Inhabiting Unity: Theological Perspectives on the Proposed Lutheran-Episcopal Concordat.

Tait, L. Gordon

Edited by Ephraim Radner and R. R. Reno. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995. Pp. 247. $14.99, paper.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Episcopal Church, U.S.A., are planning in 1997 a significant event in American ecumenical history - full communion between the two denominations. The twelve essays in this volume, by Lutherans, Episcopalians, and one Roman Catholic, are attempts to explore the issues involved in the 1991 "Concordat of Agreement" (C.A.), which will be voted on during 1997 by the two national bodies.

The document, "Towards Full Communion," not part of this volume, defines full communion thusly: (a) members of one church may receive the sacraments of the other, (b) bishops from each church participate in the consecration of bishops from the other; (c) clergy from each church may conduct liturgical functions in the other; and (d) concrete means should be created to strengthen the fellowship and common witness of both bodies. The essays are grouped under three main headings - integrity, challenge, and opportunity. Although the writers (none of them members of the official dialogue that drew up the C.A.) support the proposal, they see and discuss the problems as well as the promise.

Heretofore, Lutherans have declared that to effect the unity of the church the necessary, sufficient conditions are the proclamation of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments. If anything else is added, such as the historic episcopate, Lutherans must refuse to accept it. Episcopalians have traditionally insisted that the historic episcopate is necessary for the unity of the church (see the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral, 1886). So, the C.A. is almost totally preoccupied with the subject of ministry. Strong essays by Bruce Marshall, Michael Root, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Reno address the same issues, especially from the E.L.C.A. standpoint.

In spite of assertions that the C.A. is not simply a compromise but the result of a common understanding of gospel, apostolicity, and ordained ministry, a calculating outsider is struck by what the C.A. demands from each side: Each church will immediately recognize without reordination the pastors/presbyters and bishops of the other. The Episcopal Church will suspend temporarily the requirement that all ordinations must be by bishops in historic succession; both churches promise to include in all future ordinations of bishops at least three bishops of the other church and three of its own. Within a generation the E.L.C.A. will have incorporated the historic episcopate into its church - for the sake of unity in the gospel, not as a guarantee or pre-condition of that unity, a critical distinction.

Some in the Episcopal Church will refuse to grant full authenticity to the present E.L.C.A. ordinations; some in the E.L.C.A. will refuse any unity that seems to require something beyond word and sacrament, though immediate incorporation of the historic episcopate is not required by the C.A. If the C.A. is rejected and for the wrong reasons, both churches could be, as Reno has prophesied, "on their way toward becoming spectral echoes of the gospel" (p. 92). The year 1997 will surely be crucial for these two partners in the faith.

L. Gordon Tait, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH