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1. What is the purpose of the letter?

There are two. The first is to encourage an open conversation that might help to heal some of the divisions that have emerged in our church, the ELCA, since the churchwide assemblies in Philadelphia and Denver. Secondly, we believe that there needs to be a full, public and open discussion of the place of the Lutheran confessions in the larger life as well as the ecumenical actions of our church.

2. Why was the letter sent to the congregations?

In some circles, this may be considered an unusual procedure. In the tradition we know, issues of this importance belong to the people of God working and thinking together. In fact, the ecumenical discussion in the ELCA has been privileged from the start, featuring a small group of continuing participants who have been perceived as strongly encouraging a preset direction while discounting alternatives. Their complaints of such a mailing remind both of us of Erasmus’ anxious query of Luther, “What will the peasants think if they hear this?” “They already know,” Luther replied, and that’s the truth. Christ’s people know his voice.

3. What is so important about the Lutheran confessions?

The confessions-the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and Luther’s Small Catechism along with five other supporting documents-are like the Magna Charta or the Declaration of Independence. They are not legislative, like constitutions. Rather, they are just what the name says, confessions of the freedom of the gospel in Christ Jesus that seek to orient further confessing by the people of God. At the same time, they are safeguards of the church’s freedom, protecting against the kind of abuses of power that occasioned the Lutheran reformation. For these reasons, Lutherans have given the confessions a prior status in the life of the church. They come after the Scripture but before other authorities, like the constitution or churchwide and synodical officers.

4. What is the confessional crisis?

The crisis has two aspects. First, in the last two churchwide assemblies, leadership in the ELCA has in support of ecumenical resolutions put particular interpretations of key confessional teachings up for a vote. Such a procedure subordinates the confessions to specific church leadership and assemblies. At the same time, it excludes those who hold other interpretations and lose. The confessions are being used in a way that restrains and eliminates rather to proclaim and free in Christ.

Secondly, according to reliable historical readings of the Lutheran confessions, the three main ecumenical resolutions at Philadelphia and Denver misinterpret if they don’t flatly contradict the confessional witness. Since the Philadelphia vote on the Joint Declaration on Justification, over 250 European and some American theologians have rejected the claim that Lutheran and Roman Catholics agree on the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The Philadelphia action on the Lord’s Supper came at the expense of the doctrine of the real presence of Christ with sinners at the table. Where Article VII of the Augustana insists that it is not necessary that “rites, ceremonies and human traditions be always and everywhere the same,” protecting the freedom of the church to embrace the breadth of New Testament forms of ministry, it was ruled at the Denver assembly that “regularly” means always and everywhere the same, thereby limiting freedom Lutherans have cherished since the reformation.

5. Why was the characterization of opposing confessional interpretation so negative?

Maybe it would have been better to be a little more diplomatic at this point, but it is hard to be patient with the way both Scripture and the confessions are commonly treated by many theologians and pastors. The Scripture is the word of life in Christ, the written source that enables the proclamation of the gospel. The Lutheran confessions faithfully confess the freedom bestowed in Christ. They are to be cherished, read as a former slave reads papers of release or as a lover reads letters from the beloved.

That said, it should also be noted that the confessions are not ambiguous in the disputed issues. In regard to the ministry, medieval Catholicism moved against the Lutheran reformers with such speed that not a single bishop joined them. As the reform went on, the question was how the Lutherans were going to obtain pastors lacking the approval of the bishops. Understanding the power and freedom generated by the word of God in its preached and sacramental form, they argued in Article VII of the Augsburg Confession that this understanding is all that is needed for the unity of the church-that the later ratification of a bishop, “a human tradition,” or that the ordination practices of the medieval church, “rites and ceremonies,” are not universally required for valid ministry. With occasional variances of emphasis, Article VII has been interpreted this way ever since.

Now, however, different assumptions about interpretation prevail. It is taken for granted that every historical text is ambiguous, that all interpretation is subjective and that therefore no document can function authoritatively. Using these assumptions, Article VII gets turned around backwards. Challenged, the interpreters run and hide in the alleged ambiguity, complaining bitterly of mistreatment by those who believe that the text actually has something specific to say. Under these rules, interpretation gets reduced, in the words of a great English literary critic, to either “cunning or violence.” And then, the likelihood is that persons in leadership positions will step in, claiming the necessity of controlling the range of interpretation. Historical, grammatical interpretation has its limits, no doubt about it. At the same time, the biblical word as confessed by the church has a life of its own and gifts to bestow that supercede what this word at the same time require the telling.

James A. Nestingen and Gerhard Forde