Missourian! #2: Lutheran Martyrs; deny Luther?; ceased to be dirty word? or not?

      This continues from Part 1 (Table of Contents here), a series presenting Walther's Foreword to the 1872 Der Lutheraner on the term “Missourian”. — This portion begins with those who died as Lutherans, also in America, but ends with how the label of "Lutheran" lost its dirty word connotation.
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Taken from Der Lutherner v. 29 (1872), p. 1-2, 9-10. Translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft, Yandex. Underlining follows Walther’s emphasis. All hyperlinks, highlighting, red text, text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Foreword (“Vorwort”)

Twenty-ninth year of Der Lutheraner.

[by C.F.W. Walther, part 2 of 5]

As often as the Papists had murdered a witness of the truth in and after Luther's time, in Germany, France, England, Spain, etc., they always thought they had justified themselves sufficiently and could boast of their bloody deed if they could only say [page 2, col. 1] that the one executed was a Lutheran. Even the Calvinists were often persecuted as “Lutherans” at that time. This has even happened in America. In the time of the persecution of the Calvinists in France in the second half of the 16th century many French Calvinists emigrated to America and founded a settlement among other things on the coast north of Florida. This aroused the jealousy of the King of Spain, the fanatical papist Philip II. The same sent therefore (in the year 1565) a squadron of 11 ships, manned with 2600 soldiers, to the North American coast with the order to destroy the newly developed settlement. This order was executed on time. Whoever fell into the hands of the papist Spaniards had to suffer the criminal's death. Many were tied to the trees of the nearby forest and the headline was attached: “These were not hanged as French, but as Lutherans”. By this they thought that they had sufficiently justified their murder, for a Lutheran and a man worthy of the most martyr's death were regarded by the Papists as synonymous.*) [ref. blog posts here and here]

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*) Two years later, however, the French invaded the forts erected by the murderous Spaniards in the area of the destroyed French settlement in order to avenge that infamous act, and now also attached a headline to these Spaniards, but with the following: “These were not hanged as Spaniards and Catholics, but as traitors, thieves and murderers.”

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But since the enemies have stubbornly persisted in calling all those who profess with Luther the old Christian apostolic faith Lutherans, so finally all confessors of this faith have had to put up with this name. Yes, in the end it has come so far that the one who did not want to admit to being a Lutheran, although he carried the ancient Christian apostolic faith in his heart, by his denial of being a Lutheran, would have denied the true faith. Luther therefore wrote already in 1522: 

“Finally, I see that I must add a good word of admonition to those whom Satan has now begun to persecute. For there are some among them who think that when they are attacked they can escape the danger by saying: I do not hold with Luther or with anyone else, but only with the holy gospel and the holy church, or with the Roman church. For saying so they think they will be left in peace. Yet in their hearts they regard my teaching as the teaching of the gospel and stand by it. In reality this kind of statement does not help them, and it is in effect a denial of Christ. Therefore, I beg such people to be very careful.

True, by any consideration of body or soul you should never say: I am Lutheran, or Papist. For neither of them died for you, or is your master. Christ alone died for you, he alone is your master, and you should confess yourself a Christian. But if you are convinced that Luther’s teaching is in accord with the gospel and that the pope’s is not, then you should not discard Luther so completely, lest with him you discard also his teaching, which you nevertheless recognize as Christ’s teaching. You should rather say: Whether Luther is a rascal or a saint I do not care; his teaching is not his, but Christ’s.

