This is from p. 423 of volume 3 of Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics:

With regard to the orthodox character of a church body note well: (1) A church body is orthodox only if the true doctrine, as we have it in the Augsburg Confession and the other Lutheran Symbols, is actually taught in its pulpits and its publications and not merely “officially” professed as its faith. Not the “official” doctrine, but the actual teaching determines the character of a church body, because Christ enjoins that all things whatsoever He has commanded His disciples should actually be taught and not merely acknowledged in an “official document” as the correct doctrine. It is patent that faith in Christ will be created and preserved through the pure Gospel only when that Gospel is really proclaimed. (2) A church body does not forfeit its orthodox character by reason of the casual intrusion of false doctrine. The thing which the Apostle Paul told the elders of Ephesus: “Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them” (Acts 20:30), came true not only in the Apostolic Church, but also in the Church of the Reformation and will occur in the Church to the Last Day. A church body loses its orthodoxy only when it no longer applies Romans 16:17, hence does not combat and eventually remove the false doctrine, but tolerates it without reproof and thus actually grants it equal right with the truth.

I admit that we have seen great zeal in the ELS to apply Romans 16:17, even bypassing the proper steps given in both Scripture and the synod guidelines. Does such zeal confirm the ELS as an orthodox church body? (Or is it that we have retained fellowship with our sister synod in Wisconsin? Sorry, couldn’t resist. Yet an answer may still be helpful.)

Note the basis that Pieper gives for application of Romans 16:17: “the true doctrine, as we have it in the Augsburg Confession and the other Lutheran Symbols.” This leads to the question: what is a Lutheran Symbol? At Bethany Seminary, our Symbolics class covered the Book of Concord. We did not examine the local doctrinal statements of the ELS or any other synod, except to compare their teaching with that of the Book of Concord, to see how they measure up.

This is worth contemplating, from The Fireside.

When we hear about controversies in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), many times those controversies seem to be about things that are not related to spiritual or theogical questions, but about business and legal matters. This then begs the questions, “Is the Synod ‘Church’”? …

Fellowship is a highly-valued thing among conservative Lutherans. It is a recognition that various individuals, churches, pastors, &c. ought to freely join together in worship as circumstances may allow. Recently, I read a sentence from a theologically-trained pastor claiming a person can be placed outside of a particular fellowship by a suspension of that person from a group belonging to said fellowship. If you don’t understand that sentence, read it again. By the way, this pastor happens to be “in my fellowship,” as we say.

I’d like to point out that this statement reveals a misunderstanding of fellowship. Fellowship is not of human origin. Our declarations, suspensions, or favor do not place someone “in” or “out” of fellowship. Rather, God-pleasing fellowship comes into existence when more than one person believes, teaches, and confesses the biblical doctrine, ordering their practice accordingly. Fellowship is a doctrinal matter, not a political matter. If you wish to say that someone has left the fellowship defined by the Bible’s doctrine, it is incumbent upon you to show how that person has persistently and knowingly disavowed the Bible’s doctrine. Lacking that, it is inappropriate (dare I say “disorderly” or even “offensive?”) to claim that someone has been “put out” of the fellowship.

It is possible for fellowships to gather around other doctrines too, such as the various philosophies and opinions of men. Such fellowships amount to clubs with voluntary memberships. But orthodox, evangelical and catholic fellowship is created by the Word of God. We can recognize it where it exists, but not even kings or princes have the power to change its membership.

There’s a pretty good paragraph here on p. 180, which can be applied, well, to just about any matter involving doctrine and practice.

The Procrustean bed of hermeneutical assumption can be a dangerous and even deadly game of losing the trees for the forest, and for that matter the forest for the trees. We must never place our ideological assumption beyond the reach of close scrutiny or the critical examination of scripture and the confessional witness. It is the ongoing task of the church in every age to clarify its hermeneutical assumptions and methodology regarding its theology and practice of liturgy in light of cultural and scientific change. Genuine theological divergence over the truth of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments must never be glossed over. Yet differences of opinion over humanly instituted, external rites and ceremonies in liturgy are unnecessarily divisive to the unity of the church. How can we constructively put this distinction into practice for the sake of the church?

