Some quotes from Chapter 7: (179-217)
Grabau's Pastoral Letter (Hirtenbrief):
181: "Pastor J. A. A. Grabau had been twice imprisoned in Prussia…"
182: "Buffalo ministerium worked hard to… chain the trustees to the Buffalo Synodical Court by court order"
183: "Pastor Loehe also wished for a mutual accommodation [with Grabau]."
185: "Pastor Grabau again called one such person whom the congregation [Kirchengemeine] raises up, an uncalled one!"
186: Pastor Loeber's reply to Grabau: "Christian freedom was restricted, … more was attributed to the office of the ministry than was due to it, and thus the spiritual priesthood of the congregations was neglected."
187: "the Word can also be powerful outside of the public office, as we know from Scripture and experience"
192: "A shameful tyranny of conscience must arise if, in doubtful cases, all members of the congregation are to place their conscience into the pastor's conscience… This is how the papacy came into being."
Church and Ministry:
205: "The differences between these two or between the real Old Lutherans and today's neo-Lutheran Romanists are much deeper, they are far-reaching doctrinal differences!"
208: "The great decisive struggle of the Reformation, which our Church fought against the papacy in the 16th century, was already about these doctrines."
209-210: "It would also be contrary to the basic doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone if officials were allowed to present themselves as mediators between God and the believers."
212: "Walther writes… 'the newer theologians are horrified. "We are to administer our office by citizens and farmers?" they say contemptuously.'"
212: "the expression “übertragen” [transferred]… such Latin words are used by M. Chemnitz, Polykarp Leyser, Hülsemann and others"
215-216: "Pastor Loehe taught that the office first creates the church, only those who possess this office can transfer it to others.… It is not, therefore, as Pastor Loehe said, that the pastoral office is always first and that this is what creates the congregation."
215-216: "Pastor Loehe taught that the office first creates the church, only those who possess this office can transfer it to others.… It is not, therefore, as Pastor Loehe said, that the pastoral office is always first and that this is what creates the congregation."
215: "The most important thing here is the fact that the entire New Testament knows no difference between church and congregation ['Kirche und Gemeinde']… So the Smalcald Articles [Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, § 67] confess, which know nothing of an organized total church, with which one wants to establish spiritual authority over the congregations today."
Images of some men appearing in Chapter 7: (179-217) |
| Loehe —— Grabau —— Loeber —— Brohm —— Krause —— Hochstetter —— Wyneken —— Hoefling |
The following is an English translation of C. Hochstetter's Geschichte… by BackToLuther utilizing the DeepL Translator with minor assistance from Dr. Fred Kramer's translation. All hyperlinks, highlighting and red text in square brackets [] are mine. All internal hyperlinks are active in this embedded window, external links should be opened in a new tab or window.
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| going, going… (gone?) |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Full text of Chapter 7 (fine print) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The History of the Missouri Synod, 1838-1884, Chapter 7
By Christian Hochstetter
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Pastor J. A. A. Grabau's pastoral letter and fine answer by pastors Loeber, Keyl, Gruber and Walther. [Loehe’s basis for Grabau (179); Grabau’s background (181); Grabau’s “Pastoral Letter” (184); Saxon pastor’s reject Grabau’s theology (185); Grabau ignores Luther’s counsel (187); Saxon Pastors’s conciliatory response to Grabau (192); Grabau refuses colloquium with Walther (199); Wyneken’s 1852 judgment on Grabau’s theology (201)] The presentation and acceptance of the book by the church and the holy office of the Ministry. The fourth and fifth synodical conventions. [4th Synod 1850 – Walther’s address against Romanizing (202); Grabau and Walther compared (204); Walther’s book on Church and Ministry presented in 1851 (207); Theses reviewed (210); Wyneken’s prophecy (217)]
As the Church Notices [Kirchliche Mitteilungen, Google Books] show, Pastor Loehe not only had in mind the collection of the individual German members of the faith scattered throughout North America, but his goal was also to unite all Lutherans in America, in Australia, and in the whole world in one church body.
