The fourth congress of the Lutheran World Federation, largest church meeting ever convened in Helsinki, opened with a service of worship which was attended by Dr. Urho Kekkonen, president of the Finnish Republic, and televised via Eurovision and Nordvision to an estimated twenty million viewers. In his sermon, seventy-year-old Archbishop Ilmari Salomies of the Church of Finland warned: “Christian faith which by its worldliness loses its connection with eternity, has signed its own spiritual death sentence.” The offering at this service was earmarked for relief work in the devastated Yugoslav city of Skoplje.
With the general theme of “Christ Today,” the assembly had as its chief task a thorough examination of the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith and how this doctrine is still relevant in a modern world. It was just here that the congress became bogged down. To an incredibly involved report on the subject (prepared by a theological commission over several years) was added an incredibly confused discussion. This provoked one professor in a press conference to refer to justification as “this horrible word.” Finally, the assembly could not agree even on the wording of a “contemporary statement” on the doctrine, and in what seemed an admission of defeat, referred the matter to its new commission on theology “for refinement.” No document ever had less need of added refinement. One journalist hit the nail squarely when at a press conference he expressed surprise at finding differing conceptions of Lutheran doctrines at a Lutheran gathering. He pointed out also that some of the federation leaders who were pressing for a restatement of Lutheran teachings in down-to-earth modern terms were themselves speaking a language that the ordinary man does not understand. Confronted with something like half a million words of reports, documents, and news releases, the ordinary journalist could feelingly echo the comment of a boy who, given a detailed book on penguins, complained:
“This tells me more about penguins than I want to know.”
At a visitors’ program, Professor Charles K. Woltz of Charlottesville, Virginia, saying that the Church has not found a way to talk to modern man, outlined the latter’s plight thus: “Made too arrogant by his new knowledge of science … he exploits and despoils a creation he cannot explain.… He is brought by modern communication face to face with his brothers throughout the world, but sees in them only potential, if not actual, enemies. He lives amid terrible stresses. But worst of all he lives in the shadow of the lunatic fear that there is no purpose or meaning to his living. For such a one Christ is indeed the only hope.” Lawyer Woltz’s main point was that laymen have an essential ministry which the clergy are ill-equipped to perform.
THE WORLD AND GOD
A study document submitted in Helsinki by the Lutheran Church of Hungary noted that a relevant witness cannot be attained by discarding “the ‘theological’ terminology of our confessional writings” and replacing them with “an apparently more modern and ‘theologically unencumbered’ vocabulary.”
“It has become a fashion to speak about the secularized condition of modern humanity: the man of today is not interested in salvation, he does not care for the transcendent dimensions of his existence, he does not ask for the reality of God, still less does he know the primary question of the Reformation doctrine of justification about the gracious God. From this observation some conclude that the problems of the doctrine of justification have had their day and are pointless for our contemporaries.
“In view of the relevant teachings of our confessions, we have no reason to be surprised, if men today do not care for God, neither believe in Him, do not know Him and do not seek His grace.… Man is unable of himself to believe in Jesus Christ, or to come to Him.… It could be only on the grounds of an anthropology alien to our doctrine of justification that we may expect something else of the modern world.…”
Dr. Clifford E. Nelson of St. Paul, Minnesota, suggested that one of the sad facts of Lutherans’ history was that they have more often been drawn together by common disaster than by common doctrine. He urged that Lutherans should put their own household of faith in order by entering into immediate fellowship with other Lutherans.
Meanwhile philatelists were commenting on what they regard as the first stamp in the world having a likeness of the face of Christ. Commemorating the LWF gathering, it was one of two stamps issued; both had the assembly’s motto, “Christ Today,” in Finnish and Swedish, the two official languages of the country.
Dr. Sigurd Aske, general director of LWF’s “Voice of the Gospel” radio station in Addis Ababa, said that “the Christian church is doing a far better job talking to itself than in proclaiming Christ to the world. Being aware of that weakness may help us to avert the danger of Radio Voice of the Gospel degenerating into an extremely expensive international Christian house-telephone.”
The assembly was told baptized membership of world Lutheranism totaled more than fifty-six million; called on its member churches not in pulpit and altar fellowship with other member churches to justify their position; accepted eleven applications for membership, including the Lutheran Churches of Latvia and Estonia (these countries, with Lithuania, are represented also by churches-in-exile, with respective headquarters in the United States, Sweden, and Germany). Some tension was evident in the assembly at this latter point, and thirteen delegates voted against acceptance of the Latvian and Estonian churches.
The assembly employed forty-one translators, and the extremely detailed proceedings taxed their resources. At the close of one meeting a tiring interpreter heard a speaker say in English, “And now to finish, ladies and gentlemen …” and translated into the German the words, “And now two Finnish ladies and gentlemen.…”
Father Johannes Witte, S.J., one of two official Roman Catholic visitors, said in answer to a press question: “Roman Catholics cannot acknowledge the Lutheran church as the true church, because Jesus Christ founded one church and this one church is guaranteed by Jesus Christ himself until the end of time.” He added that the most crucial question facing both sides is the nature of the Church. Said Dr. Peter Blaeser, the other Roman Catholic: “I feel that I really belong.” He said that while he had found a variety of opinions in Protestant theology, the “extremes” of Protestant theology were not represented at the assembly. Somewhat enigmatically he continued: “There is much more piety in the Lutheran churches than Lutheran theology shows.”
