ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q006 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> PAUL: Hi. My name is Paul. I have a question about the Book of Concord. Why does the LCMS ask its pastors to subscribe to the book unconditionally, and do Lutheran teachers and other church workers pledge the same loyalty? And finally, to all the other Lutheran bodies require the same? >> DR. CHARLES P. ARAND: First of all, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is not unique in asking its pastors and teachers and DCEs to subscribe unconditionally to the Book of Concord. This is a practice that goes back to the 16th century. Indeed, it goes back to the formulation of the Formula of Concord to which over 8,000 pastors subsequently subscribed. What does it mean to speak about unconditional subscription? First of all, a subscription means that one confesses publicly, or states publicly, that the faith confessed in these documents is one's own personal faith. And, therefore, one promises to proclaim, preach, and teach nothing other than the content or the deposit of faith that has been handed down to us within these texts. To subscribe unconditionally is nothing other than to say, I believe that these texts are based on scripture. That is, I promise to teach and preach and live in accord with the content or the teaching of these texts because they are in agreement with scripture. The other option is to subscribe conditionally. This was sometimes used with the Latin word *quatanus. In other words, I'll teach insofar as they agree with scripture. The problem with that is it doesn't tell me what you're going to teach. It doesn't tell me what you're going to preach until you do it, because as long as you say, I do so, insofar as, you have not identified for me what teachings you think are in accord with scripture and which teachings you think are not. Unconditional subscription is one way of saying, I believe that all of its biblical content, all of its biblical teachings are, in fact, in agreement and in harmony with the scriptures themselves. Now, maybe, an equally important question is: Why does the church request such a subscription? Two reasons. The first is for the sake of its pastors and teachers, and the second is for the sake of its congregations. First, for the sake of its pastors, it provides you with, in a sense, a guarantee, you might say, or an assurance that you will be given the freedom to proclaim the whole council of God. Now, I can't overemphasize the importance of this, particularly in our American context, because in the, say, in protestant Christianity within America, more and more, we're encountering a hire and fired mentality on the part of congregations and its church workers. That is to say, there runs the risk -- I'm saying if you say something I don't like, then we're going to fire you. And that, in turn, can give rise to the temptation among pastors and teachers to tell their hearers only what they want to hear, that which makes them happy, that which makes them content, and the like. Unfortunately, that is not to proclaim the word of God in a way that the prophets did. Well, by confessing or subscribing to the Lutheran Confessions, the congregations know that you have committed yourself, and they have committed themselves to the entire council of God, the whole range of biblical teachings from creation to eschatology, to the proclamation of law and gospel, no matter how uncomfortable the law may make us. And that you have the freedom to proclaim all of that without concern of appealing only to what Paul calls tickling, itching ears. You need not worry that, by proclaiming the whole council of God in its fullness, or law and gospel in its severity, and the fullness of its comfort that you will then be run out of the congregation or something along those lines. So, the first reason for it is for the sake of pastors and teachers that they have the assurance that they are expected and have the responsibility to proclaim the whole council of God. But unconditional subscription to the Confessions is also for the sake of congregations. In other words, congregations, when they call a pastor or teacher, are saying, we are calling you to feed us with the pure word of God and nothing but the pure word of God. We don't want any poison mixed in with that teaching. We don't want any junk food. We want the meat and potatoes of God's word, if you will. And by them having pastors and teachers subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions, it�s a way of them saying, here is the word of God that we want proclaimed to us. And this is the word of God we want to hear, or that we expect to hear because it is the word of God. And then I hope pastors and teachers can say, great. Because that's what we want to proclaim. So subscription, particularly unconditional subscription, is a safeguard, both for pastors and for congregations, to assure both that nothing other than the pure proclamation of the word of God in its Trinitarian with its center on the person and work of Christ is going to take place.