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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 15.09.2002 |
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| Council Press Release No. 12 - Speak Out about Christian Faith Foundation, VELKD Bishop Tells LWF Church Leaders |
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LWF Council Meeting, Wittenberg, Germany, 10-17 September 2002
Press Release No. 12
LWF Council Meeting: Knuth Preaches at Sunday Worship Service
WITTENBERG, Germany/GENEVA, 15 September 2002 (LWI) – 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.
“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, also bishop of the Diocese 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.
Knuth pointed to Luther’s criticism of the medieval understanding of hope, for when people spoke about hope they were referring to the things that they lacked and what they wished to own. The God, for whom they hoped, “was, as in much of our popular theology today, the God of the future.”
Knuth pointed to the global experience of a state of increasing hopelessness, which is not least of all due to the over sensitization of hope by ideologies. Pseudo-religious and pseudo-theological doctrines of salvation have largely proved to be illusions. The principle of hope, robbed of its religious roots, has not fulfilled its promise. “We Christians have to learn once again to measure our justifiable wishes for life and the future of this world against the Biblical promises,” he told worshippers.
Luther’s Latin Bible translation of “faith” – as the “substance of everything for which I hope,” was not mere speculation about the essence of hope itself, rather, he saw it in its existential relation, and concrete meaning for the present life, Knuth said.
He considered his preaching in the City Church a challenge, especially in front of Lutheran church leaders coming from all over the world. He stressed that the “only thing to do is to stay close to the Biblical text,” and in saying something about it, to let the voice of Luther himself be heard.
Founded in 1948, the VELKD brings together eight German LWF member churches representing over 10 million Christians. They include the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Evangelical Lutheran Churches of Hanover, Mecklenburg, Saxony and Schaumburg-Lippe, as well as in Bavaria, Brunswick and Thuringia.
Staff of the LWF Office for Communication Services at the Council meeting can be contacted at German mobile telephone No., +49-(0) 170-8345 177.
*News from the LWF Council is available on-line at www.lutheranworld.org
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