While he approved of the withdrawal of his emissaries from the unionist synods, and rejoices in the organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Missouri Synod, he was not entirely satisfied with the new character that church affairs in America had taken; he thought that he had let the pastors he sent out become independent too quickly, and that there was too much change in the manner in which ministerial positions were filled in America, that this should mainly be done by the ministerium or by the superintendent, that a strict church constitution should be introduced, and so on. On the latter, he already prepared a draft for the individual congregations, which was accepted by several Frankish colonies in Michigan, although it contained 72 paragraphs and prescribed very complicated regulations for the free-church Lutherans. Pastor Loehe often expressed his opinion that the political freedom here and the acquaintance with the American sects must have a contagious effect, because of the popular rule and dominant democratic direction, on the Lutheran church or in the Lutheran congregations. It is easy to show that this fear is based on an error. The freedom of the churches, which is shared by all denominations in this country, also gives the hierarchical sects, such as the papal Roman Church and the Episcopal Church, enough leeway to develop magnificently and to fortify themselves outwardly. Also the Methodists, especially the numerous episcopal bishops among the Methodists, have such a strict hierarchical constitution that the laity (the listeners) as such not only have nothing to advise and say, but also have no voice in the choice of pastors. The pastors, in turn, are taken away from their previous congregations after two or three years in defiance of their divine calling and, at the discretion of the bishops, transferred to another post. Just as the pope wants to have ready-to-serve puppets in the priests, who are his creatures, which he moves like chess pieces, sometimes here, sometimes there, so something similar can be seen in the smaller church fellowships, which
seek support for their existence in a well-trained constitution and in the structure and strict differentiation of the church estates.
On such a basis, according to which the pastors were at the same time “church masters” [Kirchherren], as they were sometimes called in the old German church orders, and as guardians of the house of God who were allowed to demand obedience in all things, there gathered in Milwaukee on June 25, 1845 “The Synod of the Lutheran Church emigrated from Prussia” [Buffalo Synod], as Pastor Grabau, Pastor Heinrich von Rohr, Pastor Leberecht Krause and Pastor G. A. Andermann called their newly formed synod. These four pastors had eighteen delegates from their congregations with them, who, however, were also in a subordinate relationship to the pastors at the synod. The large number of these congregation delegates can be explained by the number of Lutherans, who from the beginning in Germany had mainly joined Pastor Grabau, since he emigrated to America in 1839 (about eight months later than Stephan) after obtaining permission from the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. Pastor J. A. A. Grabau had been twice imprisoned in Prussia for the energetic resistance in which he opposed the Union, and had no direct contact with the separated Lutherans of Breslau. As he used to say, these Silesian Lutherans were mainly concerned with the preservation of the pure doctrine of the Lord's Supper in their fight against the syncretistic union, but he also wanted to maintain the old Pomeranian church order. After the peace treaty of Osnabrück in 1648 had secured the external existence of the Lutheran Church, so Grabau maintained, the King had no right to introduce a different church order through his cabinet orders. But while he did so, he and his people left the country to the King, and the church emigrated to America. He maintained that according to chapter 12 of the Revelation of John, America is the desert in which the woman, that is, the Church, should be preserved from the face of the dragon (i.e., the Prussian Union)
for an appointed time from the seduction of the whole world. The Buffalo Synod accordingly carried the image of the woman fleeing from the dragon in its seal. When it proved impossible in later years to secure such authority and recognition in America as Pastor Grabau wished for the Pomeranian church order, which had once upon a time been introduced and confirmed the old Pomeranian dukes and the cities in that country, he missed the aid of the secular arm more and more. This arm was supposed to strengthen Buffalo church discipline and secure churches and pulpits for the Buffalo pastors, namely for those who submitted to Grabau's church government, as they used to say, to the Senior and his ministerium. According to American laws of the state, the first thing to be done was to have trustees elected from the congregation to administer church property on behalf of the congregation, but the Buffalo ministerium worked hard to achieve this, either to chain the trustees to the Buffalo Synodical Court by court order (which is also done in other hierarchical synods) or to have such a condition recorded in the deed of sale by the seller that in the event of a split, all church property should remain with that part of the congregation which is willing to remain under the jurisdiction of the Buffalo Synod. It was hoped that the support of the authorities would be assured by this arrangement, which in the course of time has consistently led to church trials. The Church itself, Pastor Grabau taught, is the visible assembly, composed of the teaching staff (Lehrstand) and the household (Hausstand), which belong together in such a way that the teaching staff (the Ministerium) has to teach and order, but the household has to listen and follow the orders that the ministry makes. — In human terms, a union of these Prussian Lutherans, which grew more and more through the congregations of Pastor Ehrenstrom and Pastor Kindermann, who followed in 1843, with the Saxon congregations that had settled in St. Louis and Perry County,
