wfn.org | FEATURE: Meissen: Fragile porcelain or robust relationship?

[FRANK.IMHOFF@ecunet.org]

GENEVA, 26 May 2000 (LWI) - The Rt Rev Michael Bourke, Anglican Bishop
of Wolverhampton, England, gave a lecture on "Meissen - Fragile
Porcelain or Robust Relationship?" at the Annual General Meeting of the
Anglican - Lutheran Society on 18 March 2000. He co-chairs the
Committee, which oversees the 1991 'Meissen Agreement' between the
Church of England and the Evangelical Churches in Germany. Below is a
lightly edited version of relevant excerpts from his address, which
appeared in the May 2000 edition of "The Window", the newsletter of the
Anglican - Lutheran Society.

"For historic reasons, the English churches have always had closer links
with the Reformed on the Continent than with the Lutherans. I would say
that Anglican encounters with Lutheranism have uncovered a mixture of
ignorance, striking similarity and fascinating strangeness.

Similarities
What Anglicans have discovered is a delightful similarity between our
traditions. Our churches, in England and in Germany, are folk churches
with a parish system, and a sense of responsibility for public life as
well as private piety. There are similar liturgical forms and fine
traditions of liturgical music and choral worship.

Anglicans have always envied the way in which Lutherans preserved their
monastic buildings and their medieval treasures of church art....In
contrast our English churches betray the scars of the Puritan cultural
revolution from which very little survived. It was left to Sir
Christopher Wren in the 17th century and the Oxford movement in the 19th
century to make our churches beautiful again. I have sometimes wondered
if England' s loss of so much pre-Reformation church art has contributed
to the Anglican insistence on episcopacy as a - 'visible sign' - in our
case virtually the only visible sign of ecclesiastical continuity.

These similarities have contributed much towards the popularity of the
Meissen Agreement, signed on 29 January 1991. We have sought to build
strong relationships between our churches on every level - not only
through theological conversations but through parish visits.

The Meissen Agreement has also established the two libraries - one of
German Protestant studies in Durham, England; and an Anglican library in
Tuebingen, Germany.

We are also committed to developing shared forms of episcope ?
oversight. This is expressed principally through mutual invitations to
each other's Synods, and also through inviting church leaders to attend
the House of Bishops and its equivalent.

All these contacts, through which a strong bond of mutual understanding
and commitment have grown, reflect the similarities between our two
traditions. They add pressure to express our unity more fully,
especially through exchanges of priests and pastors. . . .The unresolved
issue, of course, is the Anglican insistence that a united Church must
include the historic episcopate as a condition of ministerial
exchangeability.

Which first - church or doctrine?
At the risk of caricaturing, you could say that for Lutherans it is
doctrine that makes the Church, whereas for Anglicans it is the Church
that makes doctrine. Anglicans have majored more in church history than
doctrine .  .  .  It is notorious that since the Reformation there has
been until very recently no professorial chair of systematic theology in
England.

What holds the Church together is its common loyalty to scripture, the
recognition of the same Gospel (in a sense not too carefully defined) in
our various theologies, common worship and membership in the same Church
expressed through communion with the Bishop.  For the Church is not a
collection of individual believers, but a covenant community, with a
structure. .  .  .  In order to be part of the true Church, the local
church needs to be linked with the global church, and in continuity with
the historic church as well as the historic faith of the apostles.

The mutual fascination between Anglicans and Lutherans is that we each
find it quite difficult to comprehend how the other thinks; and yet we
recognize that we both affirm the same Gospel. We know that our own
understanding and articulation of the faith are not to be identified
with faith itself, and that our formulations are fallible and
provisional. No one has a monopoly on inconsistency. We know, for
example, that Anglicanism can encourage every-member ministry and a
sense of voluntary lay participation, despite its heavy theological
emphasis on ordained ministry and priesthood; and that some Lutheran
Churches can be heavily clericalized and professionalized, despite the
doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.

In the Meissen Agreement, the Church of England and the Evangelical
Church in Germany (EKD) recognize each other as true Churches in which
the Word of God is authentically preached and the Gospel sacraments are
administered. The Anglican insistence on the historic episcopate does
not mean that we do not recognize the ministries and sacraments of the
German churches. It means that the historical succession, as a sign but
not a guarantee of the Church's continuity in the apostolic faith, is a
valuable and necessary element of a visibly united Church. This
position, set out in the Anglican document, Apostolicity and Succession,
and incorporated into the Porvoo Agreement with the Nordic and Baltic
Lutherans, represents a real shift in Anglican thinking.

Theological pluralism
^From an Anglican perspective, the Leuenberg Agreement between the
Lutheran and the Reformed churches in Germany is interesting because for
the first time it acknowledges the validity of theological pluralism.
Churches with different confessions of faith can recognize the true
Gospel in each other's theologoical traditions, and on this basis can
enter into a unity of reconciled diversity. For Lutherans, the Augsburg
Confession, Article 7, includes the famous phrase satis est - it is
sufficient for unity that we recognize each other's doctrine and
sacraments. On this basis the reconciliation of different forms of
ministry or church structures is not necessary for unity, hence the
preference for the expression 'reconciled diversity' rather than
'visible unity.'

As the Meissen dialogue continues, it remains to be seen how far this
principle of theological generosity can be extended. If you can
recognize the true Gospel in another church, even if that church has a
different theology from your own, then unity with that Church must mean
making some allowances for that church's self-understanding. If
Anglicans have moved towards the recognition and acceptance of
non-episcopal ministries as true ministries of Word and Sacrament, is it
possible for Lutherans to move towards an acceptance of the historic
episcopate which they recognize as part of legitimate Christian
diversity?

Mutual learning and commitment have been built from strong bonds of
fellowship. Theological work must be responsible and we must carry our
churches with us if the Meissen porcelain is not to break. Time alone
will tell whether our theological journey will lead to a break-through
or a dead-end. We ask for your prayers."

(The LWF is a global communion of 128 member churches in 70 countries
representing 58 million of the world's 61.5 million Lutherans. Its
highest decision making body is the Assembly, held every six or seven
years. Between Assemblies, the LWF is governed by a 49-member Council
which meets annually, and its Executive Committee. The LWF secretariat
is located in Geneva, Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the information service of the
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presented does not represent positions or opinions of the LWF or of its
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