LECTURE I1

ANALYSIS OF THE PRESENT SITUATION OF CONFESSIONAL LUTHERAr4ISM Ir4 A!+?ERICA AND IN THE kfORLD

Jlelivered in the afternoon of October 30t11, 1969

A. ---L,'Il~eBackorouncl of Confessional Lutl~eranismin America

Dear and I~onoredfel low-Lutherans :

'rile second tlieme before us is the most exacting in our trilogy, making it our duty to analyze the psescllt sitt~ationof Confessional Lutl~cranismin your vast country. It can only be approached in a spirit of utter humility. flow can an individual asscss a wllole generation in that aspect ~rflicilreally counts? If I were not still a teacher of tllcology on modified service and tlle editor-in-chief of a theological

*;2utllor3 Xote: The Reformatioll Lectures delivered on 'iSctober 30th and 3lst, 1969, at Bethany Lutheran College, Mankato, FIirln. , are llcre prcsentcd in the form in which they were prepared in view of publication. The oral presentation differed, especially in Parts 11 a11d 111, substituting for sections of the written detailed material ex tempore address adapted to the situation and audi- ence. In the course of Lectures I1 and I11 a num1)er of pertinent documents were dis- trilmted. In the printed form they must to some extent be incorporated, wlrich adds to the lengths, of course. journal with the call behind me, I would have turned ti~ixgwhich did come to pass in America, and at that clown this lecturcship offer. So I will follow the under Ile.rv conditions . Spirit's guidance through the Word, beseeching your intercession. Since the theater of action now is I must trace with you the origins of Lutheranism America, not as close to me as to you, I am doubly in America back fartller than Europe's revival of the amenable to your corrections, nineteenth mid-century and acknowledge with you that it came from quite simple strands, which, latcr on, It is passing strange that when the subject of were strongly augmented by August. IIerman Franlte Is Confessional Lutlleranism (which in fact is proper ccu- Ilalle. The elcmcntary root in America, waiving the menism) is broaclled today, the continent chiefly in scnding of some pastors, was pious belief present in qucstion should be --North -America and not Germarly, families, which often had been carrying on since the where the Psotcstants, wllcther called LutIleran or not, Reformation. I'm liere ever thinking of my motherqs in both halves of the present country have practically family, where they read Luther's Iiauspostille in only one cllurch type, which came down to tiern from home circles because the pastor was a Rationalist, the great Prussian Ilnion, namely a claurch giving equal bcfore they settled in bladison, Co., :Ill., in 1860 right to Reformed doctrine and, in addition, to any and joined a blissouri congregation rvhich consisted anti-doctrine there nay be. I told you this morning mostly of KVestphalians s traiglat from the "Asl:nden- that even if they should now invent a way to abuse Ravensbcrger Emeckung. Thus they, as did tllousands the name of Luther and amend articles of the Augsburg and soon hundred-thousands in the )iiddle \Vest, exper- Confession in order to decorate a helpless church ienced that in t!~01d Countrjr there had been a bound to general profane society, notlling would be blessed turning of tables, wliich was now reaching changed in essentials. We must praise God the more out for thcm in the i4ew Country or had already been for visiting you in the Xew \~lorldwith a bountiful bronglat along, IIcre comes to my mind a grand~notl~es revelation of Iiis truth during a total century, which in my father's family, who had received splendid in- is still so near to you that you can contact it, struction in the Starnberg Bavarian area, Then my father Ili.mself, latcr a Ffissouri Synod trnvelliiag NevertE~eless something altogether different must missionary and then local pastor in Colorado and IVis- be recalled for justicess sake: In Germany, and, in consin, had during his secondary ~chQ01ingattended a sense, also in Scandinavia, there was a confessional the almost ideal confirmation classes of Obcrkonsis- revival coming slowly and not being uniform, yet of torialrat Dr, Marl Ileinsich August von Burger in tremendous scope, tying up witla wldesground Lutheran- Nunick. These arc just examples which admit of count- ism, undoing Rationalism's and Phi losophyl s inroads less parallels, also in the case of Scandinavians of: the previous century, even to some extent reclaim- coming to Arnericags hospitable shores. ing the university sphere, producing high quality sermons and devotional literature, founding practi- God sent to America from Europe's Lutherland more cally all the German and then Scandinavian mission than individual pious hearts and pastors following societies, extending its beneficent sway, for home thcm. Unique confessional Lutheran cmigratio~lswcrc missions, to America and Australia and, for foreign organized, reaching into or planting various synods, missions, to huge areas of the colored world all over also in distant Australia. Again, there was on the the globe, What would you and the Australians have move to the Western Continent, either with the immi- been without that? But, as we regretted this morning, grants or following them, a veritable literary inva- this miracle of explicit faith's return did not mature sion. In journal and book shipments it transmitted into a normal Luthera~lChurch in the homeland, some- the heartblood and, coupled with the heart and thus

-2- genuine, the intellectual depth of the homeland's Con- trapuntist) relationship between the pastors and their fessional I.utheranism, as it began to cllallenge the congregations at last came to its own in these Lu- post-enlightenment and anti-dogmatical unionist world. tlaeran clr1ur~11esbeyond the direct sway of Emperor t?!ost of that truth inundation flowed to tlre Germans Constantine's fateful settlemerat, No. 2: Confes- and also Scandinavians of the hliddle West, Rut men s iorlal theology, now for its livelihood responsible like Spaeth, Charles Porterfield Krauth, later T, E, to congregatio~laland synodal assemblies, felt that Schmauck in the East, in fact the remarkable initia- high quality preaching and teaching was a "must9i, and tive of the General Council, also the later llistory in the case of a few men of God preaching rose to a of the Ollio Synod and the origin of the Iowa Synod truly commanding one-time level, whereas in the case would have been unthinkable save for that influx, of many it reached a blessed, thorougl~medium. i4o. 3: Cartloads, if not shiploads of writings of Luther, of Siinultaneous ly, co~ifessional tlleoret ical thinkers be- Concordias, of sermon books, of hymn books and devo- came cclasciaus of the remarkable independent lwerage tional books, but also Latin tomes of depth and many rvl~icliwas gradually being placed into their hands and newer dependable German or Scandinavian standards which they were duty-bound to wield over against were bought up in the ancient literary centers and Europe 's checkered social history upsetting the Church got a new lease of life in new world towns and out on and its tlies-tloyy, These "cheol0giai-l~were no longer the open, stretching prairies, Thus America's Luther- in the faiigs of tile huge Cl~urch-Stateideological land was the first-born child of continental revived machirse , While %lie ;\fiddle-1tSesteners increasi~igly ~utherlanrl. Paradoxically , in spite of outwardly took cognizance of wliar. was going on about "csem (to n~odestnumbers, it rapidly grew up to be the peer, some extent aided by tile Lutherans of the East who perhaps more. being more environmentally acculturated could well trace US, institutisaas back to England), two local For in Europe the lethal state church stayed. factors operated in tile interest of the Great Lakes Xo really responsible congregations ever came into and tile Miss issip~pi: rhe pro; rnged isolating language being and in every case where an individual territor- barrier and tine cardial spcnr-icss I-:?a!m. Anglo-Saxon ial church came close to reclaiming its heritage, democratic corntry still being 7,Buij-t in spite cE tklat., this was a temporary shift permitted by favorable Thesc Eor a lmg time 12ratected the nope recently im- political circumstances. 1:verywhere clergy training migrated stock against direct pressi;i-c Lctli fro:n the remained exclusively tied to the universities, As crude popular and from the dangerously sop!iisticated stated in the first lecture, these were in the hands types of New world opinion. To boot, at ilxc head, in of the governing class and, of course, ruled l>y important centers, were men wi~oseacademic training philosopllies . Xeither at Erlangen nor at Lcipzig frm the Continent surymssed that of most of their nos CVCTI at Ilostock was there a confessio~lalLutfieran counterparts in surrounding native society. This faculty standing on solid ground and staying straight. enabled tllem to conceive and ts a large extent to (Rostock perhaps came close to it, as did the newly- implement (in spite of inevitable exasperating fron- founded faculty of Christiania, now Oslo). tier crudities) their own sys tern of church-centered education. Ns* 4: Since the chief leaders of a May If point out four things on the American side providential century had escaped unionistic, rational- my on-going cornpasison? No. 1: At long last there istic clrurch-state pressures, their passion was for peared congregations izritll elders granted a position Confessional Lutheranism, a circumstance to expand on in the Lutheran congregations of Antwerp and Amster- later. They in eonsequence developed keen eyes for 'I'ried out already in the East, they were accepted the causes of the sad reversals in the parent churctres, ughout the IVest. Thus the counterpoint (or con- particularly for the soon on-going decline of the

-4- -5 - Confessional Awakening, but no less even for early as wela as the idealist confusions which from phil- deficiencies in Reformation church structure. This osophy had entered into the continental church think- made them tremendously conscious of a whole series of ing, Schleiermacher and Ritschl are names for it, points which Europe had too long neglected in all Taking it all around, thus was written in the land types of its more sophisticated theology. For one: of h'as hington a Luthemn Dec Laration of Independence. Law and Gospel received unheard-of attention (2 series It gained stature as the Lutheran chwches, particu- of C ,Fellbe Waltller, besides other labors traceable in larly in the &fiddle \Vest adventitiously drawing on a sermons, in essays at synodical and pastoral meetings tremendously increasing imigration and on high birth and in periodicals) . But this emphasis was of one rates, were grokqir~g apace and spreading out lustily cloth with the determination to let the open Bible in all directions. have the final say witla its divinely inspired $ex$, As Lutherans always were convinced, in Scripture, and, as borne out by practice, it is simply a given Be The WaPther Century _^__w--p----- that God wants the material principle of j wtification and the formal principle o$ Sola Scriptura to function I m;;t nc1.i sjilgle out the lSZ.)al~g~ti~?aZLuthemn as 2 foci of one ellipse, Secondly, as attention Synod of /Yis~ol*ii,Oizio, a~dother States. X!is body turned to historical disturbances, Melanchthongs later was the factsr in the ~~nfes~io~lalLuti~eran deviations were first in time, blast grominent was the mlvasce of a hund~~d;yeazs as depicted, retreat from Grace Only wt~ichhad after some time tainted the great teacher's doctrine of conversion By the way, we for -this reason count the American and election, 2%e: keen, somewhat wavering scholar had CentuTy of ~~~,~th* -- djI.~-.- f-Fe--sa dl .,n-t ,thaw +-'.~~r18 ee~man ones, actually introduced the hman will as a third factor ~JE d-.+p w1ne-i.e we setf-led i~cy 1577, t]?@ acce.g?%--.8' contributory to salvatian, This in turn inevitably r, * - ante of I:~-cmkll~ car3,caza*_.d. 1x5 j:a,sk dal;-crt. .~z~.E-~ s%fsred slapport Tor what was going csrr alongside in f2*si31 -!,837, &hc2y-eal* F' crys'-' $7j;js; 2-,jz2:.**<, $qe -.."*~,3;.-~~.~~~r32-'>.L%.~A$#.~G.~ s,,...., a contemporary Emope, f sr the man-centered Renaissance ~'sc-~~~:~~~~~:;~~f:EaOln .&."LseC - 211;< hi?S,dLL,f:c-j,ljr .z*