would have been an incalculable blessing for the Church in general. Pastor Loehe also wished for a mutual accommodation. Meanwhile, the principles on which Pastor Grabau founded his church government were so hierarchical from the beginning that the Saxon pastors, headed at that time by the humble Pastor H. Loeber, could never agree with Pastor Grabau. He claimed: since our fathers were Lutheran, we know that the church rules written by the fathers are also Lutheran, therefore the laymen owe obedience to the pastors when they make their decisions on the basis of the old church rules; also in matters of adiaphora and in such cases where the application of the Word of God could be doubtful, it is part of the ministry of the pastors to make the decision. To let the congregation itself be considered a judge in matters of faith and church, that is an independent or Anabaptist principle. Pastor Grabau also often declared in the presence of his congregation members (as is still confirmed today by ear witnesses) that although Stephan had fallen into a godless life, his doctrine and the episcopal government he wanted to establish on the basis of the given scriptural foundations were nevertheless right and proper. But the Saxon Lutherans could not and did not want to give up the spiritual achievement they had gained from that time by their renunciation of Stephanism. They had also experienced what a blessing it is when the pastors desire obedience only for the Word of God and the church members follow the Word for the sake of the Word. Pastor Grabau and his followers, however, believed that this was the spirit from hell which granted the above-mentioned freedom to the congregations; instead of a correct church order, mob rule, namely rebellion and revolution, had to take place as a result of this doctrine which the Saxons led. — It is sometimes still considered that the Missourians from the beginning were concerned to found opposition altars with the help of their doctrine of the spiritual priesthood and of the Christian freedom of the Christian man,
and to alienate the members of the Buffalo Synod; but the very beginning, and through the whole course of the dispute between the Missouri and Buffalo Synods, shows this is something far different.
While Pastor Grabau stood alone in Buffalo, and not only to serve the Lutherans who had settled in the Buffalo area, but also those who had stayed behind in New York, he turned to the Saxon pastors with the request to send him a candidate to help. The then candidate Brohm set out on this journey, travelled through Buffalo and accepted the call from the New York Lutherans. Likewise, the Saxons sent Pastor Geyer to Wisconsin to a number of Lutherans, while Pastor Kindermann, who had settled Kirchhayn in that state with his congregation there, had himself directed this more distant congregation to the Saxons for the sake of spiritual ministration. However even before Pastor Geyer arrived in Wisconsin, Pastor Kindermann wanted to prevent this calling, which had already been initiated, because it had turned out that the Saxons did not want to agree with the teaching contained in Pastor Grabau's Pastoral Letter [Hirtenbrief – photocopy with English translation here, p. 11; (↗); Harrison-Walther Church and Office, p. 363 ff.; Soli Deo Gloria, p. 141 ff.], especially with regard to ordination and the authority of the pastor.
Pastor Grabau had already sent out a pastoral letter signed by six church leaders of his congregation on December 1, 1840, and sent it to the Saxon pastors with the remark that if they found anything to criticize in this letter, they should advise him. Already at the beginning of this pastoral letter it is said that because it is so easy in America that everyone chooses his own thing, whereby the church can easily suffer damage, that therefore it is the duty of the ministers of the church to restrain this independent conduct. This is appealed to from Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession, according to which no one should publicly teach in the Church or administer the Sacraments unless he is regularly called. Among the elements of the regular call, seven requirements are now listed [p. 12-14]: the candidate must above all things
be tested and tried with regard to his spiritual gifts, and then ordained by the laying on of hands of the pastors who are present, upon his confession, after which he is to be introduced to the respective church. In the ministry, in the personal calling, lies the testimony of Christ, that he speaks the word and that he heals. 1 Cor. 10:16: “The cup of blessing which we (i.e. the ordained pastors) bless” and so on. “By this we are convinced”, (so this pastoral letter teaches) [p. 15] “that a man frivolously chosen by the congregation may neither give absolution nor distribute the body and blood of Christ, rather he gives mere bread and wine; Christ commends himself to his divinely irrefutable order, not our caprice and disorder”. — In chapter 3 of the pastor's letter, Pastor Grabau again called one such person whom the congregation [Kirchengemeine] raises up, an uncalled one! [p. 17: "which the non-chosen and unordained cannot"] He advises to leave the children untouched until the arrival of a pastor, as well as the closing of the marriage covenants [p. 18, #4], if it is at all possible until then. Grabau insists that everything that is against the old Lutheran church orders must be regarded as an innovation. If a pastor should be found with errors in his doctrine, the congregation must leave the judgment in the doctrine to the other teachers, for the letter finally says: “Your teachers are not teachers of a false church, so you (laymen) can presuppose with them a genuine knowledge of the church doctrine, and a deeper knowledge than you can have, since they have learned to believe, to teach, and to keep you in the right faith, but you (laymen) have learned to believe, and to be kept and sanctified in the right faith.” [p. 18-19]
