“Walther as Churchman”, by L Fuerbringer (1 of 5); Altenburg Debate- Walther compares to Luther

[2019-10-08: added picture of Pastor Schieferdecker at bottom]
      Yesterday, October 3, 2019, Concordia Seminary announced that President Dale Meyer was retiring.  But that “Concordia Seminary” is far different from the one which began in 1839 – 180 years ago –, different from the way it was even in 1936, 83 years ago. —

      As far as I know, the following essay by President Ludwig Fuerbringer from the October 1936 issue of Concordia Theological Monthly (CTM) has not been translated and published in English.  It took me some time to decide to do this because of Fuerbringer's theological weaknesses, some of which show in this essay.  But the farther I went with it, it became clear that he reveals some aspects of Walther and the Old Missouri Synod that may not have been covered elsewhere.  The year is 1936, over 5 years after Pieper had passed away, and Ludwig may have just wanted to keep the memory of the father of Missouri alive for a younger generation.  But as I progressed with this translation, I wondered that even he noticed, in 1936, rumblings of unrest in the Synod and the Synodical Conference, and wanted to defend against erring brethren, especially in the areas of Church and Ministry.  But the hint of unrest will come later.

      The reader may note that I have rearranged the footnotes to follow their immediate paragraph, not the page, so that they are closer to their original reference, making it easier to follow.  I have inserted notices of page breaks of original CTM German language publication in <red markings>.

      Now I begin a 5-part series from the last President of Concordia Seminary to have any claim to the name "Old Missouri", an essay about the first President, and founder of the Missouri Synod.

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Original German essay in CTM, vol. 7 (October, 1936), p. 721-730, full text here. Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Fuerbringer's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Walther as Churchman. *)

L. Fuerbringer, 1931

[by Ludwig Fuerbringer]

*) This present issue appears as a Walther issue especially considering that in October [25] 1936 one hundred and twenty-five years have passed since Walther's birth. — The Editor.

The present issue of our journal describes Dr. C.F.W. Walther's activities and merits for the Lutheran Church in general and for the Lutheran Church of our country in particular, following the fact that it was just fifty years ago that he actually completed his teaching and ministry with the close of the season at the St. Louis seminary in June 1886 and the meeting of the Detroit Synodical Conference the following August. For although he began his lectures again in September of that year and even served as a speaker at the meeting of the Western District of our Synod in October and concluded the topic that had been dealt with in this district since 1873, he was already a sick man and had to stop teaching and writing immediately afterwards, until the Lord introduced him to the rest of the blessed by a gentle, blessed death on May 7, 1887. In other articles Walther is described especially as a theologian and preacher, which were without doubt the most outstanding activities in his manifold and richly blessed ministry. But it seems to us to be of importance to present in a special way his work and his merits as a churchman, especially with regard to the design of our church system, which has now passed a nearly hundred-year trial. Quite rightly, outsiders have acknowledged that his church governing activity and his outstanding organizational skill, if I may use these terms, did not in the least influence the formation of the American Lutheran churches. And if I sometimes weave in personal observations in this description, one will find this explainable if one considers that the <page 722> number of those who are still personally Walther’s pupils is decreasing from year to year.

Walther had already held church office in Saxony, as is well known, and was very soon reappointed here in America as a pastor, first by that part of the Saxon emigrants who constituted themselves as a congregation in Perry County, Missouri, in Dresden, and then after the early death of his older brother Otto Hermann Walther as a pastor of the old Trinity congregation in St. Louis, the mother congregation of all St. Louis congregations. Walther maintained this parish office even after diversions had taken place and four districts had been gradually established and these had appointed their own pastors. These districts formed an entire congregation, and Walther was the main pastor or head pastor until his death. Walther was never merely a theoretician, but was always intimately connected with the life of the congregation and, as the longest serving President of our Synod (first from 1847 to 1860 and then from 1864 to 1878), was also in close contact with the life of the Synod. Walther possessed just excellent talent also in this part of his career, and I believe to be able to say that also the leader of the Saxon emigrants, Pastor Martin Stephan, recognized this and perhaps feared it.

Walther's talent as a practical church leader was already quite evident at the so-called Altenburg Colloquy [or Altenburg Debate] in April 1841. For even if it was above all a question of doctrine, namely whether the emigrants were still a proper church after the various aberrations they had taken, this question of doctrine had an eminently practical significance. And there it was Walther, who especially proved with convincing clarity in the eight famous theses to the skilled jurist Dr. Adolf Marbach that the emigrants were still a church, and thus carried off the victory and resisted the great confusion in this play. A few years later, Pastor A. Schieferdecker, who witnessed the disputation, said in a synod speech: 

“It did not take any more than that to free consciences from severe distress, to restore the almost sunken faith in many hearts and to make it alive as if out of death. It was the Easter Day of our hard tested churches where, like the disciples of old, they saw the Lord again and were filled with joy and hope in the light of His grace and in the power of His resurrection. There are still many present here who certainly remember this day with thanksgiving tears toward the merciful God. There are still quite a few of the faithful fighters present here who at that time stepped on the battlefield for the cause of Christ and his poor, torn flock, even the dear brother” — that was Walther — “whom God needed to be the noblest instrument in his cause. As important and significant as <page 723> the Leipzig Debate of 1519” — that was Luther's Disputation with the Roman Dr. Johann Eck — “for the Reformation became, as important — I dare say it confidently — this Debate held here at that time” (in Altenburg) “for the whole subsequent formation and shaping of our Lutheran Church here in the West” (of America) “has become. What was then won and fought for as the jewel of truth has proved its worth in all the subsequent struggles that our Synod has waged.” 1) 

And the German pastor R. Hoffmann, who is otherwise far away from us, says in a now quite rare writing, The Missouri Synod in North America, 1881, of this very moment: “In this misery, when one believed that one was no longer a Christian congregation at all, but a gathered mass, lost in time and eternity, there it was one man who saved them, that same Ferd. Walther.”

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1) More details about this disputation can be found in J. F. Köstering's book Auswanderung der sächsischen Lutheraner im Jahre 1838, [Google Bks] pp. 40-54, and in C. Hochstetter's Die Geschichte der Evangelisch-lutherischen Missouri Synode in Nord-Amerika und ihrer Lehrkämpfe, pp. 28-40, where the theses are also printed. Schieferdecker's synod speech can first be found in the “Second Synod Report of the Western District” of 1856, p. 7-8.

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      The material above has been covered by numerous other historians, but it is well for every Christian to be reminded of the importance of Walther's work for the American church. Pastor Schieferdecker's stirring comparison of Walther, at the Altenburg Debate, with Luther, at the Leipzig Debate against the Romanist Johann Eck, is not diminished by Schieferdecker's own later weakness of theology.  Pastor Schieferdecker later stumbled on the doctrine of millenialism (or chiliasm) but was then restored to the truth… by Walther. — In Part 2, we hear again Walther's teaching on the freedom of the congregations and the Synod's limited advisory role.

= = = = = = =  TABLE OF CONTENTS  = = = = = = =

Part 1 – This introduction; Walther's Altenburg Debate like Luther's Leipzig Debate

Part 2 – Freedom of congregations; Synod only advisory - Pfotenhauer stands firm

Part 3 – Against Romanizing; invisible Church; one True Visible Church; Local Congregation

Part 4 – Walther's Hymnal, Agenda (Order of Service); Loehe's Romanizing

Part 5 – Synod conventions - "so powerful", ”deep, lasting impression” on pastors, lay people