are faithful, but only that they are real churches as opposed to all worldly organizations (Gemeinschaften).

The name Church is not improperly applied to heterodox companies, but according 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 with out 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 universal 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, orthodox, public confession to which its members acknowledge and confess themselves to be pledged.

Theses from Church and Ministry [Kirche und Amt]: Witnesses of the Evangelical Lutheran Church on the Question of the Church and the Ministry (1852) (from the translation 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 incorporated in Christ.

2. To the church in the proper sense of the term belongs no wicked person, 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 divisions, 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 congregations 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 teachers 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 fellowship 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 priest hood of all believers.

2. The ministry of the Word or the pastoral office is not a human institution 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 confirmation 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 office in 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 obedience 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 Local Congregation Independent of the State (1862) (abridged from Walther on the Church, translated by John Drickamer. Selected Writings of C. F. W. Walther, August R. 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 congregation, 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: Rights 4. All the rights of an Evangelical Lutheran local congregation are embraced in the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which the Lord gave to His whole church originally and immediately and in such a way that they belong to every congregation in equal measure, the smallest as well as the largest.

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: Duties 6. 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 preserved 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 forsak en 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 of God 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.

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5.

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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 sacraments according to the Gospel.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 The Evangelical Lutheran Church is the sum total of all of all who without 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.

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.

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 passages in 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 cautiously between the Old and New Testament.

19. The Evangelical Lutheran Church adopts as an article of faith no teaching 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 ecclesiastical 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 reformation in doctrine.

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Grammarian’s corner

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Greek Participles, Part VII In our last installment of the “Corner,” we discussed the matter of time and the participle. We said, toward the end of the treatment: The “cheap, quick, and dirty” answer, which works nicely a large majority of the time, is that a present participle is understood as conveying action at the same time as the main/leading verb, while an aorist participle conveys action prior to that verb (emphasis added).

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

What are the problems with the “standard” analysis detailed in the indented quotation above? Simply put, there are more than a few instances in which present participles 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 to the 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 quite unlikely 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 that Jesus is saying that opening will take place while the knocking is going on, and all of that is only in the future.2 Concerning the aorists, the problem is even more

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obvious and stark. In example 3, it is quite unlikely that the meaning of the sentence is as conjectured above, with the reception of power being something that occurs only after the Holy Spirit comes upon the Eleven, and in example 4, we have perhaps the most difficult case of all, since it seems inconceivable that Agrippa and Bernice had greeted Festus at a distance before they had arrived in Caesarea, 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 in lock-step with the time of the sentence’s main or leading verb—whether at the same 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 four difficult examples should be understood. In the next installment, I will use my understanding to develop an overall theory of Greek participle tense usage, and, subsequently, to develop a general theory of verbal tense structure in the Greek language.

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 following upon his knocking.

3. The first aorist participle example, number 3, is surely to be under stood 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 the focus of our next installment.

James W. Voelz Endnotes 1 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 your Father 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 tradition, and part of the Coptic, read a future participle, avspaso,menoi, which would convey purpose, in place of the aorist here, thus ameliorating the problem.

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book reviews

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Highlights in Contemporary Ecclesiology A Review Essay John H. Rhoads

What it means to be church has increasingly been the theological topic du jour, or should I say, topic du siècle, of both the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. In 1926, Otto Dibelius opened up space for this idea with his book, Das Jahrhundert der Kirche (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 church during the last half of the twentieth century—both within the various Christian traditions and between them—in an article, “A Half-Century of Ecclesiology,” Theological Studies 50, no. 3 (1989). Theologians of our synod have also not been silent on this topic—e.g. Kurt Marquart’s contribution to the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics series or Robert Scudieri’s Apostolic Church—and for the same reason as the broader trend: the so-called Constantinian age where Christian communities could define what it means to be church in terms of being part of a Christian society, or over against churches who defined themselves this way, is over. During the last twenty years or so, the question of what it means to be church has been asked across the spectrum of Christian life and publishing.

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 will also not be considering some valuable works which to a greater or lesser extent reflect the 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 tradition of both East and West in which the being of church results from God’s universal claim on human society. Consequently, each of the books surveyed also has an eye to the ecumenical movement whose motive of a united Christianity is laudable even if its methods and images of unity are often not.

After setting the stage with a couple of books that can help readers orient themselves to the broader conversation and a couple of books which make claims to a Lutheran perspective, we will conclude with a brief discussion of two authors whose perspective on the church as communion or koinonia have helped set the agenda for much of the work on ecclesiology at every level of ecumenism during the last twenty years.

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.

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

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s An Introduction to Ecclesiology provides a helpful survey of the ecclesiological landscape of the early twenty-first century. He describes his approach as attempting “what is sometimes called ‘comparative ecclesiology’” (14). The book is divided into three parts: seven ecclesiological traditions (from Eastern Orthodoxy to Pentecostal), seven leading contemporary ecclesiologists (such as the Catholic Hans Küng and the Baptist James McClendon Jr.), and seven contextual ecclesiologies (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 from Kärkkäinen’s typical method of summarizing each approach under its major themes rather than applying to each the same schema of systematic questions. While the comparative task is complicated by his method, it potentially lets each tradition, theologian or movement set its own priorities, concerns and contexts. Another potential downside may be that Kärkkäinen seems to stress the pneumatological emphases which each approach has in common with his own Pentecostal tradition a bit more than the approach itself might warrant. Still, overall, while one might quibble that since he often relies too heavily on single interpreters of a particular tradition, or on his own spiritfocused reading, he loses some breadth and complexity of the various approaches, his choices are reasonable—especially considering the impressive scope of this work. For those interested in surveying the broader landscape of ecclesiological reflection, this book 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 perspectives on ecclesiology, and it does organize its comparative ecclesiology according to systematic types or models. Although based primarily on the ecclesiological currents swirling especially within Vatican II Roman Catholicism, they encompass much of the non-Roman thinking as well. He defines a model for each of five main types—institution, mystical communion, sacrament, herald, and servant—according to its understanding of the church’s bonds of unity, beneficiaries, and the benefits they receive. He also fleshes out each model with some consideration of its major proponents and opponents as well as its assets or advantages and its liabilities or disadvantages. He then shows how each model or understanding of the church may result in different approaches and positions on pressing ecclesiological concerns such as its relationship to eschatology, the question of the true church, diversity of church bodies, ministry and revelation. After offering an evaluation of each model, Dulles proposes his own discipleship model which he considers potentially more comprehensive than the more narrowly defined models analyzed in the previous chapters. Perhaps the biggest weakness