Under the date of July 3, 1843 Pastor G. H. Loeber wrote to Pastor Grabau, in which he, as his “loyal friend and co-worker” in fellowship with Pastors Gruber and Walther, first and foremost expressed his joy that Pastor Brohm, while passing through Buffalo, had been warmly received by Pastor Grabau and had arrived happily in New York, and that Pastor Grabau also promised a visit to
the Saxon pastors, that the Saxons had already discussed with Pastor Grabau and his congregations the possibility of founding a teaching institution together. Loeber further reports that at Pastor Grabau's request, the pastoral letter had been carefully examined, and that the summary judgement on its contents was that it seemed to them, the Saxon pastors, that in this pastoral letter, with regard to the old church order, which was so strongly emphasized, the essential and the inessential, the divine and the human, were confused, and thus Christian freedom was restricted, and on the other hand more was attributed to the office of the ministry than was due to it, and thus the spiritual priesthood of the congregations was neglected.
Although Pastor Loeber was very careful in his critique of the pastoral letter, which Pastor Grabau had desired, it becomes clear already at the beginning of the protracted dispute that the Saxon pastors had to assert important doctrines, because they had to fight anew for the same principles on which Luther based the right to reform the church. Although Pastor Grabau’s pastoral letter and the related writings do not yet explicitly deal with the doctrine of the Church, it is clear from the letter itself that the author does not let the divine Word be the sole foundation on which the Church is built, but rather that according to his teaching, the power and validity of the holy sacraments and the effect of preaching depend on the rightful call of the preacher. Grabau taught that God wants to act with us only through authorized official pastors, and that therefore only a preacher who has been rightfully called and ordained can, through his office, bring about the effect that bread and wine are truly consecrated in the Lord's Supper and that the body and blood of Christ are communicated therein. When the sacraments are administered, Lutheran pastors would thus be equal to the Roman Mass priests inasmuch as these, who are to continue the redemptive activity of Christ on earth, are also taught that they alone, by virtue of their ordination as ordained priests, can celebrate Mass
and can mediate between God and men (the laity). Pastor Loeber, on the other hand, writes in his critique that although the ordination as a public confirmation of the call, as it is called in our confessional writings, and should be approved and maintained at all times, like every laudable general ceremony; but although the office for the proclamation of the Word is a divine order, the Word can also be powerful outside of the public office, as we know from Scripture and experience, because especially in emergencies God has also made use of people who are not in public office. So also the words of institution in the administration of the holy sacraments are not only efficacious because of the ministerial office to which the Lord acknowledges, but the Word itself is powerful according to Heb. 4:12. So the official ministers are not able to bring about that bread and wine are really consecrated and distributed as sacraments; the "we" to which the Pastoral Letter appeals (the blessed cup which we bless) has no such signifying expression in the basic text of 1 Cor 10:16, and it would consequently be very doubtful whether emergency baptism is a real baptism, and finally our Church teaches expressly according to the Word of God that our faith and sacrament does not depend on the person, not only whether he is godly or evil, but also whether consecrated or unconsecrated, called or crept in. Indeed, if the devil himself would creep in, and in human form would give us the sacraments according to the right words of institution, we should not doubt that we have received the right sacrament. This is the clear testimony of Luther (Walch. Ed. XIX, 1551) [Am Ed. 38 “The Private Mass and the Consecration of the Priests”, 200; StL 19, 1271-1272], in which he praises the power of the divine Word so gloriously in the true faith. Nonetheless, Pastor Grabau, in his supposed refutation of the critique, insists on this false doctrine and claims that Luther in that writing speaks only of evil and hypocritical persons who nevertheless hold office (while Luther expressly writes not only of godly or evil, but also of consecrated and unconsecrated), and thinks that it remains the case that such a person who raises himself up,
or a man who is arbitrarily raised up by the congregations, is no more capable in the sacrament than an actor who imitates it on the stage; if such a pastor (who was not recognized by Pastor Grabau as legitimately called) were to speak the words of institution over the elements, nothing but "vain bread and wine" would be distributed.
