This week the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church and bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) are meeting together in Pennsylvania, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leaders, to talk through concerns and practical matters related to the Concordat of Agreement. This Concordat, which would bring the two churches into full communion, will be acted on by our General Convention, and the ELCA's Churchwide Assembly, both meeting in Philadelphia in 1997. It will be one of the major decisions facing the Episcopal Church in the 20th century.

As we enter the final year of debate on this issue, an important question for Episcopalians is, "Will the Concordat allow us to continue to uphold the essentials of the one catholic and apostolic faith?"

For Episcopalians, the definition of the "essentials of the one catholic and apostolic faith" for purposes of entering into full communion with another Christian body were outlined in 1886 in what has been called the Chicago Quadrilateral, subsequently adopted by the entire Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference of 1888 and re-stated in a variety of ways by every Lambeth Conference since then.

A central feature of the Episcopal Church as it was understood by William Reed Huntington, the original author of the Quadrilateral, was never to act as an exclusive sect, intoxicated, in Huntington's phrase, by "a fluttering of surplices and the distant vision of church spires, and a somewhat stiff and stately company of deans, prebendaries, and choristers," but rather to act as a branch of the Catholic Church, seeking to bring to ever fuller concreteness the catholicity of the church and its organic unity. Huntington was inspired by a catholicism which would be completed by what God would do in the future, not a catholicism imprisoned to past tradition.

Huntington outlined four catholic essentials necessary to the unity of the church which God wills. The aim of the Concordat - establishment of full communion with the ELCA - seems to be an attempt to fulfill the goals of the wider catholicity envisioned by Huntington: common agreement on scripture, creeds and sacraments, and specific achievement of unity on the historic episcopate.

A summary of the four points of the Quadrilateral:

1. The holy scriptures as the inspired record of God's self-revelation to humanity;

2. The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds as witnesses to the faith of the historic church in its assertion of fundamental Christian truths;

3. The sacraments of baptism with water, and the Supper of the Lord, ministered with the unfailing use of Christ's words of institution and the elements ordained by him; and,

4. The historic episcopate as a fact deeply rooted in Christian history.

As early as 1909, and based on the four points of the Quadrilateral, the Lambeth Conference began an official dialogue with the Church of Sweden. But the theological consensus presented in the Concordat is based on three rounds of more recent conversations in the United States: LED I (1969-1972); LED II (1976-1980), leading to Interim Sharing of the Eucharist and announcement of full communion as a goal of the dialogue; and LED III (1983-1988), leading to the publication of Implications of the Gospel (1988) and Toward Full Communion and Concordat of Agreement (1991). These texts from LED III contain the theological convergence on which the Concordat is based.

By 1972, LED I had quickly issued consensus statements of summary agreements on scripture, worship, baptism and apostolicity. LED II, by 1980, could issue additional joint consensus statements on justification, the gospel, the eucharistic presence of Christ, the authority of scripture, and apostolicity. By 1988, LED III, in Implications of the Gospel, could give expression to agreement on the gospel, dogma, ecclesiology and mission.

Even from this brief outline it is obvious that the four points of the Quadrilateral, the essential definition of catholicism within the Episcopal Church, have guided the dialogue at every stage:

1. Holy scripture - In LED II (1980), both churches acknowledge the normative character of the scriptures as "the rule and ultimate standard of faith." LED III (1988) states this slightly differently: "Only the scriptures of the church give us normative access to the authentic gospel."

2. Creeds - Toward Full Communion of 1991 speaks of both churches recognizing the "normative doctrinal authority of the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds," but the document also states that we can affirm together as gifts for unity "the creeds and the conciliar decisions of the ancient church."

3. Sacraments - LED III called baptism the sacrament par excellence of justification by faith, for it initiates into a community which lives in the "land of promise." Eucharistic convergence is expanded significantly in LED III, which says, "The Eucharist is the normative rite of the community of the baptized." It is thanksgiving, anamnesis, invocation of the Spirit, and communion of the faithful.

Then comes this important sentence for Anglicans which points to the sacrificial dimension of the Eucharist affirmed by both churches in the dialogue: "Lutherans have agreed that in the Lord's Supper Christ is present 'as the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world who gives himself to the faithful'."

4. The historic episcopate - By 1972, in LED I, representatives of each church had agreed that the other had preserved "the succession of the gospel" at the time of the Reformation. By 1980, LED II made explicit the distinction between apostolic succession and the institution of the historic episcopate. The two successions - apostolic and historic episcopate - were seen as neither identical nor antithetical.

A 1984 Lutheran Council study occasioned by the introduction of the title of "bishop" for regional leaders elected to the ministry of "oversight" concluded that when the historic episcopate faithfully proclaims the gospel and administers the sacraments it may be accepted as "a symbol of the church's unity and continuity through the centuries, provided that it is not viewed as necessary for the validity of the church's ministry."

This led to the solution of LED III in regard to point 4 of the Quadrilateral in 1988. Episcopalians came to understand that they do not lose the historic episcopate by acknowledging the existing ministry of the ELCA as a true gospel ministry. Lutherans came to understand that they can "revise their ordination rites for the future without the integrity of their present ministry being challenged." Thus LED III could agree that "the three-fold ministry ... in historic succession will be the future pattern of the one ordained ministry of word and sacrament."

It is important to stress that this convergence does not mean total theological agreement between the two churches. As William G. Rusch, a leading Lutheran architect of the Concordat has made clear, in accepting these recommendations the Episcopal Church does not become a Lutheran Church. The Concordat acknowledges that the catholic and apostolic faith has been, in his words, "differently interpreted, experienced, and expressed in both the Anglican and Lutheran traditions." In other words, theologically and practically (in the process through which our church shares the historic episcopate with another American church) this is an agreement almost exactly like that envisioned for the Episcopal Church by William Reed Huntington more than a century ago. o

R. William Franklin is professor of church history at The General Theological Seminary in New York City. A longer version of this article appeared in the July 1996 number of The Anglican: A Journal of Anglican Identity.