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

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

Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia colleagues Tim Wengert and Gordon Lathrop, a historian and a liturgist respectively, collaborate almost antiphonally in this argument for a particularly Lutheran view of the church and ecumenism. This view centers on God’s work to gather the one church through the means of grace rather than on any human effort toward church unity. They focus their discussion on the uniquely Lutheran use of the concept of the church’s marks over against recent ecumenical use of the concept to refer to the Nicene Creed’s four adjectives for the church. Wengert’s chapters focus on the history of the concept as developed by Luther in his early debates with the papists and as reflected in the Lutheran confessions and later Luther. This concept served to define churches as visible assemblies which also include hypocrites by their core of true believers in Christ. “On [the doctrine of justification by faith alone], the church stands or falls—not merely in a doctrinal sense (that it must 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 the Lutheran understanding of the marks plays out in the lives of churches understood as participatory assemblies, mutually accountable to their faithful use. He ultimately offers churches of today—both those fascinated by new trends and those which consider themselves more traditional—probing sixteenth-century style visitation questions about their fidelity to the Gospel in the marks. Each author regularly and helpfully brings out the importance of his key points for modern ecumenical efforts. The book concludes with chapters in which the authors comment on each other’s work.

Written in a very accessible style, Christian Assembly should be of great interest to LCMS readers who share its concern for an ecclesiology centered on the means of grace. Still, it should be noted—as Wengert and Lathrop did not—that Luther’s 1539 list of marks from On the Councils and the Church differed from some earlier lists in more than just the number. While Luther’s early list, also reflected in AC VII, was limited to the Word and Sacraments as the Gospel means by which the Holy Spirit calls forth church, the later list included the Word and Sacraments along with ordination, suffering and 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 is active 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-righteousness church. Moreover, both Wengert and Lathrop follow Barth in speaking of the church as an event (27-28, 39); however, Wengert views Predigtamt in AC V as a reference to the 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” like its Latin equivalent, ministerium, is, as Fraenkel argued in 1959, a verbal noun. Ministry is the event, church its context and effect. Nevertheless, despite these slight critiques, readers will thoroughly appreciate Wengert’s masterful tour of Luther and the Confessions on the significant topic of the church defined by its marks as well as Lathrop’s brief interruptions of this tour in order for readers to take pictures and so reflect on their own church lives. This book’s focus on the Gospel-Word as the locatedness of Chirst’s church brings both ecumenical comfort and ecumenical motivation at this time of ecclesial division and separation between confessions.

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

In Mother Church, Carl Braaten writes as an Evangelical-Catholic—not an evangelical-Roman— “partisan . . . trying to win over the hearts and minds of people with a different and even opposing set of interests” to his vision of the way toward united Christianity (134). To this end he addresses questions such as the nature of the Reformation with its resulting Protestantism, the relationship between church and the kingdom of God, the relationship between Gospel-freedom and ecclesial authority, teaching authority, hermeneutics, and the task of church theology. He consistently frames the issues from his evangelical-catholic perspective as a way of envisioning a future church healed of its divisions. So, for example, he argues for historic church structures—not on the basis of out-dated theories of divine right or necessity but on the basis of their benefits for future work together, especially some form of authoritative teaching office. Braaten seems motivated by the desire to correct the unnecessary losses resulting from what he regards as a history of stressing the evangelical at the expense of the catholic. Although thoughtful LCMS readers may, at times, feel that their theological tradition is either ignored or caricatured, we should remember that this partisan’s main struggle is against the Protestant liberalism for which theology and church-life have become increasingly unrelated. Moreover, Braaten’s provocative work should stimulate us all to consider how we can most faithfully confess by word and deed, “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 develops the ontological import of the concept of communion or koinonia for understanding the very 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 humanistic existentialism—into the seed stores of Eastern Orthodox and Patristic thought in order to argue that this concept of communion which holds together in a synthesis of being long-standing manifestations of the one-and-the-many antitheses within theology.

While the first two chapters on the communion-ontology of divine and human personhood and on the consequent notion of truth, respectively, provide a largely unharvested field, ripe for further discussion, the later chapters on the implications which the concept has for ecclesiology have fed the theological efforts at almost every level of ecumenical engagement.

In his ecclesiology of communion, Zizioulas calls for a synthesis of the Christological—the historical and geographically local—aspects of church with the Pneumatological—the communal and eschatological—aspects. With regard to the historical and geographical, he pays special attention to the fact that the Biblical witness and early church witnesses seem to point to the presence of a single church for a given city. Each local and historical body of Christ is then spiritually constituted as church because by the power of the Holy Spirit the one Christ-event becomes effective as many events of incorporation, one baptism, one eucharist. As a result, Christians are baptized into the one body of Christ manifested fully in geographically local eucharistic communities. Just as the one God exists as a communion of three persons each fully God, 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 minister of the eucharistic community’s unity and catholicity, the one in communion with the many. For this reason, the community’s “Amen” is an essential part of the bishop’s ordination. Moreover, this view can also provide a helpful corrective to the question of apostolic succession by placing greater value on the bishop’s locatedness within an eschatological community rather than on a merely historical continuity of bishops existing quasi-independently. It must be noted that Zizioulas bravely puts some of his own Orthodox tradition at stake as he observes that current practices of synodality don’t always live up to his vision since they either don’t have an established primus serving the unity of the synod or don’t always ensure that the primus acts in communion with the many. Moreover, he recognizes the problem posed by eucharistic communities either not 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-Marie Roget Tillard was one of the leading voices of communion ecclesiology at the end of the twentieth century, and he articulated his vision most fully in two volumes: Church of Churches and Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ. In the first volume, he argues for the ecclesiology 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 II but also the groundwork for promising ecumenical engagement between churches.