Furthermore, as far as the old church orders are concerned, to which Pastor Grabau wanted to bind the Lutheran congregations for all times, Pastor Loeber asserts that although he and the Saxon pastors do not despise these old orders, no compulsion may be made out of them, as if omission of these orders were injustice and sin; for the Formula of Concord teaches in Article X [15] of church ceremonies that it is to do with the article of Christian liberty, “which the Holy Ghost through the mouth of the holy apostle so earnestly charged His Church to preserve” [translated from the German text]: “As soon as the commandments of man are imposed as necessary,” so the Formula of Concord teaches, “the way is already prepared for idolatry, so that the commandments of man are not only kept equal to the commandments of God, but also set above them.” Again, Pastor Loeber notes Luther's glorious words about this: “What is left will be taught by custom and value, only that the Word of God should be preached earnestly and faithfully in the church; for that some may desire that this whole order should be preserved is of little consequence to us, because we have said above that in this order things are done freely, without all coercion and necessity, and that it is not fitting to take Christians' consciences prisoner, either by law or by commandment. Therefore also the Scriptures do not finally order anything of these things, but lets the freedom of the spirit be certain, in his own mind according to the occasion of place, time and person," etc. — Nevertheless, in his response to this critique by Loeber, Pastor Grabau insisted on the necessity of maintaining the old church orders under all circumstances. He and the
the above-mentioned Buffalo pastors declare to the Saxon pastors: “It is wrong and sinful that you do not faithfully and seriously refer your congregations to the old, venerable orders of the Lutheran Church, and even pretend to them that the congregations are only now out of their own life, needs and activities to develop new church regulations. Although the Saxon pastors had only taken precautions to prevent Christian freedom from being damaged and the path of faith from being reversed, they had left it to Pastor Grabau to maintain the old Church constitution and the state-church orders, as much as was possible in America, Pastor Grabau nevertheless considered a draft for a church order appropriate to the local conditions as such a crime that he thought this innovation (the introduction of a congregational order) was just the same as what the Lutherans had to endure in Prussia as a result of the royal cabinet orders (Ordres), which introduced the "Union". — In refuting the critique, he and the other three pastors put together seventeen errors of the Saxon pastors and demanded the revocation of the new church order. “What are we supposed to do with our own stuff like this,” he exclaims, “my most heartfelt wish would be that you would come to your senses about your doings!” Finally, he also asserts that he could not consider the Saxon pastors to be genuinely Lutheran pastors, because the spirit that reigns in this critique of the pastoral letter is a lax, unchurched spirit. "The Lord have mercy on you," etc., and so on. It seems, Pastor Grabau says, that the struggle which was fought against the liberalism of the "Union" in Prussia must be repeated against the Saxons here in Germany.
