In reply to Greg D..

Hi Greg,

I certainly agree that all Christian churches face these temptations, as I mentioned in the article. However, to deny that a church whose organizational borders are national borders will not have specific struggles with ethnophyletism seems strange to me, especially in light of what is and has been going on in Russia and Ukraine, and what has been stated by Orthodox leaders themselves in recent conferences.

However, the central difference is not this structure, but our ecclesiology. The LCMS does not claim to be the one true church. No struggles or sins in our church body will cause us to question the purity of the church. I am not in fact arguing that the OC is not "one" or "true" because it is tied to the state, but because it is a visible human institution. With human leaders and human structures there will always be corruption, but the true church is Christ's, and we cannot mar it.

My specific expression of gratitude for The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in the last paragraph should not be surprising from an LCMS author writing to a largely LCMS audience in an LCMS publication. I am grateful to be in a Lutheran church body in America, with an ecclesiology I believe to be faithful to Scripture, in a setting where the church has comparative distance from the state (though not always, as you've pointed out.)