Tillard’s vision of the church as communion is structurally quite comparable to that of Zizioulas 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 eucharistic president. However, he expands this conversation by speaking not only of communion in the triune life of God but also of a dynamic communion with God’s mission of compassion for the whole world. According to this vision of communio, the pope serves the communion of communions as the chief among equal bishops, and papal infallibility is tied to his acting in communion with the bishops who are in communion with their local churches and the understanding of the faithful. In this way, all the structures of the church serve the communion.

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

In the second volume, Tillard does not add to the ecclesiological substance of the first volume but rather amasses the data in support of communion ecclesiology from the scriptures and the early church fathers. LCMS readers will likely gravitate gladly to this volume which not only dwells on important biblical texts but also patristic texts which 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 two authors—which has demanded such attention within the ecumenical movement—bears a striking resemblance to Walther’s ecclesiology, articulated before the century of the church began. It should be no surprise because the reasons are the same. In the largely secularized and pluralistic societies of our world today, churches can no longer define themselves in terms of some official state or societal function. Like the early Missouri Saxons they must consider what it means to be church, independent of the State or society.

Consider a few basic points. These major theologians of the Orthodox and Roman traditions have articulated an ecclesiology in which the basis of the church is the community of salvation mediated through means of grace, a community which is not fully realized 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 special, divinely instituted, and highest office in the church as a ministry within and in service to the communion (cf. Church and Ministry, Theses on the Ministry; The Congregation’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 rugged congregationalism but rather lived in communion with other churches (cf. The Form of a Christian Congregation, esp. Part 6 on the duty to “seek the unity of the Spirit, in the bond of love and peace also with the orthodox church outside itself ”). Consider these words from Walther’s discussion of his sixth Thesis on the Ministry and reflect on his imagery in light of our brief discussion of communion ecclesiology:

By these words our church confesses that the whole church, not merely 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 a whole 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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Additional Book Reviews THE ROLE OF JUSTIFICATION IN CONTEMPORARY THEOLOGY. By Mark Mattes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans (Lutheran Quarterly Books), 2004. 198 pages. Paper. $25.00 Mark Mattes is one of the brightest young Lutheran systematic theologians in America today. Although he is known to theologians at both LCMS seminaries, he may not be as well known among the pastors of the Missouri Synod. That needs to change. Mattes combines a commitment to the Lutheran confessional tradition with a facility to negotiate the labyrinths of contemporary theology in a way that strengthens the confessional Lutheran witness to the Gospel. Most Missouri Synod pastors have received a solid grounding in the Scriptures, the Lutheran Confessions, and the orthodox Lutheran heritage. But they have not been as thoroughly immersed in the philosophical and theological world of the last two centuries. This has not been entirely bad. And yet, it makes the reading of much of contemporary theology difficult in that it is built upon the thought world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is where Mattes’ work enters. He is a very helpful translator and evaluator of late twentieth century theology within a Lutheran Confessional framework.

In The Role of Justification, Mattes examines the thought of five prominent theologians from the last three decades.

Some are familiar to Missouri readers while a few may be less recognizable.

These five theologians include, Wolfhart

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Pannenberg, Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann, Robert Jenson, and Oswald Bayer. In their own way, each of these theologians has sought to appropriate the doctrine of justification for our own age in light of the intellectual challenges confronting the Christian church. But do they do so for the purpose of proclaiming the Gospel to people who have not heard it? Mattes contends that the first four theologians are primarily interested in constructing comprehensive and coherent theological systems either for the purpose of apologetics or for the purpose of affirming a catholic identity.

In other words, each of their systems is an accommodation to some aspect of modernity in order to find respectability within the academy and the world. As a result, their interest in justification has to do with the place and role that it plays within the overarching system. In the process, these theologians often divorce systematic theology from preaching.

Mattes finds that only one of these theologians, Bayer, is concerned to articulate the doctrine of justification for the purpose of delivering the Gospel promise to God’s human creatures.

In each chapter, Mattes lays out the central lines of their thought on the doctrine of justification and the role that justification plays within their theology.

Jüngel grounds his system in feeling (taking God out of the world), Pannenberg grounds his in knowledge (God as thought), and Moltmann grounds his in action (human person as an agent).

Where these first three “seek a foundation for Christian faith shared by non-

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Christians” (143), Jenson sees the church as an alternative to the world and so grounds his system in the church. Mattes summarizes the thought of each theologian in a way that the reader, who is not conversant with the context in which these theologians wrote, can understand and appreciate. Following the treatment of each writer, Mattes explores the way in which each author has appropriated Luther and concludes with his own analysis and critique. In the end, Mattes expresses a clear preference for the work of Bayer, whose doctrine of justification does not split forensic and effective justification, for God does what he says (171). For Bayer, conflict, not accommodation, is constitutive for theology, for law and gospel cannot be harmonized this side of eternity.