Admittedly, it had to appear to be an independentistic activity if an individual congregation together with its pastor wanted to formulate its own regulation, since Pastor Grabau wanted to deny a much more important right to the Christian and the individual congregations, namely the right to examine the doctrine and, in doubtful cases, to decide for themselves what to do or not to do according to the Word of God. According to the
Lutheran Catechism, the office of the keys is the peculiar church power that Christ gave to His Church on earth. According to Pastor Grabau, the keys would be used as a mere power of the ministry in the Church of Christ, just as according to Roman teaching they come from the shrine of the heart of the pretended representative of Christ, i.e. they are a papal power. That is why Pastor Grabau and his followers rejected as heretical the teaching that the congregation has the final judgement in its own ecclesiastical affairs, and although every Christian in general can judge the doctrine, this can only be done in the right order, no single member of the church can judge the doctrine of the pastor, only the symbols and ecclesiastical courts, i.e. the ministries and synods, have to judge it, and through these the church gives its decisions. Here it must be taken into account that while the state church consistories always have secular members, so-called laymen, among their counselors, at the Buffalo synods, however, the church delegates were only considered as witnesses present at the councils, the ministerium had the right and the duty to judge for itself in its doctrine, to make regulations, and to decide in doubtful cases. That is why pastor Grabau calls out to the congregations: “You can presuppose an upright knowledge of church doctrine from your teachers”. For the same reason he also wants to limit the congregation's right to choose its pastor as much as possible, so that Pastor Loeber writes in all modesty: "The right of independence of a Christian congregation, as Luther explains by name in his open letter to the Bohemians, seems to us to be rather misunderstood and overlooked in your Pastoral Letter. However, it cannot be denied that where a congregation is in ecclesial association with recognized orthodox pastors, it must consult them when choosing a new preacher. Under other circumstances, Loeber writes, it is not wrong, but quite in accordance with God's order that a congregation should choose a preacher from its own ranks, even without the help of others in the ministry. Mistakes also occur enough in the other case on the part of the ministry in the appointment of
pastors. But where the congregation, according to the right given to it by God, entrusts the office to one, that office is nevertheless established. Only where personal hatred and separatists are involved, where altar against altar is built and teachers are gathered after people's itching ears, there arbitrary revolt is taking place. Pastor Loeber then turns to Pastor Grabau and exclaims "We also certainly believe that you, dear brother, have nothing more to desire than that our congregations should be freed more and more from the oppressive shackles of the former paternalism, and may no longer be looked upon as the people who are cursed, knowing nothing of the Law, in the most important church concerns always only dependent on human superiors, and in doing so let themselves be tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, [Eph. 4:14] but would like to get now for themselves trained minds, and use their freedom from all yokes upon consciences and from human service, dearly bought by Christ's blood.” Therefore, Pastor Loeber also says, one may confidently emphasize to the congregations the true blessed freedom of a Christian man, whereby it will then certainly result that all who believe the Word are also willingly and submissively subject to human order, including their teachers and pastors, no longer in servile fear, as masters over their consciences, but in childlike gratitude as helpers of their salvation and as ambassadors in Christ's stead. — Pastor Grabau's response to these words was the accusation: “It is wrong that you turn the God-given shepherds and teachers of the Church into mere charitable friends of the congregations, who should only stand in gratitude for these benefits; this is proof that you do not have the right concept of the bright preaching ministry.”
One can see from this that Pastor Grabau wanted the pastors to be regarded as superiors in authority, to whom one is obliged to obey for the sake of their own ministry! He was accustomed to say: only in the things that are not against God's Word (i.e. also in all indifferent things), one should be obedient to the pastors,
but the decision in a case of conscience, whether this and that is contrary to the Word of God or not, is up to the pastor, to the ministerium, or finally to the Synod! Although the Missourians teach that the congregation is to make its decision, which it is entitled to do, from and according to the Word of God, and the layman is not obliged to leave everything alone to the pastor's decision, Pastor Grabau nevertheless teaches of the Missourians that the congregation should disregard the judgment of the Word of God! But a shameful tyranny of conscience must arise if, in doubtful cases, all members of the congregation are to place their conscience into the pastor's conscience and give themselves up to him. This is how the papacy came into being, so that the so-called clergy said: “We have right and power alone, what we set, that is for everyone, who shall master us?!” — How easy it is for even an honest pastor to have a false, erroneous conscience, or to excommunicate an innocent person out of ignorance and the like. But if, on the other hand, the decision of the congregation does not agree with God's Word, then such a judgment is not to be respected as the voice of the true Church either, but is null and void. —
Already in the preface [p. 5], in which the Saxon pastors answer for the publication of "Graubau’s Pastoral Letter together with the writings exchanged between him and them" (while they are publicly bitterly attacked and insulted in Graubau’s Synodical Report of 1845), it says: these are important truths, but they are not presented to the readers in such a way that the members of the congregation should sound the alarm with the recognized truth in the Buffalo congregations, or make divisions behind the back of the pastor. "Nay, go to him with sincerity and in the fear of God, ask humble and modest questions. Seek no quarrel, but only truth, unity and peace……” There is also a word of warning to those readers who wish to misuse this book to either
be encouraged by the improper separation from the ministry, or in disorderly and sectarian choice of unfit pastors. Such, it is said, would only bring shame and heartache to the true Church and all righteous pastors!