What Waddell writes here strikes a chord, particularly because it seems that some have recently pronounced that the adoption of a doctrinal statement by a church body decisively places that statement beyond “the critical examination of scripture and the confessional witness.”

Fun! Thanks to Bruce.

http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=51889

For some of the questions, remember the context of the quiz. There are Calvinists, Zwinglians, and Romanists present.

This is from modernreformation.org

The Controversy Concerning Predestination

by C.F. W. Walther

This essay was originally published in 1881 by Concordia Publishing House (St. Louis, MO). It was translated into English by Aug. Crull, and was presented with the original subtitle: Trustworthy advice for pious Christians that would like to know whose doctrine in the present controversy concerning predestination is Lutheran, and whose is not. This tract is now in the public domain.

Dear Reader: If in a doctrinal controversy we wish to find out which side contends for the truth, and which side contends for error, it is necessary above all things to understand thoroughly, which is the actual controverted point in question.

For this reason false teachers have at all times endeavored to shift and misstate the actual controverted point in the doctrinal controversies stirred up by them. Some Zwinglians of old, for instance, acted upon this principle. The chief controverted point in the dispute between them and Luther was this: whether the true body and the true blood of Christ is present in, with, and under the blessed bread and wine, is distributed by the ministers and therefore also taken and partaken of with the mouth by all communicants. This Luther had affirmed, but the Zwinglians had denied it. However, when Luther proved his doctrine so clearly from the Word of God and confuted the Zwinglian doctrine so powerfully, that everybody saw and the Zwinglians themselves perceived, that they had been defeated: some of the latter shifted the controverted point, asserting that they had only contested the doctrine, that the body of Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper like an ordinary body and is crushed by the teeth of the communicants. Luther, it is true, had really used this expression once; but he had added at the same time, how he meant it, namely not in that gross manner which the Capernaites of old had imputed to Christ (John 6:52-60), but in this sense that the essential body of Christ is really and truly present and is really and truly eaten with the bodily mouth.

The teachers of the pure doctrine, however, have always above all things stated precisely the actual controverted point in question, whenever controversies had arisen. A plain proof of this, among other things, is our dear Formula of Concord. For when after Luther’s death serious controversies concerning certain points of doctrine had arisen within our Lutheran church, which controversies were to be adjusted by means of the Formula of Concord, the latter in the first place always stated the actual controverted point in every one of these articles. If we look into the Formula of Concord, we find that the first ten articles of this book always begin with the words: “Status controversiae. The chief question in this controversy.” However by the word: “The chief question” nothing else is understood but: “The chief controverted point.” Only the eleventh article, treating of predestination, does not begin thus; and why not? For no other reason but because (as the first Part of the Formula of Concord expressly states in the very beginning) at that time “no public controversy had arisen (yet) among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession.” (Compare the new Jubilee edition of the Book of Concord, page 378. New Market edition page 353.)

But because now, within the American-Lutheran church, a “public controversy has arisen” concerning the doctrine of predestination, it is of course necessary, in order that no one may “fish in troubled waters”, and that all pious Christians, even the most simple, may see their way clearly in this “controversy” that has arisen, to state in the first place and above all things the actual controverted point in the present controversy. What, then, is the actual, and at the same time the chief controverted point?

It consists simply in the following twofold question: 1st, whether God from eternity, before the foundations of the world were laid, out of pure mercy and only for the sake of the most holy merit of Christ, elected and ordained the chosen children of God to salvation and whatever pertains to it, consequently also to faith, repentance, and conversion; or 2nd, whether in His election God took into consideration anything good in man, namely the foreseen conduct of man, the foreseen non-resistance, and the foreseen persevering faith, and thus elected certain persons to salvation in consideration of, with respect to, on account of, or in consequence of their conduct, their non-resistance, and their faith. The first of these questions we affirm, while our opponents deny it, but the second question we deny, while our opponents affirm it.

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