,< -$ 2 :- j2 I. .; ,., -i profoundly grateful to tho Lutheran dogmaticians and S-f:a$c: of M-jssa~lri, ~~~~-~.~~~$,~~,~~,j~~~.~~;,i-<, i:2;;j. ...--?%, ~>-d s,Ax at-a- e* * * - knew how close they had been to Luther -- not with- "'i .- K:_cn:~ac$&j et~ich W-fn~ken, rqj~e~ g~i-:~:.,:: :. :.4~tj-i~~ar\ 9 (a a - & standing detected spots sf banclearness -- some 17th conz;ess nc2nalj,SIn 5s awake~iang in NaE*th G@@sil,e~,y* 3 cav;*.. d-~ii%d =cc +~vj-,--*:- T -- century expressions on the grace point and also on .$;he -&%q .i-Lca-aj 'rib-~~~;~-~ cmEep{ap&~ltbc>-- focuss vvAaia,;8. .B j~roT3Ose9 relatiolra of the cHnurch to society were not clean-cut, is d3$racti~~gnougilt -from the aclna+$stature 0% the In their ecclesiology they had unfortmately treated kas$;arn -,% men L:r@ ~~entj~ofied,n0-R of Fl-jddBe West men ~qith the social estates as constituent agents of the chu~ch Gerrr~annames such as the I"i%sconsinSynad5s first Tate ei St&de in der Kirche). These Qiscov- dogmatical figure A8oQl.l iimnecka, nor of contemporary did not come easy to them, increased Ohio and Iowa men ss sf iP1~striomNorwegian families, to the New Testament and to the original t-forward impetus of the Reformation. They To iflustrate at once the decisive weight sf into the total rejection not only of every Car% Ferdinand WPlhelm Walther and his Synod I merely f synergism, but no less of state-churchism as quote German verdicts which appeared in print both hurch-statism, of theocracy and of its re- before kValtlaer8s death in 1887 and following it, anism. Their Luther-oriented spiritu- lauda.tisns such as were wver stherwise printed to athed and shunned both Reformed holy politics honor nan-Continental Lutheran figures, Says Albert -6 - Robert Broeme 1 in his Homi ZetCsche Ckrakterbi Zder of joined hands over a span of some 350 years with the the sixties and seventies of that century (quoted in Luther of De Servo Arbitrio ("That the Free Will Carl izleusel 's KirchZiches Hadlexikon V 11, 1900, Avails Nothing") , the book the Reformer himself p . 167) : 'Wal ther is as orthodox as John Gerhard, treasured most highly, allowing only his Catechisms but also as fervent as a Pietist, as impeccable in ts be a near second. Authentic, indomitable Lutl-her form as a university or court preasher arld yet as pop- had in 1525 struck out against the chief heresy of ular as Luther himself, If the Lutheran Church again modern man, who is none other than old carnal, self - wants to bring its teachings home to the people, she ces~tea-edman after having been ir~flatcdwith certain will have to prove once again as fai-khhl and as cer- cultural, intellectual hopes. Tnese were basic for tain in doctrine and simultaneously as appealing and the pagan strand of the early Renaissance, vaunting adapted tc time and audience izeitgemdssl in form, as Greece, but 81:esy related also %s governmental RaamcPs is his preaching. How different would be the condi- sys tern of syntleesizirag, The Medite-rrarrean stresses tion of what is tile LutB~eranChurch of Germany if had long been in the grain of Greek and of Roman such sermons c~uMfrequently be head." Cattsoliciss. Godas Word in the Reformation created a miracle, the very opposite of cultured man's self- Immediately after Waltherfs decease in 1887, centeredness. Now it was bard for the adored Chris- Luthardtvs world-famous Ev. Luth. Kirchenzeitung tian k~eamanistEramus to kick against the pricks. Be (Leipzig) wrote: lrGone ts the eternal hotne is oae of that so, even thc cautious type of self-determination giants in the Church of Christ, a man who was not only championed by this prince of scholars to correct the an epoch-making personality in American church history Reformation sdficed to reduce the God of salvatiol~ and there the eminent leader and the miting power of to becoming the chief party in a scheme of coopera- Lutherans, but one whose activity was felt as a mighty tion. If this was much less heady and escky thaa stimulating one in all parts sf the world, The suc- later Elllightenment , it was ncvertl~elessalready cess sf his work is well-nigh u~~-examp%edin the more headed t1ra-t way. Sureby the espousal sf any coopera- recent history sf our church, It proves him not only tion theory on this score makes the full distinction a man of comprehensive endowments, of unwavering in- of Law Gospel in preaeiaing img~csrible, For it dustry, and of rare energy, but also one of .$%rose winds up in making legalistic man, x;:!io "does iais providential personalities whom the Lord of his Church besttf, a co-savior . lienee Luther's p~,:;siona&r;No a~d chooses to send wherever he intends to lead his Church Never, Watch this point today wl~ereve~i~>cialogical along new paths ." notions invad~tkes%g~gy proper, Seen tl~us, it was not an aberration, but Halther %sgreatness that he But, my friends, before you take such assessments gave no quarter whatever to Germany's 19th Century of Missouri's founding figure for granted I must synergistic Luthertarm of the universities. Ile dared answer two awkward questions . not only to ignore contemporary Ewspe, also two centuries of deeply ingrained Pietism, but he even (a) The first refers to the laten: Dr. Wal ther as stepped away over the bodies and tomes of the great a dogmatician. Did he get too close to Calvinism in &g%%herandogmatfeians from Hunnius and Hmtter on, the lamentable Predestinarian controversy? Those per- Doctrinally totally at one with them in opposing both haps hailing from synods then opposed will bear with solutiom~s,Calvinism and symergism, he yet chose to me if I reply that the very opposite was the case. discard their useless bridging effort, their formula We're back to the Lutheran Declaration of Independence intuitu fi'idei finatis. Rather where logic totally we spoke of. We are now discovering its historical lacks resources he opted for Luther an$ tlae Formula sweep and spiritual depth. Waltller at long last again of Concord's Scriptme-bound reverent silence, \Oon -8 - -9 - over by the Reformation, he bowed to wisdom from on high, affirming the Law's and the Gospel's non- historical pandect on this topic, what they call a rationality. Facing Deus absconditus he yet trusted "universal book". Bishop Simon Schoeff el, visiting in the bald promise of Christ's world-saving sway. with me at tiamburg in 1945 before the War's end, quite In this connection it is imperative to state that the correctily evaluated Walther's production as the great- humble Saxon at St, Louis, Mo,, since the middle of est Lugheran delineation of these doctri~aesin print, the century both editor and professor of theology, the one outstandi~lgfruit of the great chmdl debate had hardly a peer even in Germany in his profound of ellie German mid-nineteenth celatury, If y~uwant knowledge of Luther and of the whole 17th century to try a specimen, carefully study Part I, theses 4 Lutheran li terature is1 addition to observing 'I'WAY , and 5 or 8, in one breath with the consensus hisbri- czss L;u%heralzomu;r offered as support, So it was that [b) Yet another major objection to Wald;faer must at long iast also the details on the Lutheran doc- be faced. It is the earlier one. The hue and cry trine of CRwcl.1 and Office had emigrated to the West. was raised to reverberate in Europe till of late, in They there asserted the freedom from alien controls somo cases even anew, that in polity Walther and or slants wlaich Lutller Ps classics had once upon a time .\lissouri had surrendered to American democracy. The regained for them escaping Nediaevalism. Let us as Saxons and Franconians , escaping Christ 's rule, had 20th century men register the assets, seeing them as accepted ignorant people s rule. Tfais accusation was anti-Constantine . Gone is not only this -worldly, hurled at the hlissourians in so many words by high- society-dictated subservience, and sweet New Testa- church Grabau soon after his coming to Buffalo. It ment freedom vindicated all around in congregational was against this charge, muttered in passing also by or synodical mission and polity, But along with that Loehe, that Walther wrote Die Seimme umereka 1t;rche there is swept off the floor also the main by-product in Jer Lekre uon Kirche unul AmL [The Vsicc of ow of the Constantine Settlement, the customary upper- Church as touching the doctrines of Churcll and Office, class semi -popish aggrandisement of stated cle~rics. Erlmgen 8852 - of whicla my dear American friends lackc, It is again recognized in tlacory and practice that ib complete Ewish translation, an almsst unbelievable lso the lay Christians gathered about the means of race are God's holy messengers, being aahorized neglect. 1 'Illis vslulne contained far mare than Waltl~erIS in own theses with proof texts as later translated by every respect to carry out God's mission, And yet, W. Uau, of which indeed it must be said that they were this does not in any way make the pastoral of""IICQ a true to the One spiritual CI-lurcla of b~lievers. 'Chis mere "s~cialcontract" (a la Moassseau), The facts precisely can be located only by the $leans sf Grace are quite different, ?he Word of God commands Chris- as in function. 'i'he genuine arms of heaven, Gospel tians for the gklblic dissemina%ion of the means of and Sacraments, guard against the impostures on which grace to take recourse to an additional gift from on we dwelled in opposing modern Ecmenism at the begin- high (Eph. 4:8-121, to the pastoral office as insti- ning of the first lecture. The theses, hailing back tuted by Christ himself (2 Cor. 5:18-20). Accordingly to the outline of the Altenburg debate, were of an the incumbents of this office are directly responsi- advanced post-Constantine character and provocative ble to Christ (1 Cor. 4:l-5) beyond their given re- as originally Lutheran, yet also suitable for direct sponsibility to the congregation. The same Walther practical application. But in the book men encoun- who was tremendous ly conscious of Luther 's full New tered more voices, tliose of the Confessions on each Testament emphasis on the General Priesthood , was point, Luther's testimony extensively rehearsed, and equally close to Luther's subsequent outspoken planks the authentic dogmaticiansl teachings in German and against the enthusiasts . As he rejected aggrandise- Latin. This makes the sum total a dogmatical and ment over the congregation, so he fought tooth and nail mere temporary calls. He rejected every approach to limiting the tenure of a called pastor by human We witness the spectacle that yet another Synod of ~vlissou~i,Ohio and other States had been conundrum was solved in a free country along New Tes- organized in 1847, thus advanced in Der Lueheraner tament and Luther lines. Proper attention having and in Ler72re und Wehre for decades. again been given to the Notes of the Church, this did away also with pitting the large church organiza- Augsburg VII/VIII spells out precisely the points tion against the smaller units of the church, as al- just taken by the founding fathers of New World Lu- ways happens in territorial churchism, with a corres- theranism, and so again does Formula of Concord, ponding opposite vice rising in Independentism. But Article X. The Lutheran Symbols stipulate as sole is the churc21 basically not always the One I-Boly Chris- srequiremcnt for visible cI1urch fellowship that the tian Church of' all who believe in Christ? \%erever divine cl-lurch purpose be served, so that Christ's the Church is present at all according to the testi- One Church clan dully act in truth and puritye Such mony which the means of grace as locally given and activity, moreover, is in the Past analysis always received offer, there Christ the Head is apprehended the scri~2tu~alLaw and Gospel activity and never-- a functionally and, in a sense, as institutionally political or social activity wrapped up in a pre- joirled to his body. The whole administration of the dominantly tl-ais-world context, As to the latter means of grace consonant with Scriptures is the areas, God has long provided for them through a pro- Head's doing through his body. Thereby Christ 's own cedure totally separated from rcdemf~tion. From the reign is present in order to abide with us. At a very beginning he founded his Lef t-Wand -Kingdom .. given place the whole Church, Christ's spouse, acts This, when the Son of God became man, was neitfter wherever the local congregation is agent of the Fieans abrogated nor even supplemented, tvlutual bersef i ts of Grace. This agent, aao maWer Ilaw small (Flatt , 18 a are of God's plan, but no mixing. As we pointed out, 20% is directly responsible to Christ and not to a New lforld Gnes is-htheranism emefully distinguished Pope af any type. For it acts out Christ's bounty the two realms. an$ it gathers lauman beings mder the wings of Christ, But the granting of tiais fuba%.local dignity does not Why this waste of words of a teaching nature? fragmentize. There being only One Christ, the acting We went to extra pains to elal-ify a.21 that pertains -t of all congregations is in principle given to the conception of the Churclz and Q%Fice n.s enter- &forehad. Thus, in doing as Christ commanded, the tained by Walthes and as practiced in iiis ?j.nod, $or total Chwch everywhea~eis one grand unit of action, given reasons. One chief point was to es~t,~:lisintI.nst replete with a harmony pre-stabilized. All is posited nothing as yet of democratic ideology was incospor- and conditioned on the relation to Christ and his ated by authentic Flissoaari, be it as it may with Word. Beware, no more of a prerequisite, But again Walther" later and less discriminate successors, beware, no less is stipulated -- lest heterodoxy, Fix your gaze on. Iqalther's chief books and not at ever latent through foes in and about us, impede and mere administrative directions he gave subject to introduce revolution against Christ's reign and rule. various interpretations, and you will find the rare For in this case previous ties and historical co- spiritual charisma of balance all over. In a true herence are not to be respected, since God demands Law and Gospel church neither the pastor nor the loyalty and severance from disloyalty. What forms laity "lord itt1,the thing legalism can never avoid, may be chosen by loyal units for joint action is of even if it effects compromises. The servant of itself a matter of dogmatic non-interest, of sancti- the Word is neither boss nor slave, but the Word is fied sense meeting the challenge of circumstances. itself all-powerful, all-decisive, and he has to These were the principles on which the Ev. Luth. stick to it. The relics of the Constantine system were at long last brushed aside not by aping Anglo- Saxon Congregationalism, but by giving full sway to turn up in the General Council's later doynatician, the ~eformationimpulses uncurtailed by princes and 1-Ieyster E . Jacobs , when he turned to Erlangen tl~eology? magistrates. Let it be said right here that if in In silar'r;, why did St. Louis not cooperate with this the later dispute between ?+lissouriand Wisconsin general new type of autlaentic Lutheranism, since terms did not always reflect what I called inter- thereby one united Lutt~eranismwould Rave been effected historical and intercontinental breadth, both C .F .W. in hcrica?" Yes, but the logical consequence ivould Walther and Adolf 1Ioenecke (Ev. Luth. Dogmrrtik, IV, have bem to Lake fatal steps on the way toward 10s- para. 67, 68) were innocent. They beforehand set out hg both the Serlptures and EutE~era hundred years plenty of checks and balances. But later generations before the decline of the Post-Walther Century. The lacked overall background, germ sf evolution of doctrine in a vigororas- center like S,r . Louis would have produced astonishing, per- The two special doctrinal areas which we have haps very learned results throughout not in the ser- examined, that of Grace and the Word and that of the vice a-f heaven, The issue of '%volutionists" was Church in all relations, have brought out the spiritual involved eizher un~onscisusEy or consciously in %he as well as historical maturity and therefore the firm- battles wilich firs"%kfissouri, then the Synodical Con- ness of this new start. If one compares in detail ference, %sugk%Lthrough sn the new Western continent.. the two main ventures at consolidation of the Lutheran in order to re~aain-t,ulerasla\?a.d and to keep at Eresing resurgence on the Continent, the high church group, souls, To cut things short, witness the take-over with men like Loehe and Vilmar leading, and the Er- sf abject pseudo-ecurnenism now accomplished with left langen university theology, with men like von llarless and center sections in the first half or second quar- but also von Hofmann, they are unbalanced in compar- ter of this century, first in the LCA 2nd then i~rithe ison, either containing a bourgeois Romanite or a ALC, all this totally witllout an existential fight, bourpeois rationalist germ, full balance reserved for as it is going on in the sections $~vdarG ~j!ie3-"--h-$: 3 4 a exceptions from the rule such as Friedrich Brunn. 'This tells tllc story that i,~;.ilex:.:;:: slii ha-- no ixcrv3r left to resist capit~jlatit~nb fre rb ::- c2nc: adi~pi%sa71 " - In a sense I must now beg your pardon for omis- amalgam, be it ever so small, $?i;k;,l a::+- .rt;x,"ld% Slic~5es, sion to get on. There is, to be exact, a third objec- To point out details requires a 'CUr. :'-' "': 0:-~:i:ur- tion raised against the claim that St. Louis reestab- %us $;fatf$i$ting in here , For it is TI:: ,, ;:, - Z. qv2~~ it must be coped lished authentic Lutheranism, and nect two things, wl2a.t the first lectuy6 . tc i,y with yet. It runs something like this: "Was it not on the Seh%eiermackaesidealist thrust and %he evoPu- progress beyond the Reformation and their Confessions tiorlary Hiegel smmit of Englighteu:me%~e,earl %ha lefe, which was brought about in Germany where the confes- with continental Lutheran reawakening, on the right, sional resurgence began to attempt sometlling new, in order $0 guage the switch of its mast influential eschewing what they called repristination and estab- leaders and centers toward an aggior lishing some sort of connection with concepts of justment to the day similar to what was always in idealistic philosophy? Were not also the techniques Rome's view of the Cllurch as an institution in history, of exegesis undoing former proof text methods and changing with history in order to cl~angehistory, of thus also supporting belief in a new day? Was it not which we have seen a radical development after Vati- precisely the concept ion of LehrentwickZung , of evo - canm I I, Only note the difference , For Lutherans lution even in the doctrine of Christ's Cl~urch,which who draw their life-blood from a much higher view of also as staunch a Lutheran as Wilhelm Loehe had in Christ, of the Gospel as proclaiming free grace with- his mind, who for this very reason eritancipated the out cooperation, marked out by clear-cut separation Iowa Synod? Did this in yet another form not also between Law and Gospel, and who thus are posited on Scripture Alone, evolutionism in doctrine was even in control. ?"ne charge is that the old leaven of indif- initial stages turning 180 degrees away from the moor- ference is thus still being preserved, for you cannot ings. In the impossible position of State Churches have it both ways. A veritable gem of Waltlier's is and public universities run by semi-heathen philos- Augsburg Confession's Article VII interpreted honestly ophies no amount of erudition and even of Lutheran -- think of this morning's lecture and Denver 3-15. spirituality could save the maneuvers. Now, this second lecture has to stay close to the Americm All of this was the position on which the whole scene and so in print a fbotnote must take care of Synodical Conference agreed. Gradually also the additions chiefly on the European side, explaining greater Lutheran church organization outside (except- some things of some import against ivlissouri commit - ing the General Synod till very late) drew closer and ting suicide (see footnote 9). closer to the Lutheran Confessions. We are face to face with a rare spectacle. Here is a tremendous ex- Iiaving defined and defended the essence of the panse of land projecting into the future, free from Mlalther venture in autliaentic Lutlaeranism, let us now the Old World's false line-up of the Church and the record the uniting effect on Lutherans of various secular State, and here, where you might expect anti- degrees in the vast country. After Free Conferences confessionalism, the secret "Christ Only and Christ had been vigorously espoused not very long after the 'I'otalu, embracing sinners but condoning no sin and no founding of the Missouri Synod certain then separated doctrinal error, being as separated from the world ?s Synods bearing the names of Ohio, of Wisconsin, of course as light is from night, is the ascending star Illinois, and of 3tinnesota becme convinced of a and is proving victor in a thousand ways, All told given joint mandate and a common way to walk upon. we have here indeed a unique upward surge and advance Coaperathg with b~issharaspi, they fouraded the Ev, Luth, of Confessional Lutlieranism, of ecumenism according Synodisal Conference in 1872. 'fiis was a vietory of to the notes of the One Church. Unfortunately resis- %tatiiaeranism seen at its best, Wisconsin overcame tance to this full breadth and depth of Oneness did former Basel and Berlin unionist influences and be- provincialize parts of America. This prevented one came a thslaghtful Lutheran body though Hoeneck@, attuned voice sounding forth abroad, yet a clarion By definition the confessional mion t&~usrealized call was issued also to Europe. was the opposite of all pan-Lutheran , pan-sectarian e~nionspropagated tl~e~~.alafeady, as we shall bar sf Let us glance back once more to our First Lec- tho General Synod, and with rnuclt greater gusm in our ture. In the Old Country Lutheran affairs after decades. A victoriom new manifesto was called having become a factor of note were again steadily DenkschrChristianity, had recalcitrancy the Old World territorial Lutheran been ordained at Braeunsdorf in Saxony, as a member leaders were digging their churches ' graves. In addi- of the Stephan exile band, reaching a new haven in tion they were at the same time exerting a constant %he American State of Missouri in February 1839, We baneful influence on the American Lutheran bodies out- admit that we tailored our hundred years up to 1937 side of the Synodical Conference, Wtoring them not to to suit the case of Waleher and of the Flissouri fall in line with consistent authentic or confessional Synod % responsible leadersllip as it marked a. @enwry aims. As the 19th Century progressed, the cultured still .true to sober, germuine Eutkleranism coupled pundits and worshipful high priests of continental with loyal congregations;, ifowever, this is not say- Protestantism became vitriollic in their criticism of ing that we 're quite tllrough with these lauwdred years. what they deemed a new-fangled intolerant Lutheranism Is there not, perblaps, a need $0 line up against the of the West, The butts of this attack were not the singular positive points scored thus far some crib faults that awurred alongside, but the vkrtues of ical ones at the end? true American Lutheranisnt , 'fie constant attacks pro- duced a festering sore in the consciosness of lesser ;4issouri men. C. ---- Deficiencies of the Walther Century Toward the End -- With De-Lutheranization Aext Door One point more before we turn a little. ;blissouri with its emphasis both on doctrine and on the people's The Church's life on earth must cope with all congregational responsibility achieved another vic- sorts of practical circumstances and makeshifts which, tory before its Walther century came to a close. In often contrary to obedient planning, nevertheless the wake of the first World I"lrr's anti-German rancor affect the outcome. And there is Satan, the World, and blasts this Synod of necessity became an English and the F1es.h. The following queries are in order speaking body. But lo and behold, due to its vigorous beginning at the head, referring not so much to the congregational base it turned the gigantic language thousand angles of life as to theology concentrated trans ition, naturally a threat to further growth, at St. Louis : Had full justice been done during many into a tool to advance. The ~'LutheranHour", spon- decades to all three movements or actions inherent in sored by the Lutheran Laymen's League, became a tre- theology? They comprise (a) to go to the Bible to mendous force in America, beginning to reach out beyond get the genuine saving message from the sources in a1 languages (exegetical tlleology) , vet gusts, then men will slou'qh it off as irrelevant. mprellend this message in its niven teaching !]ere Francis Schaeffer in lris review of the first its straight drive overarching its marvelous half OF this century censures all conservative forces ness, this of necessity also co~nprisinfiin- in America. sights as to irotu this unity must take shape in confes- sion and confessions over against the assaults of man ,Just a minute, T must annex a ''d" to a-c al>ove, in his unruly hi story (dognatical and symbolical Such a grasn at St. Louis rvo~~ldhave rcquircd, both theology, as twins) , ancl finally (c) no less to non- for long and short range ol>servation, a denartment der the wav !low the message must be nasseil on to the of church history worthy of that name (historical people rvitll t11ci.r Now Generation out in con~regations, theolo~y). Ilowever , was there cver even an approach in the s ti.clcs and in tile ghettos, and on the nission to such a thing? I'ias a huge effort in !?isconsin Is f iclds far away (practical theology) . I$'aurvatosa ever sizcd un properly? :40 rvgonclcr neophytes follswed after, and a new tl~eologicalclimate as rsell. In drivin- hone thc point as to (a), one can Again, wilere was a place in tile Synodical Conference j~rstlyask tl-re followin,q : 1:ho immediately follollred "e train future w~ofessorsresponsibly, or where at ur) in dead earnest the exegetical resourcef~~lness Peas t the nticleus for one? After our wate~sheciof and tlloroug'r~~~essof Georg Stoeckhardt? (rfilis gift 1333 it happened that carncd academic degrees were of God certainly did not come too early from Germany's desired and that tllc basic training of tlre Seminary Erlangen Dozcntenschaft, then the Saxon Free Church; nrofessors 11ccamc the job of ,n\merica9s 2nd Europc9s but for mature scholarly approach Synod's preparatory secular univcrsitics . Thc St. Idorai.s' Gr&duate School schools had ever tolerably equipnecl youth in Rib1 ical came too %ateand as a csmnromisc. Pangi~ages.) Then let's turn to dogmatics and sym- tlolics (I])rlrhere on the basis OF clear Scrktures If the i.nflrncnce as St . %Jn.il;istlacalogy rsalaed as personal penetration had been preatest, in the case a global hour was qnronciling larrcntd~leresults were of !:'alther marvellotis (check t?~edetails of his not slow in z;l~owingup. 'fl~erewas at St, 1,orlis and !'Jalther-Caier dopmatics comris in:: several volltnes) . also o~xti.n the field a sr.\li~zgback toaararcl the ancient Tl~efol low-un q~lesti.on ere reads tvrrhether even with soft-peddeling Pietism, an emphasis cn personal Francis Piepor at St, Louis revlacerrlent at the Sem- bonhomie susenamed Christian, more yet a tiarean to only ilzari es sttf ?iced since those died who had breatt~ed practical churcla ant! nission !vr>rk. The Latter, great the air of tile fiijiantic German Ause~?zm~~ersetzunn. in itself as we pictured it, at the same time became Tn other words, was there world-wide confrontation in an alibi for not :qrcstlinp~with thc prcsuppositis~~s spite of all contracting in the 'iiddlc !Vest? !:!ere all arou~ld. Yen of s tattlre watclr prcsupposi tions , as enou"~ men present who not only conducted the upstlot Francis Sclraeffes: insists. !.\To doubt Sod still 1)bessed of that past into today, but !u?~oat the same time were "iissouri with many very good congregations , ffowever, blessed with the sinmilar grace to view things com- was there really adequate total leadershi.n? As 210 prehensively as they come un? !'as such overvie\$ Rroadrlray graq too naively the great Behnken era anplied to all challennes posed since VJaltiler? To mission effort, highly to he praised, began to accen- the modern American thought patterns, as wall as to tuate the visible claurcl~, organizational and s tatis- what came over afresh from strange di.stant Germany? tical progress, perpetrating a shift inimical to the For Furone ' s center was exporting captivating thought best in authentic Lutheranism, Ttac inevitable lan- schemes even after 1918. If what was true orthodoxy guage transition to boot, the historic 'fiddle Kest up to a point in 'raistory tries to avoid adverse winds ~;~rchueberqnng,made things getti nz poorer outrightly and does not face bravely the direction of incoming bad. For it was bound to sitlee? out of view many past Ser~anextreme s~ccialization,worshin of secularized scf~olarsf-ripmovcd in from the Old Schleierrnaclrcr and now soon Bart11 IVorld also into the \Yes tern Lutlrerland . --- -wi.ng of current False I~TCSII?POSi !I bull-headed deternination to he great in this-worldly ., ..it? Eiz I~usinessairs, ~~neydictatorsllips , noli - inf1ucncc i~cganstamning the ground. Satan was turn- tics 3s in tl:c state, above xll jotlrnnlisl~as custom.- ing the heads of the East and OF the "Jest ever nore :+.itness ary - a1 1 a5scnt? 'Iy frienc!s , iriho savs so? toward counting Lutheran numbers, Luthcran do1lars . tlte rise of that Ea."ite~11half -~~ak(?cI,incrensfilyly Il~edoor opened wider and wider to power ~mliticsdis- earlier Federal Council as its !I. S. counterpart (now spite of the surprisin~stxccesses of mission efforts >JCr:) . extcnilin: to Americans not of German orizin, self- reliance and l~oastin: w!rerever cronpin,q 119 wcrc Let's be more specific and pick un a Few dates totally out of nlacc. along the way oF :ghat had aPrendy taken place and nro- vided the imm~diatcSackgroimcB when in 1935 Dr, ?Ilere was yet another Teas on for prono~ancccl Behn- Icon too?< office. Arou~~d1917 it had hapnencd tlint ?nodesty " Iissouri 's o~lttvarclqres tige was dimming. . the vcnere%ble General Coul~c'rl,\hi c1-a had been ScacP nn Cince t!rc end of !'rorlC! 'faTar1 'Iissouri and t!le Synodi - to a iiighcr conpcss ional level by as tor%iesincqa fig~~rc ca1 Corlfe~encc, j ~1stt:~~o\ri gro~riing in men, veans, ant1 as Tnoodore lirnnanuel Schmauck, '?as tri pncd on its rvay oontxlari ty, no 1on~n;b~of-fered the T/~fth7:?,c-j,tile next by laymen of little doctri~ralconcern. 3clieving in door i nspirati.onal and e(111cati iona3. pat terns, to tltc nractical tl~ingsthey ifere eager to creaLc ixni tcd diverse I,utlrcranismr; a(! j oi~zinj: in the East , "tidctle T,ixt!aeranism -fL"i~s%of thc %st and South. 'I?-heTJaaited ";est anti '\'es t For then the IET?C13R ER.A frad arrivcc? . : . Lutheran C~UFC-~~of ~lmCr_lca (ULC j !lad thus come illto beinfi in 1918 as a body of cowpronise. Victorious To catch ~r,wit11 rv'rlat vas anirr.atinz tlrc bodies oar tfre one fianrl were tlre unionist traditions that had oi~tsicteof the Synodical Conference lncrmit me to been predominant in the Gempal Synod, For in 1820 back a trifle 5eyo1l~lthe second decade of our century. this am?>itious amalgam united to match tho great Past fray~entntion,130s tly connected !.ri.tl~langua~e Prussian TJnion by F'an-Protestantism in rlmerica, and scttlevent, was resenterl hy Liitherans a11 of the On the other hand therc was the inflowing current of same strine movinc rttlit!~er and thither across all surrounding Anglo-Saxon sectarianism, especially of qtates. :Is doctrinal convjctions shrivelled not only the penetrating ylethodist type, elevating feeling pragnatisrt played a rolc, but also the imnact of the a3ove doctrine, with activism jumping across the Two inevitably externalized slogan, "A11 Lu~tlleransunite". Realms. Good Schnauck Is way out, the :,Jational Luth- This urge was runnin~narallei to the gcncral pseudo- eran Council , had proved no heln for the U L .C , ecurncnisr;! wlrich was ruslri-ng ahout to envelo~'>etile . . for it was of the same counterfeit coinage and had gotten glolm. A1:leri.ca's universi.tics having taken over the countersi gnaturc of Europe ' s wayward territorialism T,uthernn '"orli!. Convent ion (aftcr 1947 llact apnroached full ortllodoxy , as evince the "C!licago ation) . Syncllro~lized;qas tlie tinion of 'illcscs". Yet it ~iasfalsely claimecl that this arrlounted rzer :.!orwecian Synods in what was called tile to a f-1x11 settlement. This had caused '!is-s;ouri not licnl Lutltcran Cf~urcll (ELC , 1'3173 , s tron:;rly to ratify tile proposal and to make sure of loose cn+s ell 1,). ethnic i4orsc sentinent . T t had toile 11y ndoyti.nz the "3ric-f Statement" (1Ct.32). Soon even as soon as tile Op,jo'r gave liberty to move the strinzznt 'Rrief Statevent : was taken into tiric directions , to be gt~irlcL!by t~o~:leclianicnlly deal, llut on a two doc~xmentbasis aizd th~xsin a way conz~ccted documents , iilli el, nres a~edi11 the end to very similar to flApt,%?3. As early as 1936 I :;rnvely Ilave :lo rlircction at all. !Jell now, what about our iirarnecl ' Iiss ouri Synod J'res ic!ent 2r . John :". Rchnlten :nidcllc-ticst Gernan stock? If sucli had been the sur- OF (I~VC~O~MCJIts . i\f tcr reccivirlz sorne cx~crtilely rorrnc!in? ci.rc~lnstances for sor(1e years already, who from tlte i?ev . T? . F , !\rel)l~er (tdllo k~lew tfic 'JLC ancl can l~estrrnriscd that '1lri.o and Iowa, the synocls close "lissouri! s Fas tern situation, f~avin!: hai leci from the to ' fi s s ouri , hacl vowed to bancl togc tfier , come wfiat Seneral Connci 1) T di snatched to "is sourj 1iertilq1ra~ter.s pay, ant1 s-r,ectilated tllat they vrol?ai:tlv rzrould ~etthe some 100 paycs (nerIlal?s s ti11 in pres iclential files) f;ca:lr+inavians to join. In 1933 Ohio, Towa, and 13uf- entitlccl "The Cuckoo 's Egg in the T,ut!leran :!es t" . fa10 -forncd the -first AT,C. Already in the earlier T ts clocumcntary evidence quoteti above a1E said j a~~rnal, st,a?es, decades before taking in the ELC to form flze AtnerZcniz Lzlthe2wn. 'Tlke colors of lezions col~ing T.tl,C, t!ley boasted of bcin:: the Stratc~icCenter of in were depj ctcrl : Crygto-Calvinisn, an externalized l'l~cricanL~at;zer,znisn. Yhy not zo it all the way? ant1 enthusiast conception of the i:hurci~ for wllic11 the 5+ould in Fact i.t ?>eir1nossil3le to r1ra-r~into one ptxc 'ieans od- Grace are not ~ivotal.ant1 t71e sy~heres accorrl cioc:w.tical ly stlll?born :4issouri (togetltcr wi t11 b l urrcr': . but also Crynta-?ov~anisrn, to makc what Ilacl the qynodical Conference) , on elre ri~ht,and tlnc1o.q- bcen rcd~lcedto less, in essence, look YO^, in r~atic'JT,i: (chi n-ty 4u:gms t:ma Synod with therl) , on the anl)c;ara!lce, an? t1111s to cheat tlie devj 1. The s tatc- f eft? '"isilfttl tflinking receivccl irlpetus fron the ment was that: ~L~IGS~two s tranr!s wcrc co~zver~in:tort~arr! frrcat 2nerica1.t cllaritable tlnc1ertakj.n~in (;er~!?any a versiorl of t!le Soci a1 Sosnel , 'IT, Pcllnkcn brr~sfic:! after I'!orIc'r !'!ar T. It was cheered by the formation it 0°F :.\rritin? 1)nck ttmt his -F~*iend,the '?eve Paul sf the Lntlleran ?:!orlcd Convention at 1ii.s enacla in Lindevann, sttFCi-cer! to Cuarantee orth~d~xy.Tfic 1923. tvl~iclil COTI~IX~PCC~1117 the Par~ervision of one cuckoo's ef~qwi tXl its tloul)le eir;,ci yol!i :ins in tile 1,rrtfacran !"orlcl Churcf~. GOL11"SC of tine c11-11y !latct.rcr!.