In my opinion, the real value of this book lies in the way in which Mattes provides us with glimpses of his own theological sensibilities as a preview of the work that he may develop and produce in the future. Throughout the book, the reader will see Mattes’ acknowledged dependence upon themes found in the thought of Gerhard Forde (and behind him, C.F.W. Walther) with his emphasis that theology must serve proclamation and so theology must attend to the distinction between law and gospel whereby human creatures are “restored to creation” as God intended. Mattes argues that “theology exists primarily for pastoral discernment” to which end he proposes that we speak of justification not simply as one topic of theology, but as a discrimen, a kind of pastoral discernment.

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A discrimen “is a configuration of criteria that are organically related to one another as reciprocal co-efficients” (11).

Thus justification can help us see how a number of Lutheran themes — lawgospel, death-resurrection, hiddenrevealed God, and two kinds of righteousness — are related to each other.

Such discernment has become all the more necessary in a day and age when many are not anxious about their justification because they have been anesthetized by therapeutic ways of thinking within and without Christian theology.

The assumptions, language, method, and goals of the theologians with whom Mattes carries on the conversation are challenging, especially if one is not familiar with the thought of the writers that he examines. But stick with it. The reader will be more than amply rewarded by the theological insights and pastoral application that Mattes brings to the subject. In the end, one will be the better for working through it, with heightened pastoral discernment and tools for bringing the word of promise to bear upon the lives of 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 content should explain and apply the Word of God as it is found in a biblical text, and a

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sermon’s form should unleash the impact of that text. The second part of that declaration is the special province of this book” (13). Jeffrey Arthurs, professor of preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, goes on to offer insightful comments on the pragmatics of six different biblical genres (psalms, narrative, parables, proverbs, epistles, and apocalyptic literature) along with helpful hints on how a preacher might recreate those dynamics for a modern audience.

Arthurs stays away from simplistic advice like “Preach a narrative when you’re preaching on a narrative.” Instead, he first examines how a particular genre functions—that is, in what ways the form communicates the content. He approaches each genre on its own, pointing out the effect various features have on hearers. For example, he observes that parallelism in Hebrew poetry “prompts . . . meditation” and “intensifies the reading and listening experience” (43). Old Testament allusion in the epistles, on the other hand, “draws us in, engages our minds, and prompts us to participate in our own persuasion” (161).

After examining the pragmatics of a genre, he offers some suggestions on how to recreate those dynamics in preaching today. This portion of each chapter is a bit weaker than the first, but the suggestions are still helpful. They prompt the preacher to ask not simply, “Given this text, what do I say?” but “What effect does this text work, and how might my preaching achieve a similar effect?” For example, Arthurs suggests plotting an “emotional outline” of a psalm and then writing a sermon with similar “moments of effective intensity and then a backing off and moments of

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relief for the congregation” (53). When it comes to preaching on apocalyptic literature, he recommends using “a slightly elevated style” and “panoramic illustrations” rather than mundane ones (194).

Arthurs’ commitment to the authority of the Scriptures will sit well with LCMS readers, and his discussion of form and rhetoric will certainly sharpen the preaching of any reader willing to try some his suggestions. In the end, what is true of form in the Scriptures is true of form in our sermons as well: “The form of a text is not simply the husk surrounding the seed; it is the way authors manage their relationship with readers” (201). The preached Word of God is a word that is completely embodied: it is composed by a particular person, preached with all the tone and timber of a particular voice, and heard through the lens of an entire ministry. The question is not whether or not to use rhetoric, because rhetoric is always going on.

Arthurs’s book will help preachers get a handle on their own implicit rhetoric by looking more closely at how forms communicate in the Scriptures and in their own sermons.

David Loy Bolivar, Missouri

ROME AND JERUSALEM: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations. By Martin Goodman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. 598 pages. Cloth. $35.00.

Compared to their professors who have spent decades in the biblical texts, seminarians are whisked through their exegetical studies. With so much theology and practice for the aspiring pastor to

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learn, that dash is understandable. Every student knows that you never graduate from learning Scripture but most of us find out that parish duties do get in the way of continued learning. A parishioner once telephoned the study and asked if I was busy. “I’m reading.” To that she said, “Good, I’d like to talk to you.” So I put the book down and listened to what was on her mind. “So many books; so little time.” The result is that the passing of years and limited reading can contract our knowledge to certain basics that seem to stand the busy pastor in good stead. One fact that seems assured is that first century Jews hated the Romans and the destruction of Jerusalem was just a matter of time. Jesus said, “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2) Martin Goodman is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, former editor of the Journal of Roman Studies and the Journal of Jewish Studies. He edited the 2002 Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies for which he was awarded a National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship. In Rome and Jerusalem Goodman argues that Roman and Jewish cultures were different but not locked in a death fight and that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD was not inevitable. He asks: “Was there anything intrinsic in Jewish and Roman society that made it impossible for Jerusalem and Rome to coexist? Were the tensions which had so dramatic an effect in August 70 already apparent in 30 when Jesus preached in Jerusalem and died there on the order of a Roman governor? And…what was the effect of the conflict between Jews and Romans on the relations between Jews and Christians

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in a Roman world?” (25). The answers to those questions may not make a difference when the busy pastor makes hospital and shut-in calls, socializes with parishioners, or puts down a book to answer a phone call, but Goodman’s thesis offers a reservoir of facts to alter old attitudes and enrich parish preaching and teaching. And if a pastor takes time not only to read but to take specific insights into his preaching and teaching, Christian witness might improve.

The destruction of Jerusalem was terrible. Josephus described the devastation in August 70, when the walls of the city were breached and the Temple destroyed. “You would have thought that the Temple hill was boiling over from its base, being everywhere one mass of flame, but yet that the stream of blood was more copious than the flames and the slain more numerous than the slayers.

