Missourian! 3: A Missourian is…what?; denying it = falling from grace

      This continues from Part 2 (Table of Contents here), a series presenting Walther's Foreword to the 1872 Der Lutheraner on the term “Missourian”. — Now Walther gets to the heart of his essay.  The Church of the Reformation was now several centuries old and had gained a certain measure of respectability.  But its teachers, in Germany and elsewhere, were veering off course and a strong correction was needed. Oh, but what a "hornet's nest" was stirred up.  We continue now Walther's narrative.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

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, text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Foreword (“Vorwort”)

Twenty-ninth year of Der Lutheraner.

[by C.F.W. Walther, part 3 of 5]

Page 9, Column 1

(Continued and concluded.)

“That's Missourian!” — that's how quite a few now exclaim both here and in the old fatherland when they want to warn others about certain doctrines and institutions. As soon as they have said: “That’s Missourian” they think they have said completely enough to be able to reject the matter without further proof. It is only too obvious: by calling us not Lutherans, but "the Missourians", they want to make it clear that we are a new sect, which every faithful Lutheran has to be careful of, if he does not want to be seduced. Some have already been kind enough to call us a sect, or to claim in our face that we are on the straight and narrow path to becoming a sect. Missourian doctrine and practice and new false doctrine and practice, a Missourian and a man who causes all misfortune in the church, — these are respected and now explained by many as almost synonymous things. What the Papists wanted to say four and a half centuries ago [sic, 3-½ centuries] when they called Luther's companions in faith and confession not Christians, but “Lutherans”, that's what many today want to say when they now call us not Lutherans, but “Missourians”. As one once wanted to ban the so-called Lutherans with this name from the old Christian church, so one apparently now wants to push us with this name, so-called Missourians, out of the Lutheran church.

It is therefore apparently high time that we also talk about what a so-called Missourian actually is and wants to be. Permit us to use the present “Foreword” for this purpose.

If we are now to say briefly and succinctly what a Missourian actually is and wants to be, it is this: 

● A Missourian is an Evangelical Lutheran Christian, nothing else, nothing more and nothing less; and that the old Evangelical Lutheran Christianity will be [Page 9, Column 2] planted again and come up, that's what he wants. 

● A Missourian is a man who, by God's grace, has come to the firm conviction that Luther was the angel or messenger of God preached in the Holy Scriptures, who, after the Christian Church had been led by the Papacy into extreme corruption, was to fly with the “eternal,” that is, with the pure, unadulterated, divine gospel, through the midst of the church heaven. (Rev 14:6) 

● A Missourian is a person who, by God's grace, has also come to the firm conviction that the Lutheran Church of the Reformation was truly a true reformation of the church, namely a redemption from the tyranny of the Antichrist and a restoration of the old, original Christian church to its first apostolic purity. 

● A Missourian is a man who has therefore also come to the firm conviction that our Evangelical Lutheran Church, after thousands of years of oppression, has taken out of the rubble and dust of all kinds of human and devil’s doctrines (1 Tim. 4:1) that have penetrated is again resurrected visible orthodox church Jesus Christ on earth and that its confessional book, the so-called Book of Concord (above all the unaltered so-called Augsburg Confession, publicly handed over in the year 1530 to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg), with the writings of the apostles and prophets agrees with the most exact in all points. 

● A Missourian is a person who has also firmly convinced himself that Luther, in all the doctrines of faith in which confession he remained until his death, was a witness of truth awakened by God, highly enlightened and sent to all Christendom, and that this truth was laid down for faithful preservation in Luther's writings left to us as an invaluable treasure chamber entrusted by God to the Lutheran Church. 

● A Missourian is so firmly convinced of all this in his conscience that he could only deny it if he fell out of God's grace.

● A Missourian respects the writings of the theologians of our Church who, in the seventeenth century, developed, expanded, and applied the doctrine retrieved by Luther in scholarly and edifying writings, such as the writings of [Page 9, Column 3] J. Gerhard, Aegidius and Nikolaus Hunnius, Caspar Brochmand, Andreas Quenstedt, Heinrich Müller, Christian Scriver and others, and also accepts with great gratitude what the later Lutheran theologians have said and contributed to the good from God's Word to the present day; but 

● a Missourian does not correct the confessional writings of our Church and the teaching of the Reformation from the later writings, but receives these.

= = = = = = = = = = = =  continued in Part 4  = = = = = = = = = = = = =

      Wallace McLaughlin, a former Presbyterian and ULC Lutheran who eventually became a pastor and teacher in the Missouri Synod, related the following while a student at a ULC seminary:

"At college I was attacked by class-mates and finally 'set straight' by the president of the institution (a former Missourian) for my 'Missourian views' on election and conversion." 

      When I read Walther's statement about denying being a "Missourian", I recognized my own path in life.  When I left my Missouri Lutheran upbringing from a small town congregation, I left the Lutheran faith… and I was actually falling from God's grace.  And it was only by His grace that I returned to the "Missourian" Lutheran Christian faith. — In the next Part 4…