Concrete 'liddle Vestern nesotiations 41ad begun Rlit too 1011~we have been in earshot of wlrat 's vit!~ : lissouri under Gencsal I)residcnZ; Pfote~lhauer. on the other sirllc 0.F o~irdivide between the centuries. Respectable t?~colo,rliansof the past era had done dle work, T vcnti on '1arti.n rterx. But even lie was not wi-llin?; to go all tllc way in the Gnesio-Li~tlileran 11 , Am,erican L~~theranisr;!'~First Post -!Val ther -"--- - > - " -"- .- - -.-.------.- -,.'------. --.- direction. Ile had been sent to America as a ntission- --Century --- ary, had gradually arisen a distin,n;uished figure, 11ut had a secret dread to loose back-door con~lections IJi ttz the year 1937 wc are in the orbit o.F an- tvitEl cultured territorial Ltithera~~ism,with learned other h~tnclrcdyears hot11 for Anerica' s Confessional resources and splendid personalities dear to him, 1,uthcrani sm and for all of 14mericar, Lutl~eranisr:, still and verfiavs , as a studcd man, Ile was no matcli for totally unpredicatablc as a !illole, the last date noliticians . Ille early deliberations wit11 '.:issouri being 20.37. and her allies '!lad i~ldceclnot bcen i.n vain, 'R~ey 3j~ys1snpex8 ayq u~ ~0331)~xo(ew e awesaq 11 *,,pg *ax1 qv~Jcnsap auFuoQ *0303 u~ ,,3uauaav3S aql 30 wawa3e3S,, aq3 seM sawy2 aqa 30 u8;s 1njaJej 3arxt1,~ay1 paadope ap~s;raylo ayt 3ey~8u?ur~z1:, suoIser\a ,,drys~ol~aj 30 A8o~oa~,, sale1 pa~vdr \r dn 03 pue [8£61 STnO? 3s 301 91 aa73TU -3gue aYE~qxa~Isuogoua APJCOM Xq auaum30~au~ STY% -wo3 30 dlay ayt y2.y~ pow(^ 02 paymanbaq puz '21 oa sauauia~o~dwya1qBtou pappz pey pumas 3aed pa3~3o~pso3sayqTy 3-r y3;yrs ,, srsvq IBUJJ~~O~,, 1~y233~3 ayq 30 aqds UI *~uawn3opSu~uog.~unj e xa~d-tl1nmayl a3elpnda.x 03 punoq Jnouoy 523 NO1 SS3dN03 N(j&@&)C\103 LJO%JE~syaesun 3uanba sqn s ay7 ur ST 31asq~aa3%;unuo3 sly3 'pa~ol10jaeyrs 02 31~~E palls3 uana liaya anq \,,2uaunaop orn "3rnau pu~Lysnpues jo qyS~1ay3 u1 *uo?un uexatpnq -nsop aaql MOU OM^,, umaq-aj~ay3 paaeajap Aluo 3ou uo aai~pnuo3mo 30 ?puapa~o~dsnpour 3sed Aau * uorun ue.raqan2 uo aaalyurno3 s,pouAs ~03ysaew snoaa8uap ay3 3.xodeZns 02 aa3uo1 a3nup.u auo e aaaM 6~6%zaqjz auT3 aqa JQ saATJsnaasero2 s, ~snos JQ~ZspTm ano u? uvy8oloay% XUE aoj asnsxa ou - s paa~odaaaq 03 yse Aluald-e sapnlr ssy~~i\ suTemaa awy7 aeyz a-h~sos awo3aq aney s8u~yl e3eynay% pm *3*7*y3y.a uaapl3aq ,,2ua~aaa8y,~ su~od-aaay~ayl jo uo~q~s~yqndaya 33111s .ua;azn3ls 1~3~pouAsaaau~3uasaad ayl, jo Xansns aya 3u~2al~o303 psaa~~paps~ xaqanu s?~

