Uniformity and Variety Through the Ages

By Richard J. Serina Jr.

Conflicts over worship practice are nothing new to us today or unique to us as Lutherans. Christians have always taken seriously what they do when they gather for worship precisely because it says so much about what they believe. Invariably, that has caused disagreements over the best way to reflect that faith. It has been that way for the entirety of the Christian church’s history, so we should not be surprised if it is for us too.

For that very reason, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod included an article in its first constitution concerning unity in worship. It laid out as an objective of the Synod “to strive after the greatest possible uniformity in ceremonies.” That objective would be revised several times over the course of the Synod’s history, leading to the present version: “Encourage congregations to strive for uniformity in church practice, but also to develop an appreciation of a variety of responsible practices and customs which are in harmony with our common profession of faith.”

What does that mean exactly? How can we encourage uniformity in worship practices, and at the same time appreciate a variety of worship practices? Which practices fall in the bucket of “uniformity,” and which fall in the bucket of “variety”?

What we are talking about here is not any and every worship practice or church ceremony. Many practices are intimately related to our doctrine or are directly addressed by Scripture. In these matters, uniformity is necessary — admission to the Sacrament, the proper call of a pastor, the restriction of ordination to qualiﬁed men (and only men), among others. Even though these are “practices,” they require uniformity, lest variety in them directly contradict our confession of the faith and unity in doctrine.

What the LCMS Constitution has in mind is what we refer to as adiaphora — a Greek term translated as “things indifferent.” By “indifferent,” we simply mean they are not addressed by Scripture. Scripture neither commands nor forbids them. In that sense, they are “free,” and we as the church have latitude in how we deal with them. We have freedom to seek uniformity, and we have freedom to allow for variety — and that’s where the tension arises.

In light of issues like these, the 2019 LCMS convention asked the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR) to address the relationship between doctrine and practice. The CTCR has recently published a document titled after the constitutional article itself: Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice. To explore this topic, we looked to the history of the church — offering a study of seven different conflicts over church practice in three entirely different historical periods (the Early Church, the Reformation and the Missouri Synod). The historical survey that follows is drawn from this study.

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Conflict over adiaphora arose in the earliest days of the church: For example, look at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 and the Quartodeciman Controversy in the second century. Acts 15 describes a debate between various parties over how much of the Old Testament law must be kept, especially those things related to ritual purity, as well as circumcision. There were those who believed circumcision was necessary for salvation. The believers in Jerusalem categorically rejected this because it was against the Gospel. It was a matter of doctrine, where unity is necessary.

The Jerusalem Council approached the application of the Old Testament law differently. Since the regulations concerning ritual purity were no longer necessary for Christians, the church was free to dispense with them or to retain them. In this case, they agreed to retain four such regulations: “to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:20). (What they meant by “sexual immorality” here is not entirely certain — most likely marriage between relatives or certain Jewish attitudes toward relationships between men and women. Certainly “sexual immortality” considered generally is not a matter of adiaphora.[1]) The council settled on abstaining from these practices out of love for their fellow Christians and to reduce dissension between believers from Jewish and Gentile backgrounds.

The Quartodeciman (Latin for “fourteen”) Controversy may be less familiar today, but the Lutheran Confessions mention it repeatedly. In the second century, there were two different observances for the date of Easter: some held Easter on the Jewish Passover itself (the “fourteenth” day of Nisan), and others held it the Sunday on or immediately following the spring equinox. This may seem trivial to us now, but it was a heated conflict in the Early Church, leading to mutual condemnations and the threat of excommunication. The Early Church father Irenaeus of Lyons interceded and persuaded both parties that their diversity of practice should not damage the agreement they had in doctrine. Both practices remained alongside one another until the Council of Nicaea in 325 urged the observance of Easter that we practice today. Nonetheless, the church remembered Irenaeus’ wisdom, and the Lutheran Confessions cite his words directly in multiple places: “Diversity in fasting does not dissolve unity in faith” (AC XXVI; FC X).

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Two more examples come to us from the Reformation era: Martin Luther’s Invocavit Sermons and the Adiaphoristic Controversy. When Martin Luther returned to Wittenberg from hiding at the Wartburg Castle, he found controversy brewing over how to implement reforms in worship. Some pressed for immediate changes that Luther had proposed, such as communion in both kinds (host and wine), eating meat on Fridays and in Lent, and receiving the host in the Lord’s Supper with the hands. Other proposals had not come from Luther, like removing images of saints from the church or giving up private confession.

