"Shallow Unionism" or "Truth"?

1. We in no way intend to countenance the heresy of the "German Christians." On the contrary, we are of the conviction that their fundamental idea, the construction of the church according to national viewpoints, has been renewed by the resolutions of Treysa in a contemporary form. Just as we have fought against the "German Christians" and their national church, when men who are now leaders of the EKiD made Ludwig Müller Reichs-bishop, as we began the churchly fight against the church politics of Hitler, when confessors from Barmen and Treysa where still celebrating him as the God-sent Führer, thus we will continue the fight against the false national church, even when it appears today in the form of a German Church of the Barmen Confession.

2. It is not our intention to deny the solidarity with those who stood with us against the church-destroying errors of the day. But we demand that this solidarity find its expression in an ordering based strictly on truthfulness. This truthfulness forbids us to call that "church" which is no church.[1]

3. We testify also that we, as we have done hitherto, desire to work in the ecumenical movement of Christianity with all our powers that the relationship between the Christian confessions and churches become something different and

better, in this century when there is a fight for the very existence of the Christian faith. But we are of the conviction that this work can only be crowned with the blessing of God if it happens in absolute truthfulness, and we know that in this regard Christians of other confessions agree with us. If the great dialogue of the churches in the ecumenical movement sinks into a shallow unionism, then the Lutheran Church can never fulfill her ecumenical task, to proclaim to Christianity the correct understanding of law and gospel and the correct understanding of the means of grace, and especially also the Sacrament of the true body and blood of Jesus Christ.

4. We protest against the accusation which hitherto has always been leveled at those who have stepped forth for the Lutheran Confession, as though we were theological intellectualists, who do not realize that it has to do with faith in the heart. Because we desire to preserve for our people and Christianity saving faith in the Lord of the church who is actually present in His Gospel and in His Sacraments, we therefore are duty-bound to work with all our might to prevent the falsification of the Gospel and the Sacraments. The confession is for us as for the Church of the New Testament and for our Reformation, nothing other than the praise of divine mercy.

5. Though we have had to level criticism in the forgoing, this does not mean that we are not aware of how seriously even within the EKiD there is a struggle going on for a new understanding of the Lutheran Confession. We hope that God will bless this struggle. But this hope can not release us from the duty of working for the maintenance of the Church of the Lutheran Confession, so long as it is day.

Hermann Sasse, Open Letter to the LWF 1947; trans. MCH.

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[1] On the solidarity of the confessional churches separated from one another, yet fighting together, see Sasse, Union and Bekenntnis, Junge Kirche 1934, p. 183ff.; In Statu Confessionis I, p. 273 ff.; The Longer Union and Confession appears in The Lonely Way I.265. This is the most gripping document by Sasse I’ve ever read or translated. FWH