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' [ 1~31~0 eau~a330pjo s3u~od11~ uo aaa8e 03 Xzessa3au ssu -?lad ano JO] p1.x~~pue y3any3 : 3uaw~sedap~lau ayl aaS * swayqo~clxeysos 0% uoTle1a.x s,tp~nq3 ay3 Xl1~rsadsapue - Axapoqm jo JaqawoJeq spunoq pup sdva~dq BujAyd -jlxnu auyzaaop 30 suorsoaa sA~cr~~odarnq31d TxeaaAo UI 'qspyw .xno uy p~luosyeu~~~sop Buru~asuos suoylsanb palrelap pasunouue ay3 aanpoJlu? 03 aql 'qxmq3 aug aq7 oa an32 asylso~dpu~ Su~ysoaq u? yloq uyemaa 03 acma3 au;nFp aqq Xxaweu 'Al-pyuaw pao3je TlaM ues iy ' * ON Aq Apeaa~epa3uasaad -n3a auTnua8 sf JeqM ~ojyaagas aqq uo a.xE aM 3~ Inq .xaalem uoyun aq3 8u~p.x~Sa~lslxa%ew ln~~?ua~duQ * luaas sly7 pey suels~~r~od uaAa f sp.xe~azs3j wrays 03 s~olfo3Jaqunu sly% asu~s'awg awes ayq 3~ auo3 MOU pey ~3~2awyu~ wsruexay3nl Xlp~e~3ng toward syncretist looseness since Dr. Theodore Graeb - days. This in line with Solid Declaration, Rule and ner had signed it and through an artifice of Dr. Norm, para. 14, 17 (Tappert, pp. 506, 507) ; see also Lorrie Meyer the report of a Committee of 10 was made Preface to the Book of Concord, Tappert, p. 14. But ineffective. So it was left ever hovering in the air, to get at the root of matters in progress to this very In spite of all evidence presented to stop Synod's hour we hurry back from Harms to the last phase of the meandering toward confessional annihilation the act- Rehnken administration, which is still our topic. In ing powers in Missouri continued to evince false 1959, on the heels of the San Francisco Convention, predilections. In the negotiations between the four the Synodical Conference, at Oakland (Calif. ) , deter- synods of the Synodical Conference carried on through mined to call in Overseas Delegates, representatives their Doctrinal Commission this came into the open. sf the sister churches on other continents, to get Difficulties between the four committees became the their help in subjecting the disagreements between very order of the day. As always happens, first the the 4 doctrinal csmittees to the light of God's Word. peripheral symptoms of the final disagreement were These outside representatives came and reported to hotly debated (Boy Scouts, Chaplaincy, etc .) , for the the American synods9 representative committees both feeling was that more was in store. In between better in 1960 and 1961. They offered as their general things came to pass. Dr. Behnken sincerely aimed at criticism that the pure Plems sf Grace as the marks preserving the Synodical Conference, for personally of the One Church I'NOiFAE Uns.FUS ECCLESIAEI, by which he wanted pure doctrine. The 1959 San Francisco Con- everything on the local level has to be determined, vention's Resolution No. 9 declared the "Brief State- had not been sufficiently placed into the center of ment" to be binding for all teaching. Unfortunately the arduous fellowship negotiations. 14%en they it referred to minor synodical pronouncements as well. addressed themselves to the Recessed Convention of lrie intersperse the tragedy that this Resolution was the Synodical Conference in 1961, this was their declared unconstitutional 3 years later, when Dr. 0. pivotal point, therc expanded in 15 theses. They Harms, of a very insecure theological stance, became combined their detailed presentation %a the 4 Com- the General President of the LC-MS. Instead of clar- mittees with some criticism also of the Wisconsin ifying the San Francisco intentions, which had been Synod and EL5 presentations, to wit, that the NOIFAE 100%valid, the popish ruling of the Commission on PURAB of the UNA SAYCTA ought ts have &:en brought Constitutional Matters (Dr. Repp played a role in it) out more clearly as dra~gingthe line between the carried the day in the Cleveland Assembly of 1962. orthodox visible church, always a singula~,and The artifice aimed at the very opposite of loyalty. heterodox churches. To use Latin, the psint af de- In the place of the confession San Francisco wanted parture ought to have been the notes of the One total revolution was substituted. IVhat on that Church as fundame~twndividendi between eccZesia gloomy day changed the nature of the Missouri Synod orthodosa and eccZesiae heterodoxae. For it is only as an authentically Lutheran body? It amounted to by asking whether the means of grace are administered this that no doctrinal point can today or tomorrow without alloy that one can distinguish between church be settled at all, for finality attaches solely to fellowship arrived at genuinely or spuriously, it what is and remains past. How so? Simply because being either as God wants it or as God wants it Art. I1 of the Constitution points only to Scripture altered before any approval. It was cause for thank- and the Symbols. The chain of reasoning against mak- fulness that the Wis cons in Evangelical Lutheran Synod ing any up-to-date spiritual decision binding of soon after our meeting improved its Presentation by course was pure sophistry. For Acticle I1 was framed a balancing statement on the Church and its totally in order to effect the directly opposite, that Scrip- objective Notes which was sent to Dr. Blaess in ture and the Confessions judge issues in all future Australia and later formally ratified, and that the ELS was immediately willing to make the slight clar- "The profound truth (Luther Is abscondita est ifications necessary. It would be totally unfair not eccZesia, latent saneti) at the base of C .A. VII to mention that the formal antitheses which the Wis- has been wiped out by concentrating only on the consin presentation had directed against the Missouri concept of fellowship ... To guard the fellowship position spelled out God's own Word excepting that becomes too much a point of ethics, a mistake of a certain practical differentiation marred the already of the 'Common Confession1, Part I"... prayer antithesis. \+%at has so far been mentioned "There is in this new Mission stance an indi- were the "light weight" critiques as contrasted with vidual ism which reminds one of the 'Reformed the "heavy weightt' strictures which paragraph 28 of American typet. (After castigation of the piet- the SUPPLE3IENT to the EllROPEAN COLLECTION advanced ist slanting practiced on Gal. 2:14, which, in against blissourits Presentation. Also the Australian spite of the whole letter, had wrapped up doc- Overseas ' critique was here most severe. Our point trine in life as though doctrine were not pure of attack was a lapse into a most hoary fault, into from laeraven whereas the new life on earth always Pietist doctrinal indifference on the part of Mis- remains tainted by the flesh, the stricture hit souri's Committee on Doctrinal Unity. This had become out :) "The concerns of sanctification seem to evident black on white in what the "crash program1' be made as ultimative and primary as those of draft of Missouri's l;Theolagy of Fellowship" had at justification .Iv "Insufficient room is left for long last presented as Second Part. We alluded to the functioning of continuous doctrina divina this already when we concluded the doctrinal back- [God-given propositional doctrine] . As a result ground of Lecture One, but must here present the heresy cannot be seen properly as a revolt details in order to be duly on guard for the final against God's revelation and against the founda- presentation at New York in 1967. Our criticism, tion of the One Church, and fellmship with heresy offered on rather short notice in April 1961, included is not seen as bringing in a Counter-Church these sentences: against the One Church."