For you will observe that the tyrants are not out merely to destroy Luther, but to wipe out the teaching. It is on account of the teaching that they attack you and ask you whether you are Lutheran. Here you must be sure not to speak with slippery or evasive words but frankly to confess Christ, no matter who did the preaching—Luther, or Tom, Dick, or Harry. The person you can forget; but the [page 2, col. 2] teaching you must confess. Paul also writes thus to Timothy in 2 Tim. 1:8: ‘Do not be ashamed then of testifying to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake.’ If it had been enough here for Timothy to confess the gospel, Paul would not have commanded him not to be ashamed also of Paul—not of Paul as a person but of Paul as a prisoner for the sake of the gospel. Now if Timothy had said, I do not hold with Paul or with Peter, but with Christ, when he knew that Peter and Paul were teaching Christ, then he would actually thereby have denied Christ himself. For Christ says in Matt. 10 [Matt. 10:40] concerning those who preach him: ‘He who receives you receives me, and he who rejects you rejects me.’ Why this? Because holding thus with his messengers, those who bring his word, is the same as holding with Christ himself and with his word..” (see Luther's writing: “Receiving Both Kinds in the Sacrament”. XX, 136. f.) [St. L XX, p 90-92, § 76-78; Am. Ed. 36, p 265-266] 

Hence Margrave Georg of Brandenburg, the well-known intrepid confessor of the truth, answered at the Diet of Augsburg when the name Lutheran was used to insult him, thus: “I am not baptized in Dr. Luther; he is not my God and Saviour; I do not believe in him and do not become saved by him; and therefore in such a sense I am not Lutheran. But when I am asked whether I confess with my heart and mouth the teaching that God has given me again through his healing instrument, Dr. Luther, I have no hesitation or shyness in calling myself Lutheran; and in this sense I am and remain a Lutheran for the rest of my life.”

But what happened? In the course of time, the name “Lutheran” has finally almost completely ceased to be a dirty word; on the contrary, it has often become an honorary name; as Luther had already predicted. He wrote in the already mentioned letter of consolation to the Miltenbergers: “Although I dislike very much that doctrine and people have to suffer to be called Lutheran and thus see God’s word profaned with my name, still they will have to let Luther, as well as Lutheran doctrine and people, alone and [let them] be held in esteem. On the other hand, they and their doctrine will perish and come to shame, even to the dismay of all the world and the vexation of all devils.…  We know whose word it is that we are preaching. They will not deprive us all of it. That is my prophecy, which will not fail [to come true]. May God have pity on them.” (V, 1858. f.) [St. L. 1283, § 15; Am. Ed. 43, p. 112]  But what will be the consequence of the fact that the name Lutheran has changed from an insulting name into an honorary name? This: that the enemies of the Lutheran doctrine alone want to be the proper Lutherans, but that those who really are, now by new party names, e.g., Old Lutherans, Missourians, and the like, suspect and seek to brand as a newly emerged sects.

Be it then granted to us in the next issue to pronounce on the new name “Missouri, Missourian Doctrine” which has been pinned on us and our doctrine by the enemies.

(to be continued.)

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      As I read Walther's statement that “the name ‘Lutheran’… ceased to be a dirty word”, I was reminded of how the great spokesman for "Science" in the 19th and 20th centuries, Andrew Dickson White of Cornell University, called Lutheranism

“…that branch of Protestantism which claims special enlightenment”.

White, in a perverse way, grants the Lutheran Church a sort of respectability.  But in the 20th century, in an "Evangelical" America, Franz Pieper, in an essay in Lehre und Wehre in 1925, said:

According to [William] Shedd there are only “two great systems of theology which divide evangelical Christendom, Calvinism and Arminianism”. The Lutheran Church, which in its confession rejects both Calvinism and Arminianism, is denied the right to exist. …Princetonian Charles Hodge, joins Shedd in his judgment. Hodge declares the doctrinal position of the Lutheran Church “illogical” and untenable.

If today one announces to another of the American Reformed persuasion, whether that person is Presbyterian or Baptist or Pentecostal or "community" or whatever, that you are a Lutheran, you will typically get a response similar to those of Shedd and Hodge.  — Today, the pope "stoops" so low to appear to be in agreement with "Lutheranism"… or is it the other way around? And, of course, Arthur Carl Piepkorn said that "Lutheranism" held only a third rank in today's religious scene.  But it is all a sham.  Of course the Pope knows, as well as the rest of the world, that modern so-called "Lutheranism" has long ago left the true Lutheran faith.  But I digress.  — In the next Part 3…