In a series of sermons preached during the first week of Lent in 1522, Luther urged patience in reforming these ceremonies. Where Scripture clearly spoke, changes should be made, but only after rightly instructing the faithful. Where Scripture had not spoken, the church had freedom to change ceremonies or not, but must be careful how they exercised that freedom, lest they give oﬀense and drive their neighbor away from the Gospel.

The same principle became an issue later in the 16th century, when the Holy Roman Empire pressured Lutherans with military and political force to revert to certain medieval practices they had already rejected. Some Lutherans resumed various ceremonies from the medieval mass, the praying of the canonical hours and services for the dead, not eating meat at times in Lent, or ordination by bishops. While these practices were not necessarily commanded or forbidden by Scripture and so were free matters, resuming them could give the impression that Lutherans had gone back on their reforms and might give oﬀense to those who had worked hard to change those practices.

In response, the Formula of Concord argued that, where true adiaphora are concerned, Christians have freedom to adopt them. However, when the Gospel is under attack, they must resist pressures from their opponents to adopt practices that may harm their confession of the truth. In this case, a “free” ceremony ceases to be free under such pressure but becomes an opportunity to make a public confession of the faith.

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Debates over practices likewise arose early in the history of our own Missouri Synod. Indeed, the first convention of the Synod in 1847 included debate over ceremonies. The people were divided over several worship-related matters. One had to do with using hymnbooks and other worship resources that were not “doctrinally pure.” The Synod at first prohibited such resources because their content was a matter of doctrine and therefore impacted unity in the church. It later allowed pastors who could not immediately change to orthodox Lutheran resources to retain what they had, but only under “open protest” as they worked toward adopting better resources. Other cases were given greater leeway, such as the use of general confession or the breaking of the host in the consecration of the Lord’s Supper. These were seen at the time as predominantly Calvinist practices intended to protest Lutheranism, but those early Missouri Synod Lutherans believed they were permissible and decided not to oppose them.

An area not addressed directly in the CTCR’s report but indirectly involved in many of our disputes over adiaphora has to do with the way we structure and govern the Synod — what we refer to as church polity. At its constituting convention, the Missouri Synod adopted our current form of governance, which includes Synod conventions that involve equal clergy and lay representation, follow standard parliamentary procedure, and make decisions on behalf of all our individual congregations and rostered church workers. That governance is reflected on the district level, and even filters down to the congregation, where a voters assembly makes decisions governing the common life of that local body of believers. None of this is required by Scripture.

We believe Scripture does require certain things of a church in order to be considered a church — for instance, the preaching of the Word, the administration of the Sacraments, the pastoral office, the exercise of the Office of the Keys (absolution and church discipline), corporate worship and prayer. Church polity is not one of those; it is an adiaphoron. Other Lutherans have used different forms of polity. Some have had episcopal governance, some have been state churches, some have been led by consistories of clergy or even remained independent congregations. We have chosen a representative, parliamentary model of governance. This is not mandated by Scripture, nor is it necessary to be a faithful, orthodox Lutheran church. However, uniformity is relatively necessary in this case, or we could not make decisions together as a church body.

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These are just a few, select controversies in church history over adiaphora that relate to us as Missouri Synod Lutherans. Many others could be added. What the CTCR document Unity in Doctrine, Uniformity and Variety in Practice suggests is that we can never finally and categorically agree on which forms of adiaphora should be practiced uniformly and which ones allow for variety, especially as circumstances change over time. Making these judgments will always involve fallible, timebound human wisdom and discretion — at least until our Lord resolves these questions for us in His presence at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, where “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:10–11).

In the meantime, we who are members of Christ’s body and who have fellowship in Word and Sacrament must figure out how to maintain our life together as the church. That’s not always painless, especially when conflicts over worship or other practices arise. All we can do, as this CTCR document encourages us, is to engage one another. We must talk to each other. We must explain our positions. We must listen to others. We must assume the best of them and pray that they will assume the best of us. We must trust that the unity we share in doctrine will enable us to seek uniformity in practice where that is desirable, and also to permit variety in practice where it is responsible and in accordance with our confession of the faith.

That’s not an easy task. Then again, it never has been for the church.

To read the full CTCR report, which addresses these topics more fully and also discusses some more recent controversies over practice in the LCMS, visit resources.lcms.org/reading-study/ctcr-report-unity-in-doctrine.

[1] For a fuller discussion of this point, see p. 6 of the CTCR document.

The Rev. Dr. Richard J. Serina Jr. is associate executive director of the LCMS Commission on Theology and Church Relations.