(On pp. 15, 16:) "Going beyond mere symptoms In footnote 39 there was offered a long quote the real alternative facing the Synodical Con- (culled from Heinrich Schmidt's "Geschichte der ference seems rather to be: practice of fellow- synkretistischen Streitigkeitentr, 1846, p . 415) repre- ship regulated by the lVOTAE PURAE or a general senting a Gutachten of the mild university faculty fellowship resting on the assumption that others of Jena aimed at Georg Calixt, explicit on the total are also Christians though gathered around NOTAE impossibility of dealing with members of heterodox IWURAE and that we must- practice some sort of commnities as though they were personally not in- fellowship with all who as individuals claim to volved in the error taught. Taking this standard of be Christians and whose claim we cannot directly comparison seriously , leaves Neo-3lissouri closely disprove. " [NOTAE D?PURAE meant in the sense of akin to Calixt and the then Syncretists, the historic conflicting marks designating a church body, precursers of Rationalism, whom all honest Lutherans those of the UNA SANCTA and those of Satan's of the 17th Century rejected, including the blessed counter church being lumped together .] singer Paul Gerhard. The SUPPLEMENT to the EUROPEAN COLLECTION went on to say: (On pp . 17-27 the specific disapprobations directed against Missourits Committee were presented in this "The basis of all 'degree theories1 is the Re- fashion :) formed notion that confessional churches (for that matter also non-confessional churches) are approximations of an idea - merely an effort at Luther Seminary in its swift decline, and to ALC historical embodiment of the purity and unity of representative professors who are existentialistic the church ." Liberals (like Warren A. Quarbeck, to whom I devoted a whole "Lu"&erischer Rundblick" article), also t~ "Neither unionism nor separation can be properly President Schiotz' unabashed falsification of the defined [by crash programfs Part Two] because present AK constitution 's basic plank whish acknowl- the fundamentwn dividedi is lacking [the point edges the Bible as God's Word, By way of adding to from which to operate]. This can only be found the countless shzes of theological Liberalism im- in the NUTAE PURAE of the UPA SANCTA ." bibed at universities or from literary exchange, all these bodies have succumbed to unprincipled Ecumenism . Permit once more a digression to get the American This is the heresy of this age and of all. its sects, scene into proper perspective. Whoever wants to and bodies like the LCA and ALC lie prostrate to do rescue a patient must note the duration and the malig- its bidding, \%at was issuing the death warrant to nity of the disease. It is a fact that such abandon- the o%her bodies, as an acute epidemic disease prs- ment of the specific Una Sancta or Lutheran stance gressing usually from egghead to foot and from east became rather fixed even in Dr. Behnkents days, who to west, was for years already getting next also to indeed strove to retain orthodoxy, yet was quite a bit Missouri to lure it step by step into full fellowship like Philipp Spener, the father of Pietism (as keen with the ALC and into half-felliawshi with the LCA, Professor Werner Elert remarked). This helps account in order to end up with the final ecmaniac embrace. for i\iIissouri 's later total deafness to our official But in the case of I+.lli~~o~ri,the subject OF our story, testimony procured by the Synodical Conference at how was the anticlimax being reached? great expense. It was an unfortmate accident tlaat 14isconsints Judging by what we noted as a hardened situation suspension addressd to bfisssuri soon a%%erthe Syn- even in ?.Iissouri one must say: Surely if %hese things odical Conference s recessed convention of 1961 te~- happed to the tree still relatively green, "nrhat shall minaited our negotiations also with the then Missouri be done in the dry?" Worse degrees of defection and Spsd representatives at St, Louis, The p~~ornise of secdariaation were to be expected in the bodies of Dr. I-farms to the Overseas Delegates to be given an a looser Lutheran tradition and of less spiritual opportunity to meet the chief Missouri men again at vitality. Where once there had been uphill advances the headquarters was net followed up. The !!am~s/ toward a glorious future the anticlimax was quickly Fuerbringer/Boman leadership switched to launch the dropping down to molehill level, approaching outer Cambridge umadertaking, later called the International darkness. X mean the nether regions where all beasts Lutheran Theological Conference, This was imprudently prey and all religions meet, as in Free Masonry and accepted also by the English, Germans, and French, also in modern Ecumenism, whose chief liberal strands for here Missouri's leadership could call in any of have run to seed in atheism and Marxism. As proofs their overseas missionaries, particularly the ones for the downfall of ajoining American Lutheranism I amenable to the Harms administration. The Conference point on the one hand to the LCAfs official church largely spent its time in endless talk about the LWF, paper, "Lutheran7', also the new LCA constitution , and in order to tell the Missouri Synod in the CTCR's to their seminary at Playwood (now affiliated with report before Denver that at least some outside bodies Chicago University) and a man like Dr. Joseph Sittler were also for joining the LWF. No root questions famous there, on the other hand, however, to Augsburg were so far ever dealt with c~nclusively. None the Publishing House 's, well -known ALC series, to their less the once German Overseas Delegates kept the real issues in view. -33- Now fix your mind's eye on three Missouri Synod corresponding insuperable entanglements that charac- General Conventions, the procession beginning with terized the other body. The ALC in practicing its Detroit in 1965. They are all double-marked, they political amours since decades can go ahead unabashed are haphazaredly earmarked by loyal confession and in seeming unison, for it is already past the stage by disloyal denial, by truths affirmed along the old of serious doc%rina%con~iderations. Accordingly it lines ~f a Gnesio-Lueheran body and by adroit weasel- is not for the time being a so-called black swan, word resslutisns headed, tum-about , in the opposite acting out the antics of a cross-breed. In this year, direction, that is, to court sham Lutheranism ever 1969, Missouri is still caught in this pitiful csndi- mare avidly and to throw the door ajar ever farther tion. At Denver Dr. J .A ,Q. Preus was elected psesi - letting in the errors formerly divinely excluded. dent, which meant that Dr, Oliver PIams was ~usted, Detroit 1965 adopted as contraband smuggled in from Met the latter's chief move (3-15) came through - enemy camps the enthusiast AFFIWATIONS ON GOD 'S against what Preus had ~reviouslystood for, who now ?4ISSION. On the point of the mission of the church before the vow was taken promised obedience not to to the church (resolves 11 and 20) the affirmations God, but ta men, Again, some resolves were most are as pseudo-ecumenical as you can possibly make excellent, bearing the name of flow committee No. 2, them. In addition they built at least a bridge for even as had happened two years previous in New York the Social Gospel, the 28th century lethal power to where also good confessional resolutions had been destroy all missions of Christendom. That two years adopted alongs ide of hmbe46q. Unpredicts%bility , then, later the Lutheran Comcil in the USA (LCUSA) could is the present ward, Here we have a body totally at begin to function was due to the insincere bait of cross-purpases, settled Missouri resembling a jigsaw- doctrinal discussions having been held out to old- puzzle, a charnePean, a Protern, How long? Satan type !.4issourians in Detroit, enlisting even aged observes strategy, his secret is always to break down ex-President Dr. Behnken to make an impromptu speech. the defenses first a if the armor is strong l~eginning In reality the whole venture was by the adepts plainly wit11 practice and what !s sold for n%;..actice,and, psa- modeled after Federal Council, LWF, and &KC prece- ceeding to avowed dmtrine thsreaftcr, wow headlong dents. Next the New York Convention 11967 ratified engaged in the offensive, serokas at he$i.i and heart the final version of nleology of Fellowship. ;v%isled getting wo~ssarad worse while the -g;~.:vc~lr.$.a%pietists by sounding brass and tinkling cymbals in reports, hope and hope. Rere was left only tiac:%smilall lope the: rank and file most unfortunately became party to sf >filwaaakee 1971, dimed in less than rao ~imeby the brazen affrontry. It declared that negotiations with success sf politicking maneuvers against honest men the American Lutheran Church had resulted in the and cowregations (see footnote no) , essence sf the thing, in true dsctrinal accord. Bar- ring synodical repentance for lying and deceiving in So America es Confessional Lratheranism, after com- God's name, the logical sequence was now "the thing". pleting a marvelous uphill ascent second only to the Theater talks, far and wide but we1 1 managed, having tremendous Luther movement in Europe, threatens at intervened for two consecutive years, logic demanded present in swift overthrow to reach the bottom pit. to declare pulpit and altar fellowship with the ALC Christ warns us that the first shall become the last thereafter. No doubt some of you were present when - if the course of superficiality, ungratefulness and this was done on July 17th of this year (1969) at the criminal eagerness of politicians to "have it both Denver. A pitiful majority, a small percents-ge of ways I1 continue. ayes more, decided the issue. Many were swayed by administration and outside "pro" talk, and too many Bear with me, friends. I thought such a substruc- were blind to the fixed doctrinal deviations and ture necessary to get at the real past and to defeat propaganda. But let me now say that what is still into a truly notable victory. Naturally, this to some extent in progress before Milwaukee's final offers no justification for forsaking the full word is to be met sf course not by just recording the confessional position which characterized your facts and leaving it at that, but rather by applying first hundred years. The latter as singular the divine Igard as f%ras God grants grace and by a gift BE grace, which historically cme from a expostulating with brethren once in the same fold or I! I! great European Lutheran committed still in tf~esame fold, tsying to get a hearing before resaargence, was & to you by Christ it's dtogether too late. , the Truth and the Head of the Church, snd it alone was the source sf your i mission strength., . 0% course, emphasis on mis- sions is never a sole concern. It would mark the beginning of the end for a confessional church in the Old or New World, for blessed heirs So, during the rest of ehis second pe~iod,I am of Paul and Luther (please see @ale 5,9 and com- no longer interested in sad history, but I propose pare Luther" G~reatCsmentary on that verse), chiefly to cite the steps taken from our European to play off the Christ for all against the whole side by bodies as yet doctrinally straight md by Christ. It would be worse than foolish to make representatives of theirs both just before and at much of the zeal to share the Gospel of Christ, once after Denver in an effort to preserve to some but meanwhile ts spurn Christ only and the whole extent Confess isnal Lutheranism '9 Batter day mainstay . Christ as He becsmes ours throargh the pure means Re it fas from me to say that the divine truths sf grace. The Great Commission is to share brought out in what now follows were first publicly eternal life, and not a counte~feit,with a%P testified to by men sf Europe, But sinee 1 am from whom we can reec3~,,, We WOU%~lack proper wards Germany 1 do also want to make a certain recard plain to sharacterize an eeg theologyr saying: !To beyond a doubt, What is more important, precisely be as insistent on God's dset~5-ne- as were Paul, ehw clear verdicts sf God's Word are on record and C a i-; whittle even smmarized far future consciewtisus reference. Luther, and ,F .W Walthei- - just %a away time in ehis urgent gXabal age, yes, this IIere follow such items. attitude casts aside love, ~isi,3:~. -gut~nre his tory, the liloly Ghost, the fellowship in - +* tS One On June %7eh, 1969 - a month before the adoption Churchf. We would haye to csmter: ace when sf that ill-fated resolution 9-15 - the theologians egos' pe~mittecl Scr~pture who had become known as the German Overseas Delegates are %man against naively to payrot todayss slogans and thereby to addressed A LAST \gOWD ta the LC-MS to assemble at; lord it over the Kingdom of th6 ffe;a~%as?~ Denver, from which we shall quote instantly. The In present speaker had at once received the full consent truth and very humbly, brethren, cannot perhaps the greatest danger all sf us today arise of the co-signers for an attachment to the LaST WORD for called COROLLARIES, which was mailed shortly after from a sort of semi-bfethodist , even semi-llniver- salist Enthusiasm and from Activism run riot? as explanatory and supplementary. A few sentences This frame mind can easily line up even with from the CQROLLARIES serve best to lead us on. of learned radicals like Bultmann , Cox, etc." "You of the LC-lt3S have been our model and still I think my honored audience understands me per- are. Your transition from a German culture fectly well. church to the great American speaking mission It was necessary that the setting of the Overseas and European (also in one case Queens- church of the Lutheran Hour was turning defeat land) reaction first to the Praesidium's plans for Denver 1969 and then to 3-15 had to be clarified suf- most definite CONSTT TUTION and of the LUTHERAN ficiently before the docmentation now to follow CONFESSIONS behind them do not square with the could proceed full swing. Involved is not the slight- neo-ecumenical principles enunciated in the est tainting by what is depreciated its "dead ortho- Theology of Fe~lowshiP'. This attracted atten- doxy" as you may just have noted. Again, one purlpose tion when Part 11 qpeared in the 1960 tentative of the minutiae which were last embodied in my lecture, a Form, against which a severe critique was dir- extending even to certain otherwise seldom known de- ll ected by Australia's delegation and also by our tails of the last Behnken years and covering all the presentation, called 'Conclusions as to the years of the Harms administration, was to gain s t present Synodical Conference Impasse9, that hearing for our conclusions by anticipating the major formed Part PI1 sf 'European Supporting Docu- instinctive objection: 'Men tucked far away in old ments ' in 1961 (the analysis touching Missouri's Europe could not arrive at safe conclusions as to fellowship crash program comprises para. 31 of P967 to 1949 because they could not observe living the total book and pp. 17-27 of our Part 111. facts", Quite to the contrary, gentlemen, they were An exact copy of all we submitted in 1961 was, we%t door, in fact in your rooms all this while, as on request, deposited with CONCORDIA HISTORICAL you could register. So let's go on, letting Contin- INSTITUTE). In spite of all E~aeernalremon- ental European Free Lutheranism continue to this s trances the basic false elements ~eappeared. period's end to speak to you, first on the fateful They now constitrate Part PI1 of the document year 1967, then on Denver's 1969 break-down, as seen presented already in Detroit 1965 and %hen rati- by us and others, the chief message being the spir- fied in New York (see WORKBOOK 1969, pp. 524- itual appeal, 5461, Self-contradiction had indeed been added. The carefully worked Part %Iof the final edi- As the COROLLARIES continue %Q point out with tion, placed in front of said Part %U,embodies rsfe~enceto $he fellowship stance adopted in New so much of sound Lutheran dogmatics that it een- Y~rk,the whole formal principle of Christ's Church tradicts much of what tiien follows . The total and therefore all that is distinctive of Lutheran document lacks consistency. Yet a deliberate and truly ecumenical doetrine was there repudiated slant;, cwtailiaag the doctrine of t'ile Church, in favor of pseudo-ecumenism, and this was done in was worked also into the new Part 11, Nee- gross violation sf the Symbols and Missourivs adamat ecmenism is the dominant note, only now accom- Constitution. What follows could not yet have been panied by discordant ssmds defying all efforts said as early as April 1961, when we had spoken out at hamsnization. as the German Overseas against the wash prsgramss fellowship caricature, but it was a fully motivated "As to the (at Peast item in our 1969 critique of the adqted document and partly admitted by Dr. Harms in 'Toward Fellow- what was behind it: ; shipt), they comprise the following details : "For two, some actions not merely of stated "(a) Divergence [clash] between true church officers, but also of general Conventions have I and f a1se church (ecc Zesiu particuZaris orthodoxu already severely jeopardized the very doctrinal and ecc Zesiae particuZares he terodoxae) is done identity of your church. For directed against away with. That is, the 'Theology of Fellowship' each other a Yes -and a NQ with reference to one not only plays down, but actually throws over and the same matter and aspect cannot be genuine. board the distinction between the orthodox vis- The fact is: the fellowship stipulations of your ible church, on the one hand, which in spite of admixed hypocrites is true to the name and voice between the specific functions of Christ's Church of the One Church by faithfully clinging to Cod's and the duties of Christians in society, between mans sf grace and not permitting public contrary what Luther calls the divine right hand and left marks to become lodged in its organization, and, hand kingdoms (less mingling of realms than in on the other hand, its apposi%e, its antithesis. the first printing; but still note No. 18 of We mwt here he aware of the motley assembly of Part 111; and thus no barrier against common heterodox congregations and of corresponding Social Gospel tendencies in America is the out- larger church units, which in church history, come). ever since the apostles died and apostolicity was not properly qheld, have developed and are, "(d) Summing up then, the 'Theology of Fellow- perhaps more than ever, evolving anew, Uncounted ship ' actually rejects Iviissouri 's past doctrine true believers are mmg them and tremendous and practice, in spite of all the talk about the differences obtain between them. The constant Church" notes in the new Part II. It voices a appearance also of kspefil situations and special ringing No also to our 15 Overseas Theses, al- duties then arising is to be not ignored, But though these had been acknowledged as showing the fact that false churches are currently, the way by the Synodical Conference Convention sapiday being drawn into one GREAT MIXWRE can of 1961 with wholehearted Missouri support. The be bmassed just as little. false teaching of a doubtless revolutionary nature naturally at once produced strange acts "(b) Again injury is done to the divine corn- on the mission fields, being abetted by almost mads to avoid false teachers and of necessity identical false coins, mixed with true coins, to shm gahrings jn league with them. Said in that 'Affirmation on God's Missiont The new document, avers tressing the original hist~ricaP theology serves to justify the innate inconsis- circumstances by applying a sort of historico- tencies sf LCUSA and contributes to the currents critical reduction $0 the texts, restricts their pressing toward tine ALC/ECA amalgm and is headed scope ts a few out-and-out heretics. So it is for all camps Qf contemporary false eeumenism. that attention is gently lead away from organized camps and focussed on footloose individuals. "For three, there is a related idea, 8~atdoes %US all Reformed and similar bodies, even Rome it posit? This, that since only tlne local con- haself, and primarily all nominal Lueheran gregation is a church in the ~e&Testament sense, groups, no mattes how liberal and modernistic it alone (this, if you stress it, only for it- they may haw become, somehow slip mder the one self as for the time being), bears responsibility overall caption: 'Just erring Christians, with for the scriQturalness and orthodoxy of fellow- whom we must cornme in love" Even formal ship relations between churches. To counter representatives of erring bodies propagating [replies to be expected], the local congregation false doctrine are not looked upon as represent- is indeed the primary unit, since here the means ing error itself (not seen such as they are, of grace reach and supply most directly the qua tales, as the Latin goes). In this respect gathered people. But the wild, in its way atom- the Confessions and past positions are misrepre- izing, conclusion drawn fits exactly into the sented. official Congregationalist [if not Existentialist] pattern and is by definition anti-Lutheran and "(c) There is in consequence of general fel- anti-i4issourian (see Brief Statement, para. 28) . lowship thinking even now no strict division By the logic of this additional deviation all larger church bodies, because voluntary, are "historico-critical position" began to multiply at equated with non-church. Therefore they are Waltherfs and Pieper1s school and of late broke through fully in the hlissouri Synod's official Con- exempted from strict truth duty and given license The Baron in our to align themselves almost with anybody and any- cord& TheoZogicaZ Monthly. Lutherischer RundbZick staff, Dr. Cornelius Freiherr thing that seems advantageous. Although all of this was in the air before, in Europe [at least] von Heyl, prepared a study for Chris tian News [it was first printed in 1970, Jan. 26th issue] entitled: the supposition was first voiced by Dr. Theodore Craebner in his 1949 speech at Strasbourg "Denver, - and now?". Tile German version appeared 4 in Lutherischer Rundblick 1969, pp. 220-227. [He (France) and was again resorted to as an easy way out of the past confessional confinements followed this up by details in "Survey - Doctrinal Chaos in St. Louisf' with particulars on Drs. Rich. R. by Dr. Carl A. Gaertner at Cambridge I1 ' . Per- haps this extra theory has contributed to the Caemmerer and John H. Tietjen in Christian News of strange ease with which the Praesidium and a April 4th, 1970, German text printed in Lutherischer majority of district presidents suggested to ~undblick197Q, pp. 144-150.1 Denver the expedient of partial Selective Fellow- ship, one group of congregations * to follow the As you all know, Missouri's College of Presi- linef of official altar and pulpit fellowship, dents early in 1969 put forward a detailed proposi- but a second group, in deference to scruples of tion for Denver (proposing altar and pulpit fellow- conscience, temporarily to be empowered to refuse ship with the ALC, though permitting congregations such fellowship. Certainly, if to the One Church with doctrinal scruples to practice non-fel lowship) , belong the pure means of grace (it is to the which in substance was identical with the subsequent resoluti~n3-15 of Denver, This docment pu$lished Urn Sancta that Augsburg Confession VII, para. 1 in Synod's papers it was which had forced the former ( and 2) , attaches 'pure and recte [Latin text] Overseas Delegates to take that overt step to issue and so does Walhtherts classic on Church and the LAST WORD just referred to, pressing home there- Office, Part I, Art. V) , then God, through them, with to b!issouri the eitherlor far their Post-Walther both makes possible and also demands, as pertain- Century. Chief officials and professors received the ing to honesty in jointly confessing, one ortho- docment. In spite of some promise lreld out by Dr. dox communion, which in principle is world-wide kiarms it did not appear in the SUPPLE31ENT to the and in point of time ranges from the apostles WORKBOOK and was not even mentioned in the sessions, to the Lord's return (cf. the import of 1 Cor. whereas LUTHERANS ALERT, July issue, 1969, graciow 1y 10 and 11) ." printed it. I beg your pardon if I again read to you at some length words on the gravity of the situa- As you know, dear friends, the authority of the tion (Drs. Kirsten, Oesch, and Roensch placed their given Revelation from on high was now also whittled signatures to this LAST WORD): away and reduced to chips at the St. Louis Seminary, River Forest Teachers College being a close second. ' "So we must settle for truth. Surely, if the This catastrophe followed some years after it had be- sole right-of-way for the pure means of grace come common sport in the LCA to flout the written is demanded from above (point 2), but if this Word of God, soon joined in by ALC terminal schools. divine condition is flouted (according to the After Dr. Martin Scharlemann, with his original posi- evidence pointed to under points 3 and 4) by tion which made the first great dangerous impact, the ALC-LCA as organized church bodies and by had held his post against Dr. Behnkenls request to the LWF as a fellowship organization (on that him to resign, representatives of the so-called please see CTCR minority report, MXXKBOOK, p. the Protestant population the church-going 70f.), the conclusion then inescapable before average is well below 5%, nevertheless in Ger- the church all over the world must be put down many on this side of the Iron Curtain the tax on paper, It reads: income supplying these broad membership churches and levied with some sort of government aid is If the LC-MS accepts the proposal of altar tremendous. The doctrinal condition is worse and pulpit fellowship with the ALC, she will than ever, and of late it includes large fac- identify herself with the status of the ALC, tions of scoffing Marxist theologians. This that means she will identify herself with a demonstrates anew that the official position of church which has for good a broken theology and the Lutheran Symbols since the Enlightenment which is committed to tolerate false doctrine is, by and large, only one of a historical nature, in her midst, and so the LC-MS also can then no assigning to them a deceptive niche in the par- more maintain the claim to be a church of the ticular church body's museum. Soon the inter- cornunion, regularly practiced between so-called Lutherans and so-called Reformed all along, will be advanced to 100% union status on the basis of illusive doctrinal agreement. Wont of all of grace as they normally function in truth and is the hodge-podge of theologies and philoso- purity according to Scripture. Instead of being phies governing the state-paid, allegedly Luth- a free church this great historic body will have eran or at leas% Evangelical, theologi~alfaml- become a captive church. Instead of being ortho- ties, with a few men of true Lutheran intention dox it will be sectarian. The Book of Concord in-between, Liberalism had repeated heydays, in the church's museum does not avert this, but and it did not vanish in the least after War II. adds more dishonesty yet. "Of late things have gotten to a point in On the additional live issue, raised by the Continental Europe where those who were for two favorable majority report of CTCR, we, the LAST WORD centuries conditioned to changing union patterns signatories, offered this: in order to aceornodate truth and falsehood simultaneously seem to have reached the utter "To claim that this Genevan sub-organization limit and declare, also in these nominally has established a positive record, having ad- Lutheran Churches, to be unable still to go vanced in its subjoined bodies, especially a long. This has caused BEMEMflTNISBEWEGUNGEN dependent ones, Biblical and confessional loyalty and [KTRCHLICHE] SAMMLUNGEH of a type close to borders on the ridiculous, exceptions excepted. us to spring up all over. Can you bear respon- As to the well-known territorial and state sibility for stabbing these last-minute rem- churches in Europe, which comprise the bulk nants in the back by an LWF embrace of the VoZks- of the LWF constituency, these folk churches kirchen? '' (VoZks-kirchen) are in their basic structure geographical units of Europe, or, where they The concluding section of A LAST WORD has this compete with Rome, they are sections, [merely] to say: called Evangelical, of post-Christian secular society which is still traditionally defined "We deem it fortunate that the stage in Den- as functioning also along religious lines. Of ver has officially been set for decision, not ostponement, The official proposal to split vantage even as the eminent church historian, :he churchinto two camps of synodical congre- Dr. Hermann Sasse, has repeatedly pointed out gations, viz. one group "following the line" and your Church's true vocation from God, The Aus- the other group gradually to be "brought into tralian theologian has also emphasized your un- line", is, it seems, hardly worth a moment's heard-of asset over against European Lutherans notice* It plainly is unconstitutional and in during the last three hundred years, namely live, fact would spell the end of the present church church going, self-governing, spiritually re- body. There is thus at hand for the LC-MS the sponsible congregations in a free country. my hour to take its twentieth and twenty-first must Lutheran churches thus singularly blessed century choice. It is the solemn option be- die - as they are almost extinct in ~urope?" tween turning to the right, in repentance and holy determination, or to the left, headed The following sentences of concern, which I take toward the bitter end, The right choice is to from the "Earnest Fraternal Appeal", had been penned be loyal to the Redeemer and His One Moly in Queensland earlier yet. The Appeal had also been Christian Church and to lost mankind, namely signed by a group of affiliated Europeans (the paper by continuing to administer, as a doctrinally called BALANCE printed it before Denver): united body acting on the level of all its con- gregations, the Holy Spirit's means of grace in "There are scattered throughout the world all truth and purity in accordance with the Holy congregations and churches faf thf ul 6s Scrip- Scriptures, The opposite and wrong tarn means ture and the Confessions, For a hundred years the irreversible decision to cast all the sing- your great Missouri Synod was the acknowledged ular strength and mission hitherto granted by leader and champion of these churches But as problems God to the winds in exchange for an aecaamenfcaB' your Synod became troubled by the of liberalism, its at pottage of lentils, In case of this latter administrative apparatus any its turn, the Synad will inevitably expose God's rate turned attentfan more and more toward congregations to variants of deception, every the worldly-wise Ecmemaicsal Mo~~ementand neg- one sf which is pregnant with infinite increase, lected the Sywad's former brothers-in-am8 in Furthemore, evangelical and evangelistic power other countries. As a result, the 2~rmerly is dissipated, decimated, and given the lie as solid Confessional front is in danger of %rag- soon as doctrinal control is once and for all mentation. Certainly, if you join in fellowship ruled out. Doctriml honesty toward the affil- with A.L.C.-%.C ,A. , you will break up our world- iated congregations can never be recovered in wide Confessional fellowship, Make no mistake the ALC-LCA-LCMS amalgam that is now being prop- about that. But surely you will not abandon agated. Contrari-wise, if God grants to Mis- those with whom you are one, in order to join souri repentance and vietory over the present those with whom you are not one in doctrine?" keen blast and whirlwind of temptation, it will thereby break through the clouds and ascend as In this connection I must call your attention a shining light, pointing also others to the to the fact that all the continental European sister right way, Then your Synod can, under God, churches of the LC-MS officially intervened at this become the truly Evangelical Center of all stage. This of course principally as touching the Chris tendom. Indications of this definite pos- lobal Lutheran World Federation, favorably reported sibility are already coming in view, to which n by the CTCM majority, but also mentioning the ALC we Europeans can now witness from our outside ue. In fact they did this twice, at first in a -47- formal joint Overture, appropriated by the Brazil European mainland. Several documents portray that, Districts and printed in the SUPPLEMENT of the WORK- from which I take my concluding items. BOOK, and once more in individual letters (by Chair- man Dr. Gerhard Rost of the German inter-synodic I first quote our Southern District Synod's agency and by the presidents of the French and Fin- minutes (of the Evangelical Lutheran Free Chwch, on nish Free Churches, see German texts in LUTHERISCHER Sept. 15th at Stuttgart) : "Honorary President Fr . RIINDBLICK, 1969, pp. 108-112) . Noack (Queens land) reported on Denver, where he had been present. It shoc=ked the delegates to hear that It is here necessary to refer to President Oliver a consensus in all [truly] doctrinal points is no Harms reaction on receiving from me lines accompany- longer synod-wide cansidered as being demanded in ing the three main memorials (cc to the Vice-Presi- the Augsburg ConfessjionCs Art. VIT [para. 21 . Pres- dents). When Dr. Harms got the first one of the ex- ident DP, Mms Kirsten supplemented what had been tended appeals - the one originally penned in Queens- reported by referring to a meeting with delegates of land - he wrote me five pages. And when I sent him the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod who had the Overseas' LAST WORD he wrote me six pages and a stated that there were two theological factions in seventh page of documentation. He was always a the Missomi Synod and that such a situation logically gentleman and thanked us for our concern, but showed must lead to separating the parts into two churches, that he had hardly gotten anything in the whole life adding that the Missouri Sywd is no longer in a and death issue straight. Just to establish pulpit condition to render a decision through which matters and altar fellowship in his opinion didn't amount to are to be decided on the basis sf the Confessions." much at all, for synodical safety consisted in this that there was no merger in the technical sense of This spelled out agreement with the words of the tern. In his strange way of thinking the only Seminary President Car% Lawrenz in the 2ksor$katses&ern thing seriously to be considered would be legal fu- Lutheran, Aug. 31, 1969 - somewhat later published sion. As to our explicit remarks on the Praesidim's in Germaaa by our theological journal, %u&he~iseher proposition for Denver re ALC he was at a loss to &ndbZick 1969, pp. 213-218. comprehend our qualms azperturbation. He talked about his top-flight theologians, the best Flissouri It may be worth your trouble also Is listen to could produce. He had never done his theological the way the American decision is being commented on homework. He warned that what Missouri had under- by some responsible Europeans outside of our comun- taken to help Lutheran Free Churches did not mean ion. Pastor @.Schmlze of Bremn, who had pkablished the support of opposition altars to Lutheran folk a long article analyzing the Lutheran Free Ghmches church a1tars. in widely read EvangeZische Kommentare, now wrote on MISSOURI-SYNODE in der Zerreissprobe (Miss our i (An exchange of letters immediately after Denver Synod at the point of splitting), this time in with the new President Dr. J .LO. Preus and remarks Lutherische MonatsbUtter (Oct . 2nd, Hamburg) . The of his when he came over in person late in 1969, will fact that the LC-MS did not accept the invitation be referred to in the final lecture.) of the LWF had just proved a point of considerable interest for church news, and the Bremen pastor The fact that "the deed" is done, that the pro- utilized the chance. Schmolze quotes Dr. Robert tested church fellowship is now a law till 1971 Preus on Denver from The Lutherun Layman at some through resolution 3-15 and its implementation, has length. A type of cooperation between the Spring- already witnessed some logical sequence on the field, North Adelaide, and Oberursel theological faculties, as he sees it, would be essential for what American scene. (The Confessional Lutheran Church of Finland has a representative here, their conclu- he, Schmolze, evidently has at heart. It is this that among the multiplicity of only nominal1y Lutheran sions are an even stronger parallel, but they can churches the wor ld over %is souri remain Missouri", speak for themselves.) The general officials of the French body living in Alsace (the well-known German- as his last line puts it speaking part of the country) came together in their home province with the elders of all the local con- I next quote a few lines from the declaration of what is at present a personal Status confessionis gregations, which have furnished most of the funds necessary for the Synod Is work. (The French-speaking on the part of the editors of htherischer fidblick congregations in France itself came straight from (Drs. Kirsten, Oesch, Roensch in issue 3/69, p. 212): the Roman Catholic Church and do not fully understand things yet.) All assembled were of one single opin- rgAlsothe LUTHERISCHE RUNDBLICK resorts to a This was put to paper and conveyed to President Sktus confessionis to condemn this Resolution ion. Preus on October 19. This whole docment, written in - of course not directed against the Synod itself English by President FrLdGric C. Kreiss, is being as far as the Conservatives begin to assemble. published in America and, translated, in Lutherische After all that was written before the LUTHERISCHE RundbZick, quarters three and four of 1969, pages RUNDBLICK does not have to substantiate its posi- 201-203. As in the presence of God President Kreiss tion anew. Besides it is up to the Missourians and his men spell out the significance and import of to articulate their protest and to pass it on the decisions in Denver. Let me just read the con- to a11 concerned. Excellent interpretations of clusion :: Status confessionis have already appeared in faithful print, well qwlified to liberate con- "The Luthmafa Chwch-Missouri Sp0d through gregations from immediate cooperation and to this decision has shown that it has become a strengthen them for future action, It is self- different Chuseh from what it was, a Church understood that not only we, but also the many whictn in such maeters as ehwch-fellowship or who have in advance protested this scheme, as the necessity of an internal doctrinal csnsensm witnessed in our issue No, 2, will intervene or practices now a theology different from that at least give brotherly support to the Missouri which had so far been accepted and bfhich had so Conservatives, by their prayers and otherwise." far been the basis for our fello~qshipwith the Lutheran Church-Mi ssouri Synod. We are f orced Our nobleman, Cornelius Freiherr von Hey1 , to conclude that a majority of its constituency declared at the end his review of C .T.M. : of has now willfully abandoned-the basis of the personally, much in love with the great history of fellowship which existed between their church the Missouri Synod and in accord with their princi- and the allied Confessional Lutheran Free ples, declare that I am over against these gentlemen Churches in Europe, in general, and our Free in tutu confessionis It. s Church in France and Belgium, in particular. After having repeatedly raised our voice in Finally I must bring to your attention rather warning we now declare again that we cannot in full the first semi-official action. Within the condone the fellowship which has now been offi- community of our Free Churches it transpired in the cially established and proclaimed between our Evangelical Lutheran Free Church in ~ranceand Bel- - sister Church and the present ALC as the latter gium. The brethren speak in the name of all those stands today in its doctrine and practice. We among us on the Continent who are close to the consider such fellowship as incompatible with turning again to the right or remaining on the left, the Word of God and therefore repudiate it as the basis of fellowship, which had existed for over an expression of anti-Scriptural unionism. We a hundred years in some of the cases still exists pray the Lord of the Church that He may guide or not. This may suffice on the gravity of the pres- the hearts and minds of the present leaders of ent situation and the stress of overseas appeals. our dear sister Church so that they may find the proper ways and means to remedy this false The movement of the First Post Walther Century fellowship decision. We now consider it is within the compass of the first four decades has our urgent duty to actively and thoroughly been the calamitous reverse of Confessional Lutheran inform our Chwch in all its congregations, ascendency in America; it has triggered the almdst especially also our so far uninformed young complew repudiation of the Walther Century by mission ssngregations in the solidly Roman Walther s Synod. Catholic parts of France, concerning this sit- wtion, so that ow chhl~chmay, after a neces- Additional points, including further appeals sary period of delay and reflection - if it as we only gradually learned all of the details, I should still be necessary - then take note of have chosen to reserve for the last lecture, as the fact that the fosrmer basis of God-pleasing starting point for t~morrow's"Mandatory Look at chmch fellowship with the Lutheran Qaurch- the Future." Missouri Synad no longer exists and take appro- priate action accordingly. [And in the mean- time, they declare .tkaat for their own persons, they are in the protesting state over against all such persons who in any. my want to imp%@- ment this false fellowship .] Note 9:

