Outer Rim Territories

With regard to Christian unity it must be emphatically stated that this is not the work of man, but of divine grace, John 17:11–15, 20, 21; Ps. 86:11; etc. Human influence, wisdom, and ingenuity do not suffice to preserve the unity of faith or doctrine. That precious boon is the gift of the Holy Spirit, who graciously bestows and maintains it through the Word of God. For this reason all Christians must diligently pray for the unity of the Spirit and zealously use the means of grace, by which alone it is preserved. For wherever the Word of God is despised or rejected, no true unity of faith can prevail. Christians remain united in the faith only as long as they stand united upon God’s pure Word.

Mueller, John Theodore. Christian Dogmatics. electronic ed. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1934.

This is one of the “official” dogmatic texts of the LC-MS. I don’t see any mention of trust creating unity, do you? I do see a strong indication that practice does indicate faith and faith is given by the Spirit. By these things we are unified not in self-created trust. This flies in the face of the dogma being spewed out of the Purple Palace, eh?

Better yet, another “official” LC-MS dogmatic text from Pieper.

Another evil product of subjectivism (Ichtheologie) is doctrinal chaos and discord. There can be no unity of faith in a church body which bases its teaching on the subjective opinions of the theologians and not on the one doctrinal foundation, the Word of the Apostles and Prophets (Eph. 2:20: “And are built upon the foundation of the [Vol. 1, Page 7] Apostles and Prophets”). Men tell us, indeed, that doctrinal unity is possible even though the divine authority of Scripture be surrendered. They are confident that the “purely subjective vagaries” would be easily recognized as such and eliminated by “the communal spirit of the Church.” But the same author who makes this statement also reports that while there is a general agreement on the new dogmatical principles, there are also “uncounted divergencies in the application of these principles, these divergencies being due to the differences in the religious individualities of the dogmaticians or in the degree of their scientific consistency.”
There is only one cure for this scandalous doctrinal disunity. The theologians must forsake the Ego basis and return to that foundation on which the whole Christian Church is built, namely, the Word of the Apostles and Prophets of Christ, the Word of Christ, the Holy Scriptures. That will make Christian theologians, theologians as described by Luther: “Let that be our boast that we are catechumens and pupils of the Prophets; let us simply repeat and preach what we have heard and learned from the Prophets and be sure that the Prophets have taught it. The Old Testament calls those the children of the prophets who did not produce anything of their own, anything new, as did the Prophets, but taught what they received from the Prophets.”

Pieper, Francis. Christian Dogmatics. electronic ed. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1950, c1951, c1953.

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