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from the district pastor ...

Rev. Mark Jamison

Why has the Augsburg Lutheran District adopted Our Declaration as its primary teaching document when others have said such a document is unnecessary? There are many ways to do theology today and many methods. There are also a plethora of opinions as to how one knows God. Our Declaration insists with Martin Luther that one only knows God as God has chosen to reveal himself. But we also insist that the cross is the starting point of revelation, and the event by which all other revelation is understood. Our Declaration then is a very short concise statement of how we read and understand the Scriptures from the perspective of the theology of the cross. That means we employ the traditional law/gospel distinction in our proclamation of God's Word. We are intentional about doing this because it is naive and unwise to assume that other districts in the LCMC will adopt our method of doing theology. LCMC has been created to allow for theological diversity in proclaiming the Scriptures and the Confessions. One of the strengths of LCMC is that it allows Confessional Lutherans to associate by theological accents, and not to force uniformity of witness where none actually exists.

Our Declaration will furthermore function as a tool for both witnessing and teaching. It will help to give us language for our speaking of God. Just as Luther wrote the Small Catechism for speaking of God in the home, Our Declaration can be the way we speak of God in congregations and chapters in our District. Like the Small Catechism, its compact size enables our witness of the Scriptures and the Confessions to be more manageable and focused. To assist us in using it for witnessing and teaching, I would like to offer some commentary on each section of the Declaration in upcoming issues of this newsletter. I hope these articles will show its contemporary relevance in our culture and in our churches.

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