"mis declaration was adopted and simed by In order to be quite clear on the necessity of a number of pastors and leading laymen after independence for the Walther Century it is necessary an information meeting aWen$ed by elders and to fill in ;a few further details on the hen contem- officers of a number of congregations of the porary German Neo-Lutheranism. This will Incidentally EGLISE EVANGELIQUE LUTHERIENNE - SYNODE BE show how little can be expected from Continental FRAdVCE E2' BE BELGIQUE in St;rasbsurg on October Lutheranism today, which on the whole is little more l9th, 1969, and sent to President Jacob A,O. than a WCC division. Only students need read on. Preus by the Rev. Fred 6. Kreiss of the French Synod ." Being the immediate parent of all serious UeS. descendants, last century's Lutheran Confessional So here you witness the normal reaction for the Movement in Germany, when it had moved on from its Lutheran Free Churches, for authentic Lutheranism early hopeful heyday, split up into "Lutheranisms" all over the world. Status confess$onis first on (Luthertuemerl . None was the Lutheran Cb1 cch , none the part of individuals who know all the details, was fully attuned to its unchanging ecumaiiical voice, this is the immediate counter-action. But then, reiterating the standards of the One Church. For giving the Missouri Synod those two years after political and philosophical strains had almost at July 1969, immediately when they are past, the final e entered alongside and effected all sorts of decision as to whether after the Milwaukee Convention's aks with Scripture and the Confessions . Excepting