For the ground was nowhere visible through the corpses; but the soldiers had to clamber over the heaps of bodies in pursuit of the fugitives. …All the rest of the wall encompassing the city was so completely leveled to the ground as to leave future visitors to the spot no ground for believing that it had ever been inhabited” (24-25, quoting Josephus, Jewish Wars, 6.271-6; 7, 1-3). Indeed, the name “Jerusalem” was to be eliminated as well. Late second–early third century historian Cassius Dio wrote that the emperor Hadrian “founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the god he raised a new temple to Jupiter” (461, quoting Cassius Dio, 69.12.1). Except for pious Jews and Christians who remembered it, the name “Jerusalem” was not

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known. In 310 AD a Christian named Pamphilius was on trial before the Roman governor of Palestine, Firmilianus. Pamphilius said, “Jerusalem was his fatherland, meaning, indeed that Jerusalem of which it was said by Paul: ‘But the Jerusalem that is above is free, which is our mother.’ That disturbed Firmilianus, who imagined that the Christians had established some new city named “Jerusalem” that was hostile to Rome” (534, quoting Eusebius, “Martyrs of Palestine,” II.9-12). It wasn’t just that the stones of the Temple were taken down, as Jesus had predicted, but the place and even the name “Jerusalem” were obliterated.

Why? Over the centuries the Romans had demonstrated that you don’t mess with their power. In 321 B.C. the Samnites led by Gavius Pontius, perhaps an ancestor of Pontius Pilate, defeated the Romans at the Caudine Forks. Rather than kill his enemies, Pontius let the Romans go. In 291 the Romans returned, defeated the Samnites but did not return the show of mercy, killing the captured Pontius. In the second century BC Cato ended many of his speeches with “Carthago delendum est,” Carthage must be destroyed. It was, totally, in 146 BC. In the late first century AD, the Nasamones in Africa were eliminated. Emperor Domitian announced to the Senate, “I have forbidden the Nasamones to exist” (149, quoting Cassius Dio 57.4.6). That said, Rome was lenient, so long as you submitted to its rule and presented no active threat. Of course, every province had its troublemakers but their punishment wouldn’t obliterate the chief city of the province and unleash hostility against the whole nation. Wrote Cicero in the

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first century BC: “There is no race which has not either been so utterly destroyed that it hardly exists, or so thoroughly subdued that it remains submissive, or so pacified, that it rejoices in our victory and rule.” (in Ann Wroe, Pontius Pilate, 63). “In general,” Goodman writes, “the Romans were happy to allow their provincial subjects to continue to live in…idiosyncratic ways” (148). To imagine implacable hostility between Rome and the Jews makes it difficult to explain legal concessions made to the Jews. Judaism was a “religio licita,” a permitted religion.

The empire permitted diaspora Jews to send their yearly Temple tax to Jerusalem.

The government banned many associations of citizens, and though synagogues were classified as such “collegia,” synagogues were exempted from the ban.

Sabbath observance was safeguarded, though it struck many Romans as a waste of time. In addition to those and other concessions, Jews were able, quoting from the First Amendment to the American constitution, “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

They did. In 40 AD Philo led a delegation to Emperor Gaius (Caligula) on behalf of the Jews in Alexandria. Paul’s appeal to the emperor is hard to understand if the Roman system was dead set against anything Jewish. Remember that in these early decades after Christ, Christianity was a sect in Judaism, not a free-standing “church.” These relatively good relations between Rome and its provinces—Goodman calls them “laissezfaire”—are reflected in mid-century New Testament documents (148). Paul’s view of government in Romans 13 is positive as is Peter’s in 1 Peter. It’s later in the first century, after Rome had obliterated

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Jerusalem, that emperors like Domitian could turn also on Christianity.

So how does Goodman explain the destruction of Jerusalem? In 66 AD a priest named Eleazar led an ambush of Roman troops. It fell to the Roman governor of Syria, Cestius Florus, to respond. He marched down toward Jerusalem but then stopped. Had he gone on to Jerusalem to take revenge, the score would have been settled. But Florus retreated, and in retreat the forces of Eleazar routed the Romans. The stage was set for what? The destruction of Jerusalem? No, but at least a major handslapping of the Jews by Rome.

Surprisingly, nothing happened for over three years. In that time the Jews lived as an independent nation. The number of Roman soldiers in Judea was normally small, but the need to reassert Roman rule brought 60,000 troops to Judea under the command of Vespasian. Back in Rome, mid-68 and 69 saw Emperor Nero deposed and four men claim the imperium, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian, who won out. Every Roman emperor since Augustus had laid claim to power because of personal military prowess. In some cases, like Augustus, the claim was legitimate. In other cases, like Claudius and Gaius, military victories were contrived, but they were contrived because they were seen as necessary to claim the supreme power.

Hence, Vespasian, aspiring to be emperor, needed a major military victory. Quite conveniently, he was poised with troops ready to avenge Florus’ defeat and the humiliation of Rome. What would have been a routine “hand-slapping” of Judea now became an occasion for an overwhelming military victory, and the need-

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ed PR for a general to become emperor.

Vespasian’s bid, and his need to advertise a victory over foreigners to give it legitimacy, explain the energy with which the attack on Jerusalem was suddenly prosecuted. …

Vespasian’s image urgently needed the gloss of foreign conquest—the surest foundation of authority for a Roman politician— for him to be portrayed in the capital as warrior hero and savior of the state.

Vespasian delayed his own journey to Rome until the summer of 70, in the meantime instructing his son Titus, left behind in Judea, to win the war as rapidly and comprehensively as possible, regardless of the cost. (419) So Jerusalem was obliterated, not because of implacable hostility between Jews and Romans but because the Jews’ little rebellion in 66-70, insignificant in the big picture of the empire, gave an aspiring emperor an opportunity to claim power. When Vespasian died in 79, son Titus assumed power and needed military trophies to justify his rule. His role in the destruction of Jerusalem served that function. The same for Emperor Domitian, who succeeded Titus on his early death in 81. “Once the Flavians had established their power on the back of the defeat of the Jews, it was not in the interest of most subsequent emperors to

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tamper with the image so carefully contrasted, let alone to challenge it directly by allowing the Jews to rebuild their Temple” (554).

