Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Meddelanden och aktstycken - Dokument till frågan om nattvardsgemenskap med Englands kyrka av N. Söderblom - 3. To the Conference of Bishofs in the Anglican Communion
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to the conference etc.
377
is made more difficult by the fact, which has appeared also during
the preparatory negotiations, that evidently within the Anglican
Church itself different doctrines are held in these two questions.
Yet, and without any wish to belittle the difference that exists
between the two churches, we do not hesitate to pronounce as our
opinion that during the course of the preparatory negotiations and
so far as we have gradually got to know more about the Anglican
Church, our impression of that unity which binds the two Churches
together in what is deepest and most central, has become predominant.
In the Church and the congregation of Christ, as in every living body,
real concord is not characterized by uniformity, but by unity in
diversity. A detailed definition of those matters in which this
concord appears cannot be attempted here. But yet we do not
feel justified in pretermitting briefly to call attention to two points,
which are to us more decisive than all others, with regard to the
purity of the Christian doctrine — viz. the recognition of Scripture
as norma normans both with regard to life and doctrine, and the
building of our salvation on God’s grace alone received by faith.
The first of these principles means to us that in matters of
faith no other authority must be put directly or indirectly above
or, which is the same thing, on a level with the prophetic and
apostolic word in Holy Scripture, as the message preserved to us
of the works of God for the salvation of man in that history of
salvation, wherein the all-commanding centre which everything else
presages or points back to is Jesus Christ. The prophetic and
apostolic message has sprung out of this revelation of God himself
and is itself a part of this revelation. All later expressions of
Christian faith, however great their value may be, are to be
considered only as more or less reliable guides to or, in the words
of the Formula Concordiae »witnesses» of this revelation, witnesses
whose verdicts must always be tested, by the experience of the
Church and of the individual Christian, in the light of the revelation
itself, which is recorded, confessed, and interpreted in the prophetic
and apostolic message and is thus accessible to us also.
When we put beside the principle of revelation the principle
of faith or grace, this is at bottom not another principle by the
side of the first, but we mean only thereby to make the content
of revelation more clear from a certain point of view. The
revelation is throughout essentially a revelation of God’s prevenient and
unconditional grace, precedent and independent of all human
endeavour, that is: a revelation of the love of God, which, while
condemning sin, searches for the sinner and restores him with His
forgiveness. What we want to express by this is not only one,
not even the most central, of those Christian doctrines which have
grown out of the Divine revelation, but the fundamental direction
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