-53 - a figure now and then there was no p~ofound knowledge a peculiar Schleiermacher revival and embodied Schel- of Luther's writings, which for Gemany was rather ling and Hegel ingredients as well. Not without strange to say. The radical revolution in thinking these admixtures did it conquer Leipzig and some since Enlightemen$ and Pietism's even earlier pcu- other sites of learning. ~rlangen'sfeted exegete, liarities had all over remained influential in the von Hofmann, as a member of the party of the Kenoti- joint units consisting of stare and church, This cists, went so far as to cut Christ's humiliated affected the best of the learned exponents in the humanity loose from his divinity and to deny the Vi- gradually stabilizing process of the Lutheran revival. carious Satisfaction, making it impossible freely to ;Even if they were antf-revolutionaries, they mre trust in the justifying verdict as rendered purely and more opted for ego-theologies . from the outside, To J. Ch, K. von Hofmann the Bible is a fabric of God's handmaiden, history's product To point out a chief detail in every qwrter , and no% to be equated with. Cod '53 Word. A watchword there appeared the Romntic nstissn of "Organism", of this professor was that he, the Christian, was to of "historically given whole, being in advance him the theologian, the first source of doctrine. structured along the lines sf estates". mis struc- (Note that ALC Professor Gerhard 0, Porde seems to turedness was ghi%osophically assumed to be in back be trying hard to be the 20th century American von of the various appearances of the State ad also of Hof mann copy) . E(ahnis as dogmatician went, fartker the ~hurch, In many respects the two were believed yet and muddled almost everything, to be fairly alike, state-churchism tenac iously clouding the vision. A dosely allied second postu- In line with their "Evolutionitis" both the High late built firmly on history's ordered unravelling Church men ad the rank and file of Erlssngen thes- somehow always begetting progress, ever something logians were mil%enwialis&s,hailing in the expected better* 1000 years a sort of crown, topping Organism's prog- ress from on top. Of course you authentic Lutherans Sanguine expectancy was in the grain even of know that the goverment of DEYS ABSCBJDXTUS in the confess%oml%yvocal High Church Lutherans (in history cannot be pressed into any beforehad system "highness" akin ts ysw J ,A .A . Grabau) , such as of thought at all* Man thus trespasses on God '8 Julius Stahl, who was a conservative Prussian poli- grounds . tician of Israelite extraction, above all the church- mw hehe, Vifmar, and Kliefothe In $he High Church Fairness concedes to the groups mentioned that party it took on the strange form of making out of they were not alone nor are exceptions today. The pastors governing priests, hoping thus to pull people governing hypothesis , hailing history as evolving out of the vast secularizing process toward the ever to the better rather than being unpredictable, spiritual. The pneumatic nature of the New Testament with superdimensional casualties pushing in between Church, it being direct to Christ everywhere where where least expected, was modern. It no doubt hailed faith is, was no longer understood. largely from technical victories, as it does +n our days of the moon journeys. In those decade: progress But as we turn to the other end sf the neo- faith was running amuck with at least the same ter- Lutheran line we note this buoyed-up bourgeois pro- rific speed in Anglo-Saxon and French as in German gressivism to be even more potent. The Erlangen thinking. How understandable all that sounds to our type of university theology, first presenting the American and German ears today. Wefre still close less subjective and in many respects even profound to these gods. Romanticism, achieving systematic premises of early Adolf von Harless, progressed to finality in Schelling's and Hegel's mighty specula-

-55- tions , simultaneously exercised a magic spell even not heeding strictly the Word of Scripture nor the on the Roman Catholic Tuebingen School, as it does analogy of faith therein given, why, in principle, on Hans Kueng at Tuebingen just now, must you somewhere arbitrarily stop short, let's say, of the most radical Modernism? What was to be ex- All High Church business in the end defeated it- pected, if ~nthusiasm'ss~ke'shead was tolerated, self, its sacred orders enthusiasm supported in effect shwed up rather early, In the last century's six- the rule of educated officialdom, However, the Roman- ties and seventies, already, all types of Continental ticist wings attached either to Eternal Rome or to Neo-Lutheranism lacked the logical #jet to radical Lutherland stopped short of "to tally liquidating Biblical criticism's and to Social Gospel Ritsehlian- givens of the past". They did not run the full Heg- ism's taking over at all schools, elian course, as did Karl Marx with his new mankind aims in mind, rather they drew fixed historic results Nevertheless, while the theological systems in wherever they were appealing, Yet Schwaermerei developed were off -hand hpossfbili%ies for authentic prompted virtually all prominent Neo-Lutheran univer- Lutherans, as the outsgoke%amess of St. Louis, Walawa- sity celebrities and even most of the powerful tosa, and Decorah did solemnly register, the huge preachers of the epoch to concoct some special doc- literary output, particularly in exegesis and history, trinal departures and additions, especially on Church deserved discrimlm te sbsemation, Some conservative and Office and on Eschatology, The formulation of Lutheran circles put on &he market as late as the these doctrines was in fact looked upon as free ter- turn from the 19th to the 20th century the extremely ritory, as within the God-given peculiar mandate of valuable 7 volmes sf Ki~chlichesUasadlmik~n (which the 19th and 20th centuries, It is not hard to see had been started by Carl Meusel), Who knows these how akin is today's chief World Church and theolog- volumes among those influential today in Amer f can ical faculty force. The extreme "~ituationalitis," Lutheranism? Can Kn~w~chingfsm know where its fathers which at the same time hard-core, almost Marxian stood ? activism, is heeding no word of God, is run by wild enthusiasm and running both the WCC and LWF offices But Bet's get back $0 the niddBe of that 19th at Geneva, being to some extent latent also in the century. It was the time when ehe qrcierq.", hope to AFFIRMATIONS ON GOD'S MISSION. Yet it is related not recover the Lutheran Church of Ge~n~a::? . ci-ae a Isst only to several other sires, but also to Neo-Lutheran- cause and when German Christian f ervox as ar as ism as one of its great grandfathers. extant among the comon people switched anew to vari- ant forms of Pietism, Believers wanted to find at Such, then, was the background of the Synodical least some outlet for actions of the Christian heart Conference 's objection to Evolution of Doctrine and took recourse to conventicles, to eccZesioZae in (Lehrentwicklung) and of their theologians' tireless ecclesia. So in the main things remained in Germany insistence strictly to delimit "Open ~uestions", and also in Scandimvia till our times. At present points which were urged especially against Iowa. The many leaders of pietist conventicle groups realize full import of the ideas struggling to conquer Luth- that separating the Word and the Spirit undoes them, eranism could only be seen in Europe. Fortunately too. But where is full-force Lutheranism to which is sour i's original minds, the Hoeneckes, the Karens to turn? What purported to be the Lutheran Church no less, were present as much in Europe as in America. became strangely estranged from people, even the be- In-depth vision saw how the land lay. If you can lieving people that were left, a fact not gainsaid by subject the body of Christ's doctrine to varying addi- that lingering of Lutheran piety, say, in Franconia tions or subtractions, going by the moment's glow and around Hermannsburg , Legithis t ic conservatism

-57 - was related tc seactiomry politics, The High Church 19th century Luthertuemer. The genial genre of biog- party in the forties started out under Julius Stah$ raphy, which everywhere first gains attent ion, fastens with conservative organic State ideals for the purpose on a certain man and his merits, less on the epoch. of hitting out against French ravolutisn and si~nilar 1'11 try to be a bit helpful since publishers and the ideals, In their approach ta ecclesiology, to that LWF have flooded American Lutheranism with debris for them closely related topic of chareh and office, from Europe. This massy wreckage cannot be recognized $his party acknowledged a debt ts the semi-Megeliaw for what it is without real church historians arising ~&~m.;an-~thsli~.$okraan Adam MBhSer of Tuebi ngen and again in your midst. Men I mean knowing the connec- was thaiikf u% for the ati~iulationoffered from across tion between the 19th and 20th centuries and enjoying the Channel by English Tracgarian victories, The sub- the grace granted by God to show America how to dis- jectivist pietist impulse, franticaf lg hailed at the pose of the dust storms, oddments and dregs blocking same time by purely rationalist humanists, remained its road to Wittenberg and Chris tian origin beyond. active and pushed toward synergisms, God and maw Mentioning a few names, Hans Felix Hedderich offers conpany business, all over the landscape, Without much help indeed on the main Neo-Lutheran currents in th-i s Val ther 's and Boeneske % geenine Conversion and his Die Gedankerz der Romant2 gber Kirche und Sgaat Election stand would no$ have been so stoutly sad so (Ber telsmann 1941) checking on Fr iedrich Schleier- macher and Julius Stahl. He shows that both tried to persiseewcly opposed in the New Wo~3.d~Dr , F, Pieper '8 subsequent attasks on the avalanche of subjective and fix secular straight-jackets on the Church, as we speculative innova tiows were totally in order, Only explained in Lecture I, the one as a carnal enthusiast thus could the New World 's Drcl aretion 0% independence trusting to the universal religious instinct , the be upheld, other injecting legitimist governmental premises into ecclesiastical polity. The former right faow deserves Although WilhePm Loehe as the preacher and the being declared the patron saint of all who trust people chief head sf the Prawesniaa Lutheran upsurge and as blindly, who advocate situation ethics and see the blessed planner sf long enduring foreign and inner cure of church ills in ever more democracy, enfranch- mission endeavours had inklings that the Constziatine ising children, etc., etc, (as Keith R, Bridston) . World Ckureh aymbj-osis was detrimental and soot1 wasld (As to the latter, he wanted to be a believer, But be at wit's end, and although August Vilnlclr told his he spoiled his confessional approach by making the not &so worthy E%essianprince, "Sire, let the t;hurch pastor the sole avenue of grace toward the people be free'" they all did not risk a break, Thus German and ~od'ssole instrument of government over the Lutt~eranfsm , excepting the valiant Lutheran Free people, even in areas where God wants the Christians Church people, remained tied down to a hugs ancient to have free choices Vilmar and Loehe got drawn into block on %he road, One further result was that h~th- that same current, and today they in turn draw almost eranism was looked upon as merely a historical family all German theologians who eschew Liberalism and want among historical families to be viewed and handled confessional truth into this egregious right fringe morphologically (even Werner Elert 's pat tern, though current .) Another important writer, very recent, is his instincts and details often were better than his Fr. Wilh. Kantzenbach of the LWF's Strasbourg Insti- ground-plan) tute. It is to be conceded, of course, that in his theology he is a far cry from the freedom granted by Let me at this point suggest that there has not becoming captive to Christ Only and Total. But he been sufficient research on the impact of the alien recently rendered truth a service by exploring the specuXations concerning "Idea, Organism, and History" quite spectacular speculative influences that were and also of the Constantine realities on the continental a-work on the Gestalten und Tzjpen des NeuZuthertums made the tremendous Lutheran equipoise accessible , Tt is not superfluous again to America, by the two tomes just appearing to mention that Bengt has produced a "History which are to be followed by two more tomes. of ~h~~k~gy"(Concordi or th its price in spite of the evident drawback that he does not know a thing ab~utyour Walthgr Century, nor ousht Holsten Nste 10: a b3ekezztr%is3kilirslre ~m.?Amk in de~deubsciaera etlen Theologie des i9.dahrhundert (Uppsala An Arsnerican author deserves mention, Much of 1952) be passed by (with perhaps tiresome listing of the material on the Missouri Synod disintegrating, details under separating heads but, for instance, on counting from the 4 Doc trim1 Commissioners' disagree- p. 244 making plain just about the whole line-up of ments t~ the break-up of the Synodical Conference, Missouri's neology sf Fellowship in an essay by facts which my Lecture II recorded in the form it P ,A .ph , hil lip pi) . If in Anerica "s Lutherlad real became evident eas our European vantage point, has charch historians could somewhere in a late hour been committed to the printed page in the pragmtic exercise due influence, short breath books like and spiritual manner of a U, S .A, pas tor who was on "WhicE~ Way to Lutheran Unity? I' wodd become ludi~rous. the scene for 8 small synsd. The Evangelical Luth- Who would then even cast a look at %maturewriters, eran Synod's total uphill fight is incidentally corn- ~qithbooklets and periodicals like Urn S'crnck, von memorated, which my Iec tare thus could omit, I: refer Schenk, Hezber t Lidemann, Lathg~arnF dashing in to Theodore A. Aaberg9s City Set On a Hitz (Mankato, to trace things? Also the main outpu Lu&heran Minn., 1968). The E,L,S, author naturally a&fers &uarterty and Lutheran World would then appear as details which 1 skipped, particularly on pp, 164-202, almsst eqmlly imdequate. Help might thus accrue mentioning t"ha '"~oc trissal Af f imatisns" ', Kis synod's for reconnecting those, who today in pulpit and pew suspension of direc%pulpit and a%ear fellowship in are longing &o remain Lutheran, with the comerasm 1955, i~hfchin pare produced the de~~~ationsf the hisbricus Lutheram drawing out the line of the "Comon @onfessPon'"by the I-;C+fS in 8956, and also Conf essisns . There is, and will ever be suck later weighty details. Also more stages of "Theology a thing, the secret of true ecmenical balance, %he of Fellowship" from the first crasl: :,r.ogram to the upshot of the Bong streeck of two hundred early f Pnal Nev Yollfk ve~sbonarc depiceed. gears after 1517 was its great incarnation head ahead, it if was, anal body still attached, though Again, if Concordia Publishing House is Es have Jostled, This continua tion of doc trim1 integdty a future and no$. just ts go dom the drain as a was first of all emstioflrally discredited by later dependency of Augsburg and Fortress, it ought to individua%ist Pietists and then haughtily cast to aspire to become a non-provincial clearing hause for the winds by the rationalist neologians. But the all good Lutheran or othemise helpful literature, Walther Century, though steeped in Luther and empha- particularly including also historical sources and sizing the 16th century, rediscovered also the 19 th in-depth works, and Concordia Historical Ins titute century as being far nearer to the pure marks of the ought to be quickly detached from the ~eo-Seminary's One Church of Christ than all 19th century Nes- home propaganda. v Lutheranism had offered . This even though several df sapprobations had to be voiced regarding prac tice putting up with the unbroken Constantine may, and Kirchemrdnungen and theory following suit, and formulations using too much Neo-Ar istotelianism and getting weaker. Drs. J ,A,O. and Robert D. Preus have Remainder of First Lecture:

