Luther, “Great Confession,” AE 37:368: “Outside this Christian Church there is no salvation or forgiveness of sins, but everlasting death and damnation; even though there may be a magnificent appearance of holiness and many good works, it is all in vain.”
Piepkorn was, then, a theologian of the Church. And the Church, he insisted, is the community at worship. Of course the Church does many things, but worship is the source and the summit of its life. We do not worship in order to assist, to facilitate, to serve any other end, no matter how honorable or urgent that end may be. We worship God because God is to be worshiped. Worship is as close as we come here on earth to discovering an end in itself, for it is our end eternally. Piepkorn repeatedly invoked the words of the Athanasian Creed (which he would remind us is properly titled the 'Quicunque Vult'): 'The Catholic Faith is this that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity.' All of our believing and all of our obeying, including all of our theology, is brought to the altar. It is liturgy or it is nothing ("Afterward: Richard John Neuhaus On the Occasion of the First Awarding of the Arthur Carl Piepkorn Prize, 10 October 1984," The Church: Selected Writings of Arthur Carl Piepkorn, 338-339).