Called to Common Mission: A Minority View

By Dr. Tod Nichol

Dr Nichol, faculty member at Luther Seminary, St Paul, was one of three chosen to redraft the unaccepted Concord of Agreementfor "full communion" between the Episcopal and ELCA churches. The committee issued its revision as Called to Common Mission (CCM). Nichol submitted a "minority report" when the document was sent on to the ELCA for action at its Assembly this year. In an unusual move, the other two members of the drafting team, in conjunction with ELCA Ecumenical Affairs officer, refused to circulate his dissent with their majority opinion. As a service to the church, we reprint his slightly abridged report.

Since I favor the earliest possible acknowledgment of communion in Christ by the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, I regret that I cannot endorse Called to Common Mission.
I see it as my task in this brief statement to describe several of the most significant objections that Lutherans may have to Called to Common Mission .... I confine myself here to what I take to be the most fundamental procedural and theological matters .... A fuller discussion would also take up vital questions related to ethos, practice, and the place of both churches in the American and global contexts for mission ...

... [M]any Lutherans will find much in this document to affirm, notably its expression of "Agreement in the Doctrine of the Faith." .... At the same time, Called to Common Mission is very similar to the previous Concordat.

Procedure
Some Lutherans will object to aspects ofthe procedu re by which Called to Common Mission was developed.
1. The instructions delivered to the Lutheran members of the drafting team by Lutheran authorities specifically stated that a revised and rewritten statement must include an agreement on the historic episcopate. This precluded discussion among the Lutherans of the drafting team of the matter most controversial and divisive among Lutherans.

2. Called to Common Mission differs from other ecumenical agreements to which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is party. It requires substantial internal changes in the polity and practice of this church. It would at a minimum result in a reordered ministry, constitutional amendments, and liturgical revision .... There is, [some] Lutherans will maintain, not sufficient internal consensus in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to warrant the undertaking of such changes in good faith with an ecumenical partner. ... Some will also ask about the relation of this [CCM] statement to the decisions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America regarding [against the Episcopalian "three-fold"] ministry, in 1993, taken after protracted internal study.

Theological Substance
1. Called to Common Mission expects the intro uction of the historic episcopate into the Evangelical Lutheran Church for the realization of full communion between the two churches. The statement does not require Lutherans to subscribe to a theological assertion that the historic episcopate is necessary to the unity of the church and is deferential to traditional Lutheran formulations regarding the unity of the church and the office of the ministry, but it does insist on certain invariable practices for the realization of full communion.

While this proposal avoids the use of the term "condition," an agreement resulting from it would in practice impose conditions on both churches. Episcopalians are asked to suspend temporarily the preface to their ordinal so that they may acknowledge the full authenticity of presently existing ordained ministries within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Lutherans are asked to receive the historic episcopate and to make substantial constitutional and liturgical changes for the sake of full communion with a church with the historic episcopate.

Those Lutherans who hold that the right preaching of the Gospel and administration of the Sacraments are sufficient for the unity of the church will object to conditions in practice asked [by the CCM] of either church by the other. [They] ... hold that neither the Holy Scriptures nor the Lutheran Confessions permit episcopal or any other historical forms of the ordained ministry to be explicitly identified as necessary conditions for full communion will object to the proposal. They will regard it as inconsistent with Scripture and contrary to Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession .... They will not agree to theological assertions or practices that they consider unnecessary [" adiaphora"] when partners in discussion declare the same assertions or practices to be necessary.

2. Some will maintain that certain other elements and implications of Called to Common Mission concerning the nature of the public ministry, call, ordination, and the office of bishop are not warranted by Scripture and inconsistent with the Augsburg Confession (e.g., Articles 5,14,28).

3. Some Lutherans, [on the other hand] who may not share the objections above, will contend that Called to Common Mission does not commit Lutherans to a theological rationale for the historic episcopate that wou Id make it integral to the ordering of ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ... that will make full communion with the Roman Catholic Church and visible unity with the Orthodox Churches immediately possible.

Other prospects
Again, I want to say that I favor the earliest possible acknowledgment of communion in Christ by The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .... [T]he debate over Called to Common Mission will be a debate about means rather than ends.

Should either or both churches decline to approve Called to Common Mission, I believe that there remain other promising paths toward full communion to explore .... [I]t would require both churches to develop fundamentally new approaches to ecumenism. This would likely be an ecumenism more oriented to recognition of Christian commonality in Christ than to exacting agreements in theology and ecclesiastical practice ....

As an evangelical Lutheran and as a member of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, I look forward to the time when all Christians will be able to recognize the unity they have in Christ and to enjoy the diversity in theology and practice permitted them by the generosity of God. Such recognition will revise and renew Christian ecumenism, serve the spread of the Gospel, build up the Church on earth, and express a communion in Christ that already exists without our acknowledgment of it ...