After the finalizing of the doctrinal background in the Formula of Concord of 1577, four post-Reforma- It's now some time since these 1969 Reformation tion Centuries will be pointed out, confined to Con- Lee tares were delivered in Manbto 's Bethany, It tinental Europe. (The fourth is still in progress, so thus seems appropriate here to affix the three out- that this First Lecture, as to Europe, will go beyond lines which had been bnded out to all attending. sketching the background and will already include the They are reproduced for the reader's benefit to malysis of the present state, attaching a notice emble him to connect the Second Lecture with the concerning expans ion f nto a ther continents ,) First One, which the previous issue of this prineed, and with the Third One, which will follow Betaiga on the Four Centuries: after. However, note that the outlines were guide posts to the considerably shorter verbal lectures First post-Reformation Century: 30 Years ' br, and embled the speaker to point to them to save Paul Gerhard , slow drift downward -- Last year 1677. time, They help quickly getting the thoughts even wow. For these printed lectures they do not, however, --Second post-Reformation Century: first Pietism, supersede the service rendered by the divisions as then Englightement -- intellectual and enterprising fwarked by underscored sanperrss.reiptions in each case, upper-elass man ready to take God's place now also following a capital letter enumeration. in Pr~~estantGemany -- Last year 1777 (one year af rgr Declaration of Bndepewdeace in U ,S .A,) . Third post-Reformagion Century: eclipse of p- 1CIES;E PRESENT STATE OF CONFESSIONAL LUTHEMNISM Christian doc erlne, and faith; a revival af eer Napoleon, at IN MfEWTCA AMID THE WOWm which many places developed inta a remarkble Luth- eran Confessional Re-awakening , The firs% da te for the latter fa the birth sf the first Lvthesan Free by Dr, &J, Me Oesch Church, another center is Bavaria. In iaviening the ----Lecture I- October 30, 10: 08 A ,Me further development : Bible criticism &ad Jot txfnel decline win out, issuing into the Ritschlian pseudo- --General Division and Basic Approach:- Lutheranism cultural Gaspel, Rswg;!ver, the swll Lutheran Free Church movement has nevertheless spread be Past , Present and Future will the aspects across Germany -- hst date 1877, developed in the three lectures, Fourth pos t-Ref orma tion Century (still in prog- But first the --doctrinal backgroud must be filled ress, therefore already an analysis of the present in -- as to what CHRIST ONLY means and how the ONE state): the decline reaches almost the final low in CHURCH, in responsible action locally, can only be all the state and territorial Lutheran churches of made sure of by its pure notes, i,e., by the means of Continental Europe, so that these are practically grace taught and administered according to Scriptures . only units of the total secular society (Norway still Such an orthodox church is truly ecumenical, and for better), that reason it cannot fePLswship with heterodox churches (although there are Christians in them) because it would thereby be approving of Babylon which is suppressing Zion, -62- Nevertheless there are some Christians left, fact must begin with 1837, when C .F ,We Walther was mostly in various pieeist associations; and a few ordained in Saxony, which he soon left, really Lutheran territorial pas tors are left over, who are $e~riffcal%ybaffled, Parishes are beyond The basic WALTWER CENTURY of ConfessionaP Lu th- the hope sf any recovery, and as is ehesbogisal eranism in America, being projected in paint of the teaching a% all universities, This is the sad story straight into the third and fourth continental psst- in spite sf ehe hages &ha$ arsse prior and afeer he Ref omation centuries. bst date 1937, Second World War, Karl Barth led on to Bdtmann, etcs More promise than ever attaches to the Lutheran mis century saw various extensions of ~11~6~pe's Free Church ssun&er-moveraent to be finally recognized Con%fessisna%Re-awakening, operating in America, But as sf f er ing the Lutheran csnf essioaal alterna tbve , through C,P,W, Walther, more than throl~ghwhat had in American Barge-body-Lu eheraniam is spoiling things . sme practical aspects preceded in the East, the shape S~andBmvianstate ehureh sit= tdon aimflar to Ger- of New World Lutheran Conf essisnakism received an man, S~zedenand Demark even worse, What ssr t of impetus not only closer to confessing congregations, Last Date will be coming in 19971 but also more consistent in teaching and preaching than contemporary Europe, in some respects even tran- scding the ~efsmae%anBs own decades. The %nfluence THE PRESENT STATE OF CONFESSIOHAL EUWEMNXSM of the Missouri Synod, as feuded together with Laehe SEN M-ERICA Am THE VORm Lutherans in L847 , was tremendous, It amounted to a Gsd-pleasing spiritual Declaration of Independence, mis continued to ga by our dating, in the Lutheran heartlands up to 1937, which was 50 years after ~alther's death,

Background ad amlysis of the present situation \*ibe not denying s the% contributions, also those in Ameria, introduc%wg the Malther Century and the Zgam Scandinavia, nor being urnware of side tsacking First post-Walther Century, influences, the chief factors involved %nthe "onward and upward" movemen% d,emad being resogriized as they Preliminary Remarks : culminated in the Synodical Conference (Ig72), We must register the clarion call sounded CQ Europe, Naturally Lutheranism in America afzer 1577, which proved deaf through cultured provincialism, the more of a factor after 1677, would start as shaped Lutheran Free Church movement excep ted . by the Old World, moving, however, wiehsu t s $a te sup- port, with less emphasis on learning and wPth asre Pos t-Walther achievements , even great post -World attention to gathering continental immigrant people War 1 victories in missions must be noted . Yet also into congregations, whfeh aff ered some pro testion dark clouds ascending around absut the Synodical Con- against a rapid going dom after $777, ference and serious new developments endangering above all the Missouri of the great language transi- Yet, in case it should be true that God brought tion must be portrayed. about an enriched, perhaps even more consistent devel- opment of Lutheran Conf essionalism somehow, somewhere General Council merges into United Lutheran in America, we might be justified in counting its centuries from a different starting point, We in Norwegian Merger in 1561'9 produces EL6 and ELS, in the Overseas' "European Collection, Part 111"; the sections of this part were handed over to the individ- Ohio and Iowa together with the Synodical Con- ual committee concerned only, not to an committees, ference produce the Chicago Theses, which Missouri did not accept Wisconsin suspends church fellowship with Mis- souri after the 1961 j oint Synodical Gonf erenee C~nven 14issouri adds the "~riefStatement" in 1932, tian, although Missouri is still represented through sf fiela1 Bbservers at the last meeting of the four The Geman background AAEC had appeared on the @ommittees with the &exseas in 1962 befsre Missouri's scene in 1930, seven years before the WaPther Cen- Clevelar~dConvent ion, tury's LAST' DATE, 1937, The Synodical Conference of 90 years standing The FIRST POST-IdALTHER CENW-RY (the emphasis turning then reached an ignsble end in 1962, both Wiseonsin either ZO the "post" or to the "WaBtheai'), The Last and the ELS leaving it and Missouri embarking more 113 kz is 2037, D ,V,, of which a full third part has or less on the lIarms course, the Slovak Synod running c~a11spPred. along. "Theology of Fellowship" was being expanded into the three pasts adopted in New York, the outcome The (German background 1 ALG % and Mi ssauri ' s being but a little less pseudo-ecumenfd than the jo%at two document attempt was presented and acknowl- first attempt had been, On this basis LCUSA had been eidged as future basis by the $938 St, Louis Conven- approved of and the '%%ssianAffirmations" passed tion. But a few msntlas later it was vitiated by the already 2 years earlier, (The substituted fntesna- I~%c?:sburghAgreement and by the incrzasing ALC ap- tional conferences nf a new type, Cambridge 1 and I1 f 7.* proaches to the ULC, r; ihe Crucible'\ laowdon, s-jngr-ii lacked the Overseas' doctrinal presuppositions and, 1".iq,,,,, :3 c$ , spoke out on ghat) , ra?k~eT&IAC meT:ger ts,16:i,~g haranguing mosgly about the EWFp in essentials have

the i

The anti-past or$sng& "~&a~em~~:~~32 CQS Denver 2969 was preceded by a suceessian sf

#--1401 ~eivlces@ hgseefiiernt ai:d p~sT-lj,rar aprange~en:~ Australian and European doctrinal- appeals ("APJ URNEST increased the Synodical Gonf erexce ~rsublea,~;h!!eki FRATERNAL APPUL~~, LAST WORD OF POWER OVERSEAS cz,-,%eredsw ''Theology of Fellowship, Part 1I~"52i%h DELEGATES", "COROLMRIES") also by official European in its crash program stage), Q3~erseasDeB sga~z,sweze Bvertures , which were all neglected. Denver's 3-15 called ts the scene %a three co~iseca~t~veyezrs zI:kr was followed by the declaration of the statas confes- 1959, 'Their 15 theses, stressing %he pure nozes af sionis in print by the editors of the LUTHERTSCHE the One Church, were presented in 1961 to the fs~~r RUNDBLICK (see 1969 issue for the quarters I11 and synods @fourdoc tsinak csmnf ttees with individual IV), and, with reference to the Lutheran Free Churches applications, of France and Finland, by their representative men announcing the state of protes t. The Recessed Synodical Conference Convention in 1961 approved of the &erseasbpresentation as offer- ing avenues for a new start, A severe critique sf ~Bsssuri's"Thesl69gy of Fellswship" had been includes<% ooakGf2 attack. It is also valuable because it corresponds with an explanation of the purposes which the scribe to a remarkable extent to the Hebrew text in our had in making the changes. In general, these changes Hebrew Bible, and as we had it before 1947. Although are seen to grow out of the motivation noted in other there are numerous variant readings, as we can learn studies: the development of a text which was more from a study of the unpointed Hebrew words at the easily understandable to a readership which no longer bottom of each page of Isaiah in Kittel's DIBLIA used Hebrew as their primary language. The MS is seen HEBRAICA, these are few in comparison to the number as a simplification of the MT with the greater number of words in the Hebrew text on each paqe, Moreover,- of variants explicable for this reason. This is true in most of the instances in which this-manuscript for stylistic changes as well as for the reasons noted (called the St. Mark's Isaiah Scroll) differs from above and in other studies of linguistic factors. the Masoretic text, the variants are relatively insig- nificant, often involving the letters waw and "Seen in the light of this and other studies, which are optional in many Hebrew words. the MS becomes a popularization of the Book of Isaiah which developed to meet the requirements of a partic- In his study Dv. Rosenbloom, who teaches in the ular audience. It also indicates that a single 'fixed' Classics Department at Washington University in St. text was not the prevailing practice at the time of Louis, takes up most of the variant readings in the the MS although such may have been the ideal of the St. Mark's Scroll. This manuscript is very old, Masoretes. Liberties were apparently taken with the having been dated by reputable scholars at about Holy Scriptures which moderns would hesitate to take. 150 to 100 B.C. This is almost 1000 years older than On the other hand, the MS may be seen as standinq in manuscripts of Isaiah or other parts of the Old Testa- relal;ion to the MT or the masteentext csci ts time as ment which were available to us before 1947. (When the Newly Revised Version gtands in relation to the manuscripts became old and worn, they would be dis- King James Version." (p. xiii.) carded by the Jews and replaced by new copr'es .) Yet it is interesting ts know that the author of this This reviewer found it helpful and rewarding to book speaks of the copyist (or copyists) of the St. read the entire Book sf Isaiah in the Hebrew with Mark's manuscript as having before him (them) a Hebrew various Engl ish versions for reference, 2nd neting text which was essentially the same as the Hebrew text the variants as pointed out in this liti le book, in our Bible, and that most of the variant readings which can prove very beneficial to any studg2ilt of in the St* Mark's scroll are the result of careless- the text of Isaiah, we had occasion to disagree with ness, a misunderstanding of the text, or an attempt the author's conclusions in only a few instances. at simplifying the text. In the vast majority of We are indebted to both the author and the publishers cases Dr. Rosenbloom prefers the Masoretic Text (MT) for this book, which we would recornend as a conven- to the St. Mark's scroll (MS), which, he alleges, in ient and helpful guide. some instances destroys the poetic quality of the MT. Rudolph E. Honsey

In his introduction Dr. RosenbSasm makes the following statements which, we feel, give a good description of this study: The Layman's Parallel New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Pub1ishi ng - House, 1470, $7.95; paper- "The present study is an analysis of the var- back, $4.95. iants of the MS and the MT from a literary orienta- Several parallel editions of various transla- tion: the relationship of the MS to the MT, together ions of the New Testament have appeared in recent years. This is the newest and contains the King James Version, the Amplified New Testament, the Living New Testament , and the Revised Standard Version. Readers of the LSQ are generally familiar with a1 1 of these translations except the Living New Testament, which is a revised edition, in turn, of the American Stand- ard Version, though paraphrased. If one remembers the weaknesses of the translations and uses them properly, these four parallel columns will be great aids to Bible study. G. E. Reichwald

The Zondervan Expanded Concordance. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1968, $14.95 A good concordance is a valuable tool, as every pastor knows. But one of the problems is tracing a word through a translation which has no concordance to open the way. One may use the original, but when one is interested in how a translation uses a word, this cannot be done too readily. This concordance combines several translations to meet this need: the King James Version, the Amplified Bible, the Berkely version, Phil1ip's translation, the Revised Standard Version, the New English Bible, the English Revised, plus some words from the new edition of the Schofield Bible. Bible students will find it a most helpful reference work. G. E. Reichwald

Wold, Joseph Conrad. God's Impatience in Liberia. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1968, $2.95 teraman rub l ishing Company has been pub1 ishi ng a series of monographs on various mission fields through- out the world. While our synod does not have any African missions, it is most interestinq -- and infor- mative on methods -- to read what other groups, includ- inq Lutherans, are doing in Liberia. G. E. Reichwald