ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q038 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. * * * * >> JOSHUA: Why must a pastor be regularly called? In other words, who, according to the Augsburg Confession, ought to preach and administer the sacraments? And why does the Augsburg Confession take the stance it does? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Here, Joshua, we need to look at three articles, I believe. The first article would be Article 5 because there it speaks of the fact that God instituted the ministry. Then Article 5 talks a lot about the word and sacrament as being the instrument of the Holy Spirit through which he gives faith when and where it pleases God. However, that article begins, really, with that of the ministry being instituted into the church. Article 14 then talks about how one should go about putting an individual into that office. And finally, Article 28 speaks about what duties are required of that person who finds himself in that office. Now, why does the church call and ordain someone? Well, it goes back again to Article 5 because it says that God instituted that ministry. I think that Article 5 already speaks of a specific ministry here that is given to the church, a ministry that stands apart from that of all believers. We as Lutherans believe that it is thereby a necessity given to the church that it must ordain and call individuals into that office. It is not relieved of that duty as long as it exists in this world. And so we take great effort of placing individuals into that office as Article 14 says. Is says there, �Nobody shall be called to that office and allowed to administer the sacrament without being properly called.� The Latin word there means *retivo cartis, having been called properly. What does properly called mean? I think it embraces a number of events. While we don't necessarily have in scripture clearly defined how long we have to educate someone, it is important, nonetheless, to understand our Lutheran doctrine, the Lutheran Confessions especially, and the complexity of our faith, that we all have an education that is willing and able to understand everything and wants to teach that what's being said there. So we have always placed a great demand and claim for proper education. How long it should be? We cannot define that necessarily to a specific number of years, but it certainly is a necessary component of a proper call. What do we need then also? We also need a church, a church that is willing to isolate individuals and place them into their office. Such procedure is usually taken by the call that the congregation extends to an individual. Here we have to be mindful that such a corrugation does it on behalf of the church, and not as a single congregation doing whatever it pleases. It has a responsibility to the Church of Christ that those individuals being called to itself and into the office that this is done properly. And part of that proper call is an affirmation, a public attestation, that goes through to ordination. Such event will occur on a Sunday when the hands are laid on the individual to rectify that call that has been extended to that individual. So the *retavocartis embraces a number of events. It does not finish just merely with the call extended to an individual, but it closes also with a proper ordination, something that occurs visibly and is an attestation, publicly, that this now has completed the process of putting someone into the office. We then have Article 28, and I've spoken to that also previously. Article 28 refers, really, to what the pastor should be doing. And I believe that he must concentrate, as the article clearly says, on preaching the gospel, administering the sacraments, applying the keys of forgiveness, and withholding the sins of those who are not contrite. These are the main duties of a pastor. He should not be deterred from them by other things that he wants to do. He should not assume a political office. And so in summary then, we have three articles here, Article 5 which speaks that the office is instituted by God. We then have Article 14 that speaks of how one should properly put a person in office, and then Article 28 speaking of what duties one should assume once one is in that office. A final reminder must also be the fact that the concept of ordination speaks out against that of the Roman Catholic church. Admittedly, the Roman Catholic Church practiced a consecration that understood that it was delivering to that individual, at the time of his ordination, an indelible character, something that bestowed to the individual a dignity, a stamp that distinguished and discerned him from all other believers. Such a concept of consecration ordination is not that of the Lutheran Confessions and that of the Augsburg Confession. However, we have to say that the rite of ordination is an important component of Augsburg Confession 14 so that it is singling out an individual from the midst of all the believers and putting him in a very distinguished position; namely, that of preaching God's word so that the congregation has a guarantee by putting someone into the office that it will hear Christ's word in this world, that it will be given forgiveness, that there is a certain understanding of locality of where God�s forgiveness is bestowed; namely, there where the church practices ordination and calls someone into the office. The practice of call and ordination are two inseparable acts in the Lutheran Church today. We cannot say that we only call someone but not ordain them. I think the *rito vocavis embraces both. The concept of ordination must be illuminated a little further, I think, when we speak of it in the context of that of the 16th century, namely the Roman Catholic practice of consecration. As we all know, the practice of ordaining or consecrating someone into the office of priest, as the Roman Catholic Church does it, would mean bestowing in that individual an indelible character. That means he has a certain dignity that discerns himself from that of the priesthood of all believers, of other Christians. That is not what call and ordination mean in the Lutheran sense. However, we do believe that we have the obligation of calling individuals into that office and ordaining them so that God's word can be heard and that there is an assurance that it is constantly preached and given to us, those who want to received it and be forgiven of their sins.