TRANSCRIPT Rev. Todd Wilken, Host + + + + + "Reformation Confessors: Johann Gerhard" Guest: Dr. Ben Mayes Editor of Professional and Academic Books, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO General Editor, Johann Gerhard’s Theological Commonplaces Wednesday, October 23, 2013 + + + + + WILKEN: We often think about “the Golden men who lived during that “Age of Age,” whether it’s religious or political. Orthodoxy,” as it’s often called in Lutheran Christians from the Reformation, particularly history, didn’t consider it a Golden Age. It’s Lutherans, are often tempted to think about a very difficult time, and no one exemplifies a Golden Age as a time when the Lutheran this more than one Johann Gerhard. He’s Confessions were newly minted and born into that age, but his life is far from Lutheranism was flowing forth in its purest easy. It’s far from a walk in the park for this form, so to speak. theologian and pastor of the 17th century. Well, that may have been true with regard to Welcome back to Issues, Etc. We’re live this the teaching and practice of Lutheran Wednesday afternoon, October the 23rd. I’m congregations by and large, and Lutheran Todd Wilken. Thanks for tuning us in. We’re pastors by and large, but I’m pretty sure the going to spend this hour – Issues, Etc. Issues, Etc. Transcript – “Reformation Confessors: Johann Gerhard” – page 1 Reformation Week is upon us, and we’re definitely on the advance. They were taking focusing on the Reformation Confessors. over territories and churches within Today, Johann Gerhard. We’ll spend it with Germany that had formerly been Lutheran, Dr. Ben Mayes, remembering Johann and they were generally doing it by having Gerhard. the princes or the rulers convert to the Reformed confession of faith. Then the Dr. Ben Mayes is a regular guest. He’s rulers would try to do their best to impose Editor of Professional and Academic Books their version of Christianity upon the for Concordia Publishing House based in St. churches beneath them. Besides the Louis; General Editor of Johann Gerhard’s Calvinist threat, Lutherans were also Theological Commonplaces. Ben, welcome especially dealing with the Jesuits and back. Roman Catholic apologists and writers who came about specially as part of the Counter- MAYES: Thanks, Todd. Issues, Etc. is the Reformation. So that was also another best! external threat. One that we often don’t think about, but was a very live problem, WILKEN: Thank you, by the way! Would was Unitarianism. Especially in a town you describe for us the kind of age into called Racovia in Poland, the Unitarians had which this man is born, which is sometimes set up a publishing house and several thought of as the Age of Orthodoxy, or the schools and just continued pumping out Theological Golden Age, but a very difficult publication after publication attacking the time to be a Lutheran pastor for Johann doctrine of the Trinity and of the two natures Gerhard. Describe it. of Christ, and of Christ’s atonement, His satisfaction for our sins on the cross. And MAYES: He was born in 1582, so that’s that’s another part of this whole era that the about a hundred years after Martin Luther Lutherans are struggling with and trying to was born, and it’s two years after the grapple with and show from the Scriptures publication of the last of the Lutheran that that’s not the right view. Confessions, the Formula of Concord. So it was at the end of this period of As I said, it was a time of relative internal consolidation in the Lutheran Church, when peace as Gerhard was growing up, but the Lutherans were getting their act together then, of course, in 1618, the Thirty Years’ and confessing clearly what the truth of War breaks out, and that goes for another God’s Word is, on the basis of that Word of thirty years, as the name says, until about God. So it was a time for, in many places 1648. And Gerhard dies right towards the within the Lutheran Church, where there end of the Thirty Years’ War. There’s a lot was relative internal peace. However, that going on in that time period, and a lot that was not absolute. Right there after a people don’t understand or know about, but number of these struggles, especially in Gerhard certainly had quite a few struggles Saxony, had gotten straightened out with that he had to deal with. the Formula of Concord, a new prince takes over, another elector, and Calvinism is WILKEN: So let’s talk about how he came brought right back into electoral Saxony. So to be one of the giants – really, truly one of while Gerhard is growing up, you have the giants of this Orthodox period. Tell us these infiltrations of Calvinist teaching within his biographical story briefly, if you would. the Lutheran Church in Saxony once again. That all culminates and is dealt with, with MAYES: Well, he was always an excellent the Saxon Visitation Articles in the 1590s. student in school and university. After Now, besides that, the Calvinists were pursuing medicine for a while, he decided to Issues, Etc. Transcript – “Reformation Confessors: Johann Gerhard” – page 2 study theology and become a pastor. In German Lutherans pretty nicely, but that 1606 – which, by the way, is the year before didn’t always happen. Sometimes they Captain John Smith established didn’t treat the Germans any better than the Jamestown, Virginia – Gerhard received his Emperor’s army did. Now, because Gerhard first call, which was a call to be a pastor and had been so successful in defending superintendent of twenty-six parishes and a Lutheran teaching against the Roman lecturer at a high school. He was just about Catholic Church, the Emperor’s soldiers twenty-four years old at the time. So just by plotted to kidnap Gerhard in 1631 and bring considering his first call, it’s obvious that his him to Rome for trial. However, God contemporaries thought very highly of the preserved Gerhard from their plot. On the gift that God had given to Gerhard. Of other hand, the Swedes, too, were angry course, among us, a new pastor is never with Gerhard because he had been advising made a District President or a Circuit that the Lutherans make peace with the Counselor right off the bat. That just doesn’t Emperor. And so Gerhard had to face the happen. But Gerhard was. His first call was threat of imprisonment from them, too. In to be a supervisor of other pastors. So 1636, the Swedish army plundered before he was thirty, he had become a Gerhard’s estate and burned his house and Doctor of Theology and he had published his farm buildings. Then in 1637, the city of several books. In his mid-thirties, then, he Jena was raided and plundered. That was was called to be a Professor of Theology at the year, by the way, that Gerhard died. the German city of Jena which is also where That year, he wrote to his friend Solomon he had studied. And there he spent the next Glassius, who became in many ways his twenty-one years until his death. Now, his theological successor, telling him about the family life: his first wife – her name was savagery of the soldiers. He said, “But I am Barbara, and she died after only three years enduring all of these things patiently, and I of marriage when he was 29. Three years say along with Job, ‘The Lord gave, and the later, he married Maria Mattenberger, and Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name lived happily with her for the rest of his life. of the Lord.’ He Himself, nevertheless, will And the latter couple had ten children; four look out for me and my household with the of whom died in early childhood, as was so assistance necessary for life, for I see that common in those times. I should mention my finish line is near.” Then on August 12, also that a number of his devotional works 1637, Gerhard, being 54 years old, became that he wrote, some of those early very ill, and he knew that his death was devotional works, I think here like the approaching. In the next few days, he spoke Handbook of Consolations that Carl to his friends and his family, confessing the Beckwith translated, those were written right same faith that he had written throughout at the time when his first wife and his first his life, and making arrangements for his child died, because they both died of the family and the university of Jena after his same disease right about the same time, death. Two days before his death, he when he was quite young in his 20s. His life confessed his sins to his pastor and was not just the happy life of a writer and a received private absolution and the Lord’s teacher. As I said, in 1618, war broke out Supper from him. After receiving Christ’s across Germany, a war that would continue body and blood, he sang the common off and on for thirty years. And this was Lutheran communion hymn that I know and especially fought between the Roman love, “Oh Lord, we praise Thee, bless Thee, Catholic Holy Roman Emperor and the and adore Thee.” And right after this, he Lutheran Swedes, led by the Swedish king, arranged for money to be given to the poor Gustavus Adolphus. Now, you would think people of his city so that they could have a that the Lutheran Swedes would treat the meal.