Lutheran-Episcopal Doctrinal Consensus

1. We accept the authority of the canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We read the Scriptures liturgically in the course of the Church's year.
2. We accept the Niceno-Constantinopolitan and Apostles' Creeds and confess the basic Trinitarian and Christological Dogmas to which these creeds testify. That is, we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is true God and true Man, and that God is authentically identified as Father, Son, and Holy Spririt.
3. Anglicans and Lutherans use very similar orders of service for the Eucharist, for the Prayer Offices, for the administration of Baptism, for the rites of Marriage, Burial, and Confession and Absolution. We acknowledge in the liturgy both a celebration of salvation through Christ and a significant factor in forming the consensus fidelium. We have many hymns, canticles, and collects in common.
4. We believe that baptism with water in the name of the Triune God unites the one baptized with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, initiates into the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, and confers the gracious gift of new life.
5. We believe that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, distributed, and received under the forms of bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. We also believe that the grace of divine forgiveness offered in the sacrament is received with the thankful offering of ourselves for God's service.
6. We believe and proclaim the gospel, that in Jesus Christ God loves and redeems the world. We share a common understanding of God's justifying grace, i.e. that we are accounted righteous and are made righteous before God only by grace through faith because of the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and not on account of our own works or merit. Both our traditions affirm that justification leads and must lead to ``good works''; authentic faith issues in love.
7. Anglicans and Lutherans believe that the Church is not the creation of individual believers, but that it is constituted and sustained by the Triune God through God's saving action in word and sacraments. We believe that the Church is sent into the world as sign, instrument, and foretaste of the kingdom of God. But we also recognize that the Church stands in constant need of reform and renewal.
8. We believe that all members of the Church are called to participate in its apostolic mission. They are therefore given various ministries by the Holy Spirit. Within the community of the Church the ordained ministry exists to serve the ministry of the whole people of God. We hold the ordained ministry of word and sacrament to be a gift of God to God's Church and therefore an office of divine institution.
9. We believe that a ministry of pastoral oversight (episkope), exercised in personal, collegial, and communal ways, is necessary to witness to and safeguard the unity and apostolicity of the Church.
10. We share a common hope in the final consummation of the kingdom of God and believe that we are compelled to work for the establishment of justice and peace. The obligations of the Kingdom are to govern our life in the Church and our concern for the world. The Christian faith is that God has made peace through Jesus ``by the blood of his Cross'' (Colossians 1:20) so establishing the one valid center for the unity of the whole human family.