Yet, the true value of Rome and Jerusalem is the way it brings together data from two major cultures then translates that data into a better understanding of the Christian situation in our culture, especially the terrible heritage of antiSemitism. In the first decades after Pentecost, the church enjoyed as its own the special privileges Rome had given the Jews. “At least some Christians in the first generation assumed that they were preaching not a new religion but simply a new kind of Judaism” (499f.) But when Judaism became enemy of Rome and the Flavians, it was to the advantage of Christians to assert independence from their Jewish origins. “Among the most important reasons for the growth and spread of Christianity during these years, one must be that after 70, and even more after 135, Christians presented themselves to the gentile world as unconnected to the Jews, whose alienation from mainstream Roman society had been sealed by the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. …[B]y the fourth century, when Constantine became the first Roman emperor to portray himself as a devotee of Christ, the links between Christianity and Judaism had been deliberately obscured by Christians themselves” (488). We will, of course, see the work of the Spirit in the amazing growth of the church, but things do happen in a context, and that setting may not always be good and pure.

This book takes time to read and effort to use. On the book jacket Tom Holland of The Sunday Times describes

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Rome and Jerusalem as “magisterial.” You don’t just read a book like this; you make the studious effort to appropriate its contents into your own teaching and preaching. There is much information that can be used for modern ministry. Roman and Jewish cultural views of abortion?

Among others, see page 233. Divorce practices? Page 205 and 216. Cultural differences about food and liquor? Page 281. Work and welfare? Page 279. Life after death? Page 238. There are many more and fortunately they are listed in the index. Professors routinely say that whatever book they’re talking about is a book you need to have. I don’t know. It seems to me that the causes and consequences of Jerusalem ablaze in 70 would perhaps help our evangelism today if we would take the time to read and reflect.

One thing is for sure, Rome and Jerusalem reminds us that our zeal to witness is often not matched by society’s eagerness to hear what we want to tell them.

“Christians in the first generation were different, espousing a proselytizing mission which was a shocking novelty in the ancient world. Only familiarity makes us fail to appreciate the extraordinary ambition of Paul…” (493).

Dale A. Meyer THE BOOK OF PROVERBS IN SOCIAL AND THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT. By Katharine J. Dell. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

224 pages. Cloth. $85.

Katharine Dell, Senior Lecturer (Old Testament) at the Cambridge University Faculty of Divinity, has developed a growing portfolio of works on Wisdom Literature and on specific wisdom books

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(Job and now Proverbs). As complement to, and as extension of, her academic interests, she also edits Guidelines, a quarterly publication of the Bible Reading Fellowship, which provides study and resource materials for home and group study of Scripture.

Though she does not describe this book as such, it has all the marks of a dissertation, at least at one stage of its production. As she presents and buttresses her theses, Dell provides an impressively comprehensive overview of prior and alternative views. Her references, footnotes, and bibliography give the reader a major bibliographical head start to further study.

Dell’s concern is to explore possible social contexts for the varied materials and forms in the Book of Proverbs, ranging from royal court, wisdom schools, and popular/folk culture. This inevitably brings wisdom traditions from the Ancient Near East into the discussion. That in turn leads to a discussion of the integrity of the theological character of the Book of Proverbs and of specific references to YHWH in the Book of Proverbs.

Dell moves alternatively between studying the Book of Proverbs itself (and other related ancient documents and traditions) and presenting and weighing the various approaches and proposals of secondary sources. As ponderous as this may seem, her combination of attention to detail and awareness of wider contexts gives credibility to her observations and conclusions. In a nutshell, Dell proposes and concludes that ethics and education are the critical social contexts for Israel’s proverbial material. This allows a major role for family and clan in the develop-

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ment of wisdom, while also allowing a place for priestly and royal refinement of wisdom. In any case, those elemental ethical and educational contexts are themselves frameworked in another context, namely the theological context of faith in Yahweh, which underlies the entire Book of Proverbs, even where Yahweh is not specifically cited. On this contextual basis Dell pursues points of overlap and shared expression with other parts of Scripture (cultic, deuteronomic, prophetic, psalmic), which in turn leads to her final conclusion (challenge, actually), namely that since “in the book of Proverbs the wisdom tradition is truly integrated with its canonical bedfellows…[wisdom literature should] no longer [be] regarded as an outsider to more mainstream concerns” (199-200).

Though this book may seem a bit academic (and expensive!) for the tasks of pastoral preaching and teaching, Dell has significantly benefitted the exegetical task by underlining the theological significance of the Book of Proverbs specifically and of wisdom literature generally, and thereby enriching both the faith and the ministry of the people of God. Henry Rowold

THE STRUGGLE TO RECLAIM THE LITURGY IN THE LUTHERAN 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 “traditional” have limited worship debates to questions of style and form. Lost is a

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theology of worship shaped by the Lutheran Confessions. James Waddell seeks to correct that with a thoroughly investigated answer to this question: For Lutherans, is there a required catholicity or is there unfettered freedom in regard to the forms of worship? Advocates of the contemporary, according to Waddell, too often have engaged in liturgical license reflected in theologically uncritical adaptations of worship forms. Yet, advocates of traditional worship have trumpeted a liturgical repristination, insisting upon liturgical uniformity for the church’s orthodoxy (5). Evaluating these, Waddell investigates what the marks of the church’s unity are in the Lutheran Confessions and what adiaphora are when used in freedom. With proper definitions of unity and adiaphora, he critiques the arguments of Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) traditionalists shaped by the ecumenical school of Liturgical Theology, and probes the inadequacies in the contemporary camp’s arguments for complete freedom. Waddell’s examination of the Confessions affirms that historic liturgical forms are to be defended, but cannot be considered necessary for the church’s catholicity or unity. They are not of the church’s essence. What is necessary is justification through the Word and Sacraments. Beyond these divinely given things, liturgical traditions are humanly created ceremonies that cannot be made necessary for the church’s life. While rejoicing in the received heritage of the church, liturgical forms should be culturally embedded in ways faithful to the church’s marks: Word and Sacraments.

