LWF Council Meeting 2002
Wittenberg, Germany, 10-17 September 2002
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Speak Out about Christian Faith Foundation, LWF Church Leaders Told |
Speak Out about Christian Faith Foundation, VELKD Bishop Tells LWF Church Leaders
Rev. Dr. Hans Christian Knuth, Presiding Bishop, United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (VELKD) has cautioned Christian churches and leaders against primarily seeking the consequences of their own theology, and challenged them to strongly uphold the foundation of the Christian faith.
LWF Council members participated in the Sunday worship service in Wittenberg's City Church. © LWF |
"In the church, we have fallen victim to the principle of achievement, and have nothing more to say about the foundation, the reason for our hope," Knuth told representatives of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) member churches, in Luther's city of Wittenberg, for the September 10-17 meeting of the LWF Council.
Delivering his sermon during the Sunday morning worship service in Wittenberg's City Church (Stadtkirche) today, Knuth spoke against the preoccupation of "loading ourselves and fellow human beings and Christians with burdens and demands, commandments and laws." What is theologically scandalous for "our church politics," he said, "is not that we speak so politically, but that we speak in such legalistic terms - that we no longer talk of the gospel of hope, but only of the church's deficits." His sermon was based on Hebrews 10:35 - 11:1.
Knuth underlined global experience of a state of increasing hopelessness. |
Knuth, also bishop of the Dicese of Schleswig, North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Germany, appealed to worshippers to heed the voice of Reformer Martin Luther, who "cannot be said to have pursued a theology without consequences, but whose work had a most consequential effect precisely because he was not primarily looking for the consequences of his theology." For Luther, the context from the 10th and 11th chapters of the Letter to the Hebrews remained, all his life, a fundamental orientation of his understanding of the faith, Knuth said. More...
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Information on Lutherstadt Wittenberg can be found at: www.wittenberg.de/en
