Sacraments: Secondary to Word of Gospel; Piepkorn vs Pieper

[2024-11-30: see also this blog post on this subject]

    What is the primary fundamental article of Christianity? "The Word in the form of the Gospel". — 

      Philip James Secker († 2024) is perhaps the best known spokesman today for Prof. Arthur Carl Piepkorn († 1973).  His essay delivered to the The 32nd Annual Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions, at Concordia Theological Seminary, Ft. Wayne, Indiana in January, 2009 may be downloaded here. It is entitled "Arthur Carl Piepkorn and The Schism of Authority in Lutheranism". The target of this essay is the teaching of Prof. Franz Pieper, this in spite of Pres. Harrison's claim that Pieper is "our greatest LCMS theologian". (Also in spite of Dr. Henry Allen's claim that "Pieper’s multi-volume Christian Dogmatics… remains a foundational text in LCMS seminary instruction".) As background for this matter, the following is from Pieper's Christian Dogmatics, vol. 1, p. 86: 

Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, important as they are, do not have the same importance and necessity as basis of faith as the Word in the form of the Gospel and are therefore called secondary fundamental articles.  

But Secker reports the following in his history of Prof. Arthur Carl Piepkorn, p. 12:

While reading the Symbols in the fall of 1928 and after, Piepkorn became convinced that according to them the Word and Sacraments are both constitutive of the Church. In 1937 he wrote that “Christianity is in its historic aspect essentially sacramental.”

Piepkorn testified to this [p. 6]:

I went up to the University with a habitual faith, but I found myself, very shortly, ill-equipped to meet either the problem of personal religion—I learned this in a personal religion group—or confrontation with other Christians. 

If Piepkorn had taken to heart the teaching of his "revered professor" Franz Pieper (p. 7), he would have had all that he needed to fend off those of the sects at the "University", for all he had to do to distinguish himself was tell them the true Gospel, i.e. Universal, Objective Justification.  But he did not... why?  Why would he shrug off the greatest teaching the world has, or ever will, hear, the teaching that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions?  Why would he either forget or leave this "Lutheran Doctrine of Justification" to fend for himself and claim that he "discovered" the Lutheran Confessions?

      As an antidote to the false teachings of both Profs. Piepkorn and David Scaer, I want to publish the full text and Christian teaching of Prof. Pieper from page 86 of Volume I [Christliche Dogmatik p. 95-96]:

In the controversies between the Lutheran and the Reformed Church, one of the disputed questions was whether Baptism and the Lord’s Supper belong to the foundation of the Christian faith.118 Scripture has decided this question. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper certainly do belong to the foundation of the Christian faith, together with the Word of the Gospel, for Baptism is given “for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38), and in the Lord’s Supper Christ’s body and blood are imparted as “given for you” and “shed for you for the remission of sins” (Luke 22:19 ff.; Matt. 26:26 ff.). The promise and offer of the forgiveness of sins, which is the foundation of faith, is contained also in the Sacraments.119 Hence the doctrines of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are certainly fundamental doctrines. — But why do we call them articuli fundamentales secundarii? A man may, through ignorance of the nature and benefit of the Sacraments, lack that foundation of his faith which the Sacraments supply, but still have the true faith in the forgiveness of sins if he trusts in the Word of the Gospel, as heard or read. The reason is that the Gospel Word gives the full remission of sins gained by Christ, and Baptism and the Lord’s Supper give the same grace only in another and in a particularly consoling way (verbum visibile — applicatio individualis). The Christian who does not make the right use of the Sacraments, but trusts in the Gospel, has the true saving faith though he lacks the additional support for his faith which God has provided in the Sacraments.120 Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, important as they are, do not have the same importance and necessity as basis of faith as the Word in the form of the Gospel and are therefore appropriately called secondary fundamental articles. The one is essential to faith, the other is intended to support faith. What is absolutely necessary is the hearing of the Word. The articuli fundamentales secundarii are, in the words of Quenstedt, those qui non simpliciter fundamentales seu causa salutis sunt, ad fundamentum tamen pertinent (Systema I, 355).

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118. Nikolaus Hunnius’ Διάσκεψις Theologica de Fundamentali Dissensu (1626) and Joh. Huelsemann’s Calvinismus Irreconciliabüis (1646). Walch, Bibliotheca Theologica, II, 486 ff., discusses the complete bibliography, covering also the Reformed writings.
119. This is fully discussed in the section "Baptism a True Means of Grace,” in Vol. III.
120. This is the case with the children of God in the Reformed bodies, who, misled by their teachers, fail to use Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as divinely appointed means of justification. Believing the Gospel, they have the full forgiveness of their sins, full salvation. Both Luther (St. L. XVII: 2212) and the Preface to the Book of Concord (Trigl. 19 f.) call attention to this.

      Why would Piepkorn call Franz Pieper his "revered professor" when he expressly contradicts a major teaching of his?  Prof. David Scaer is in the same camp against Pieper, even when he seemingly praised him.  And make no mistake, they considered/consider themselves to be "Confessional Lutherans!"  Scaer even authored a book on "Confessional Lutheranism".  Yes indeed! they are to be considered CONFESSIONAL in capital letters, Pieper is out with his transient opinion.  And Piepkorn was one of the translators for Tappert's Book of Concord... doesn't that make him truly "Confessional"?

      Are we to listen to Piepkorn and Scaer when they proclaim that they hold to Confessional Theology more than Franz Pieper does?  Are we to distrust Pieper?

      Yet it was this very teaching of Franz Pieper, in his Christian Dogmatics, that jolted me back to my Christian faith, that caused me to not consider Holy Communion as a work of mine, but God's work.  It is Pieper's clear distinction of the Holy Scripture from the Sacraments that caused me to truly value them, not devalue them as Piepkorn and Scaer imply.  For the basis of the Sacraments is not their ex opere operato (the work itself), but the Word that gives them their divine power, that indeed they are God's work.  It was not today's LC-MS sacramental teaching that brought me back to my Christian faith, it was the old (German) Missouri's teaching on the Word of God, the true Word of the Gospel, i.e. Universal, Objective Justification – the teaching that is largely missing from Profs. Arthur Carl Piepkorn and David Scaer.