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

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tates of the Liturgical Theology school of thought which, as he seeks to prove, made historic liturgical forms necessary.

On the other hand he serves in the LCMS, where making worship contemporary often is considered an absolute responsibility on the basis of a perceived unfettered freedom in worship. Waddell’s goal was to work through this impasse on the basis of “a confessing evangelical catholic (Lutheran) theology of liturgy” (15).

To achieve his purpose, Waddell divides his work into two parts: Early Modern Clarity and The “Contemporary” Challenge. Following a helpful introduction, the first five chapters trace the development of the Lutheran Confessions’ position on adiaphora within its historical context, identifying what are the church’s marks, how liturgy is shaped within the parameters of order and freedom, what it means for worship forms to be adiaphora, how forms are received without being necessary, and how the Confessions shape a move toward ecclesial harmony. The chapters in the second section examine the contemporary worship debate, characterizing the positions taken by the traditionalists as legalistic and the contemporary advocates as unfettered license.

He concludes that the arguments of the Liturgical Theology school import a foreign theology of worship into the Confessions. Waddell’s critique of this repristinatory position focuses upon its appeal to liturgical tradition as normative.

This perspective permeates, he claims, the theologies of worship of LCMS advocates for an unchanging liturgical tradition. The final three chapters provide a formative response. Waddell posits

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a hermeneutical methodology for addressing the liturgical forms grounded in Lutheranism’s formal and material principles. He argues for the benefits of historic liturgical forms because they provide a formative catechesis in the faith.

He contends for the inculturation of worship in local contexts. Lastly, he suggests, for the sake of good order, a desirable, base “ordo” that is catholic and evangelical but which can adapt to cultural expressions, especially in songs and music.

Waddell successfully enunciates a Lutheran theology of worship devoid of legalism and license. He pinpoints how contemporary advocates have abandoned catechesis through worship forms. This abandonment reflects a shift away from the church’s marks toward an American Evangelical theology. At times Waddell’s analysis could have been more accurately finessed. He frames Liturgical Theology as a unified theological position whose adherents express the same perspectives, positing a comprehensive school without proving its existence. Likewise, Waddell treats Liturgical Theology as one “school” of thought in the LCMS, which can oversimplify the particular theologies of LCMS theologians. Neither their methodologies or arguments are the same, nor do they spring from the same sources.

Waddell’s analytical critique captures the wonder of being a Lutheran, liturgically speaking; freedom for inculturated worship in the midst of the liturgical heritage’s treasures. As he proves, “there is not . . . a catholicity of the [liturgical] form” (267). Lutherans neither make liturgical forms necessary nor espouse an anti-biblical, anti-creedal license in con-

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temporary, cultural expressions. That makes this book necessary reading for transcending the traditional-contemporary 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 focused treatment of the problem of evil. While his account will not convert all the skeptics, Wright marshals the Biblical evidence into a coherent, compelling, and hopeful vision of what God is doing about evil in our world.

Three points set Wright’s treatment apart from others. First, in Wright’s words, “the problem of evil as classically conceived within philosophy is not soluble as it stands, not least because it tends to postulate a god other than the God revealed in Jesus Christ” (164). Second, it is ultimately a practical rather than an intellectual problem—it confronts us in the banal evils we encounter every day as well as horrendous acts of violence such as 9/11 and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami of December 24, 2004. Finally, “what the Gospels offer is not a philosophical explanation of evil, . . . but the story of an event in which the living God deals with it” (93).

What God does, Wright argues, is set all things right through a head-on confrontation with evil in the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. “The power of death itself, the ultimate denial of the goodness

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of creation, speaks of a force of destruction, of anti-world, anti-God power being allowed to do its worst. The Gospels tell this whole story in order to say that the tortured young Jewish prophet hanging on the cross was the point where evil had become truly and fully and totally itself ” (81-82). In other words, the Gospels take evil seriously, because God took evil seriously by sending his Son to suffer it in its most concentrated form.

Forgiveness becomes the linchpin in God’s action. “When we understand forgiveness, flowing from the work of Jesus and the Spirit, as the strange, powerful thing it really is, we begin to realize that God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others, is the knife that cuts the rope by which sin, anger, fear, recrimination and death are still attached to us.

Evil will have nothing to say at the last, because the victory of the cross will be fully implemented” (164-65). This chapter is worth reading in its own right because of its powerful understanding of forgiveness.

Certain readers may quibble with parts of Wright’s argument—his treatment of the atonement, for example, or his remarks regarding political power (although this reviewer finds the latter both timely and trenchant). Wright’s book is nevertheless an important and refreshing treatment of the problem of evil in a literature that is often quite sterile. Wright shows great sensitivity to the human propensity for evil and the depth of the problem of evil. He provides an intellectually rigorous account of God’s answer to evil. Most of all, he proclaims hope for God’s people in the face of evil within and evil without. The book is a

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gem for any pastor or theologically interested lay person.

David Loy Bolivar, Missouri

THE BLESSINGS OF WEEKLY COMMUNION. By Kenneth W. Wieting. St. Louis: CPH, 2006. 304 pages.

Paper/Cloth. $23.99.