A burning issue in world Lutheranism centers on ordination of women. While German churches have several hundred ordained women pastors (Vikarinnen), Norway has only one, Sweden has seven (against continued opposition), and Denmark and Finland have not ordained any so far, though women are serving a number of congregations. The Church of Finland faces a curious situation in that 44 per cent of all enrolled students in Finnish theological seminaries are women. Said one woman theologian in Helsinki: “At the assembly we expected to welcome American sisters in our profession. But we could not find any.” (All American Lutheran bodies oppose ordination of women.) Differences of opinion on the subject were cited at the congress, ranging from “how can a woman preach—was it not a man who was crucified?” to “a pastor’s office is nowadays so different from New Testament times—so why can’t a woman pastor work in her profession just as a woman doctor or woman engineer?”
An American churchman was named to succeed an American as president of LWF. Dr. Fredrik A. Schiotz of Minneapolis, president of the American Lutheran Church, was elected as the fourth head of the federation at the closing plenary session. Dr. Schiotz, 62, will assume leadership of the international church organization from Dr. Franklin Clark Fry of New York, president of the Lutheran Church in America, who has just completed a six-year term in office.
The LWF brought its assembly to a close with a colorful outdoor festival in Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium. By proclamation of Archbishop Ilmari Salomies, church bells of local parishes throughout Finland rang out promptly at 3 P.M. as the meeting (estimated attendance in excess of 20,000) got under way. An address of welcome in four languages was given by Bishop E. G. Gulin of Tampere (Finland’s second largest city), and Martin Luther’s triumphant Reformation hymn fittingly concluded the congress.
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod is not a member of the LWF because of the latter’s position on church fellowship. Telling this to a press conference in Helsinki, the president of the 2,600–000-member U. S. Lutheran church body, Dr. Oliver R. Harms, added that this did not close the door on the possibility of future Missouri Synod membership in the LWF. In reply to a reporter’s question, Dr. Harms said the synod’s observers regarded some of the present congress’ statements on justification as “unclear.”
Eight African and three European churches were accepted into LWF membership. Largest among them were the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church (400,000 members) and the Estonian Evangelical Church (350,000 members). Also welcomed were the East German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Eutin (104.466 members), the Evangelical Church in North-West Tanganyika (60,170 members), and the Lutheran Church of Southern Tanganyika (96,000 members).
The Development Of Splendor
On the eve of the resumption of Vatican Council II more than one Protestant observer is pondering the possibility of doctrinal and ecclesiastical reform within the Roman Catholic Church. Will Rome’s talk of reform pass into reformation? Is the Holy Spirit beginning to revive the theologically delinquent and traditionally rigid Church of Rome? World Council ecumenics find hope for an affirmative answer to these questions in Rome’s cordial reception and informal consultation of non-Roman delegate observers at the first session.
But the outlook of the WCC is misleading, says theologian Karl Barth in a current issue of the World Council’s Ecumenical Review. In the first place, increased Roman Catholic interest in the views of non-Roman ecclesiastics is motivated not by the wish to discuss, doctrine with them, but by the desire to know them better and more ably to present to them the true essence of the Roman church. “Its ultimate goal … is the development of its own splendor.”
This is not to say that reformation of Roman theology is not already under way, says Barth. The preoccupation of the World Council with broadening dialogue with Rome has largely overshadowed the “spiritual movement actually taking place” within the Roman fold. Barth sees an industrious and fruitful concern for biblical studies on the part of Roman clerics, an exaltation of the Gospels, surprisingly new interpretations of Tridentine theology. Is all this not “the beginning of a reorganization … around the Gospel?” Through this renewed concern for Scripture, Barth asks “has not Jesus Christ inevitably stepped anew into the center of faith of the Roman Christians and the thought of Roman theologians?”
If this is true, suggests Barth to the leaders of the WCC, then “we should direct our attention far more to what is beginning to appear as a movement of renewal ‘within’ the Roman Church, to what in fact has partially already been set in motion, rather than to the possibilities of a loyal correspondence between us …”
But not all ecumenical leaders agree. “Barth talks as if these things have happened,” WCC General Secretary W. A. Visser ’t Hooft comments. “There is a schema, but we must wait for the realities to come to pass.”
Ecclesiastical Coexistence
In Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church announced formation of a new Committee on Questions of Christian Unity.
Named to head the committee was the articulate 33-year-old priest, now Metropolitan Nicodim, whose rise to ecclesiastical fame in the Soviet Union has been so meteoric as to arouse wide suspicion.
The committee was set up to replace a commission on relations between Christian churches which had been headed by Metropolitan Pitirim of Krutitsky and Kolomna. It has been instructed to work “thoroughly and attentively on the problems of Christian unity,” said a statement issued by the church’s Holy Synod.
The statement stressed that the committee was being organized in response to the “vivid demonstration of the bonds between the churches” witnessed when representatives of “almost all the Christian denominations, including Roman Catholics and Protestants,” attended celebrations in Moscow last month marking the fiftieth anniversary of Patriarch Alexei’s episcopal consecration.
The bearded Nicodim, easily the best known of all Soviet clergymen, was given the title Metropolitan of Rostov and Yaroslavl only a few weeks ago. It makes him the second-ranking figure in Russian Orthodoxy. Only once before—in the seventeenth century when Archbishop Peter Mogila of Kiev was given the title of Metropolitan at the age of thirty-two—had a prelate in his thirties been raised to that rank.