The Blessings of Weekly Communion comes from the pen of a pastor, for it is the revised D.Min. thesis of the author, who is the pastor of Luther Memorial Church, Shorewood, Wisconsin—and it shows! As the chapters progress, one senses the presence of an undershepherd who writes out of love for Christ’s people and devotion to the Lord’s gospel promises found especially in the Eucharist. This is perhaps one of the (though not nearly the only!) chief strengths of Wieting’s work; it proclaims Lutheran theology for the sake of pastoral care. The work is dedicated to a lay audience, and is accessible to both lay and clergy readers alike.

Though it seems odd to do so, I begin by directing attention to chapters six (“The Lord’s Supper in the LCMS Today”) and seven (“Treasures Abound”), for they are the heart and the greatest contribution of Wieting’s work.

Chapter six presents the results of Wieting’s survey of LCMS congregations as to (1) the frequency in offering the Lord’s Supper, and (2) the pastoral responses that explain why the Lord’s Supper is not offered at each Sunday service. The chief explanations given by survey respondents for “less than weekly” communion are: (1) the Sacrament

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will become “too common”; (2) the Sacrament will take “too much time”; (3) Christians do not understand the church’s witness to every Sunday communion; and (4) “occasional Communion” is viewed as the norm of Lutheran practice. After offering reasonable responses to these objections, Wieting then thoughtfully suggests that both “anti-Catholic” and “pro-Protestant” sentiment in the Missouri Synod’s history might help to account for the tradition of less frequent Eucharistic celebration. This chapter describes the current situation in the LCMS. Chapter seven contains the book’s main positive contribution, Wieting’s theological and pastoral reflections on the blessings that the Eucharist offers. Here is substance for both lay and pastoral readers alike. The kind of sustained theological reflection found in this chapter could help a pastor broaden his congregation’s appreciation for the Eucharist, while also promoting a genuine hunger to receive the Lord’s body and blood more frequently. Too often the benefits of the Eucharist are confined to the Lutheran catch phrase, “the forgiveness of sins.”

Wieting invites a broader, wholistic, and even eschatological appropriation of the blessings of the Supper. Though not everyone will agree with every way that the author extends and applies the blessings of the Eucharist, the chapter is a wonderful resource, not least for teaching the laity. Chapter eight, titled “These Things Matter,” discusses a number of issues that are closely related to the doctrine of the Eucharist per se, including (of course) the practice of close or closed communion. Chapter nine, “Into the Future,” is the book’s conclusion.

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I return now to the actual order in which the chapters are offered. In a way, the work in its present form has a slightly misleading title; a more accurate heading might be something like “Weekly Communion: History, Teaching, and Practice.” After an opening chapter (“Foundational Thoughts”) that briefly examines key Scripture passages, the next four chapters rapidly survey aspects of the Early Church, the Middle Ages, the Reformation Era, and the Modern Period. These chapters of historical survey account for more than one hundred pages of text. If I have a criticism of Wieting’s work, it would be that he perhaps tried to accomplish too much with some of the historical survey. To be sure, the chapters contain much significant truth and reflection; Chapter Four on the Reformation Era is particularly helpful and marked by a carefully balanced discussion. It’s just that the time periods are so vast that inevitably material had to be omitted. In particular, in this reviewer’s opinion, the chapter on the Early Church and its practice might leave the reader with the impression that we know more about the early period than we actually do. As an example, Wieting cites the wellknown passage from the First Apology of Justin Martyr in which Justin briefly describes Christian worship. But to conclude that Justin’s comment, directed to a pagan audience, “...demonstrates that the main features of the eucharistic celebration were fixed as early as the second century” (57-58) runs too far with the evidence, as important as the quote from Justin is. Justin does not claim to give a comprehensive or ecumenical comment on Christian worship practices. It seems unlikely, on the face of it, that Justin

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would even know what practices were common in different parts of the Empire far away from Rome.

As mentioned above, I appreciated the author’s gentle and pastoral tone throughout. Wieting writes with a balance that all would do well to imitate. He carefully avoids pitting the Eucharist against the Sermon, for instance. The author also writes with a generous spirit, especially when describing the practices of past generations. Pastor Wieting would never become a “star” on talk radio, nor is he likely to become the darling of the bloggers of the world—and I mean that as a sincere compliment.

One is always limited when writing a particular work, and Wieting cannot be faulted for not writing everything I wish he had. If I could have wished for one aspect of this discussion to be more fully developed, however, it would have been more interaction with the spirit of this present age in which Wieting seeks to promote every-Sunday Communion.

What aspects of North Americans’ mindset would be most likely to take the blessing of weekly communion and abuse it? Both as parish pastor and also as seminary teacher, for instance, I have found myself marveling that week after week, Sunday after Sunday, virtually every member of the congregation present goes to the Lord’s Supper every time it is offered. Is no one unrepentant? Is no one ever convicted of their need to refrain from communing until they have reconciled with their brother? At the time of the Reformation, as Wieting notes, the

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Reformation offered the Eucharist often, knowing that the people would not all come, even when they should. In our day, one wonders if the problem might be the opposite, namely, that there should be some who refrain because they have unrepentantly violated the law of love and forgiveness presupposed by the Supper. Here is where an increase in teaching and catechism is a necessary complement to more frequent communing.

In addition, although there was discussion of some of the objections to the practice of closed communion, I suspect that Wieting’s defense of this historic practice will make sense only to those who are already so convinced. This is a genuinely difficult issue in the society in which we live and move and have our being. Many Christians, I suspect, genuinely do not understand the rationales that are given. A more full discussion on this important topic would have been helpful—but once again, one cannot address every issue in one piece of scholarship.

In sum, The Blessings of Weekly Communion is a fine piece of pastoral theology and could be used with profit by pastors and congregations. It is important to note that each chapter ends with a list of excellent discussion questions.

These questions enable the book to be used in the context of an on-going study group format, both to reinforce the message of each chapter and to promote positive discussion.

Jeffrey A. Gibbs