But also the warm reminder to Pastor Grabau in the critique was quite accurate: "Permit us, dear brother in the ministry, above all, that we strive to investigate and preach the true Gospel of the free grace of God, and give God alone the glory that through His Word He wants to take His church into His almighty protection against all gates of hell even in these last perilous times. If He did not do this and did not give Spirit and power to the Word, then we ourselves would certainly not achieve anything by preaching the pure divine Word, let alone by the reputation of our ministry or by the austerity of external order. But He promised her that He would do so, that He would not leave His church, and would give her everything she needed, that He promised her, saying: ‘Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the world.’”
With great patience, the pastors of the Missouri Synod worked in their congregations to bring the hearts of their hearers into obedience to the divine Word; they knew well that the Word alone is the seed of rebirth, by the power of which the children of God are brought to true and blessed freedom. Although there were also those who resisted and fought against the divine power of the Word, nevertheless a faithful congregation was soon formed under the Missouri pastoral care, which held fast to God's Word and caused those who resisted to be separated, satisfied that they could build themselves on their most holy faith and order their congregation according to God's Word. The orthodox congregation had all the more room for this freedom after it had experienced such a sifting and testing.
The splits that took place within
the Buffalo Synod were quite different. Even if an entire congregation left the association of this synod, as was the case in Watertown, Wisc. in the 1840s, Pastor Grabaus and his followers said that such a congregation no longer belonged to the church, it had become a rabble. It was noted by us above under the tenth section [p. 184] that Pastor Kindermann himself, who provisionally served this congregation, initiated Pastor Geyer's call. It was only when it was learned that Pastor Geyer agreed with the Saxon pastors regarding the doctrine of the church and the preaching ministry, that the Buffalo ministry wanted to reverse this call given by the Watertown congregation. The congregation, however, persisted in the call sent to Pastor Geyer, and the Saxon pastors had to consider such a call valid while teaching and proving from God's Word that the right to call [Vokationsrecht] did not rest in a single privileged class (not in the ministerial offices) but in the whole congregation. — Much more difficult were those cases where individual members of congregations separated from their pastor and from the church out of displeasure. Such a case occurred first in Milwaukee, where individual Prussian Lutherans separated and accepted a certain Klügel as their preacher. This Klügel had separated from the association of the Saxons and had been warned by the local pastors about accepting such a position in Milwaukee. So Klügel had gone to Milwaukee on his own initiative. Nonetheless, the Buffalo people wanted to blame the Missourians for Klügel's trials, and the second Buffalo Synod, meeting in 1848, declared that although Pastor Grabau had promised to hold a conference with the Saxon pastors to resolve the pending disputes, the Buffalo Synod would not be able to do so, which was to take place in the spring of 1847 at the latest, that he was nevertheless right not to be present, since the (so-called) rabble pastors Geyer and Klügel had not yet been called away from their posts (with the so-called rabble).
The Buffalo people added that Pastor Grabau was not authorized to travel to Chicago (where they wanted to do everything the Buffalo Lutherans brought up) because, apart from Senior Pastor Grabau, only Pastor Krause was invited there, which was a setback for the two other pastors: Kindermann and Rohr.
The Saxons would have thought it immodest to invite the entire Buffalo ministerium, nevertheless they would have been happy to see all the Buffalo pastors in Chicago. Pastor Grabau had already been invited to Fort Wayne for a talk in 1846, but there was a reason to invite Pastor Krause in particular to Chicago, because a large number of Lutherans, former members of Pastor Krause's congregation, had turned to the Saxon pastors with the request for an expert opinion, in which they repeatedly accused their former pastor in regard to his doctrine and life. The answer to the letter of these members of Pastor Krause's congregation was postponed as long as one hoped to get a meeting with Grabau and Krause, who had also been informed of the complaint. Pastor Grabau did not come, although he had promised from the beginning to come to a conference without any condition. He even soon declared that he would not answer the letters addressed to him by the Saxon pastors. Already in his reply against the critique, Pastor Grabau denied the Saxons' faithful Lutheran character, and declared war with the words: “God help us that we may resist your false, unchurchly spirit, if you do not repent, by virtue of our holy office, publicly and joyfully”. From this he gathered the Buffalo Synod in the year 1845, which in its first synodical report also publicly declared the Saxon pastors to be false teachers, and issued a dictatorial appeal to them to recant. This happened even before a so-called rabble preacher (opposition preacher) [Rottenprediger] had started on the part of the Saxons or a former member of the Prussian Lutherans congregation had been accepted by them.
When Pastor Krause refused to respond to the accusations made against him, the first convention of the Missouri Synod gave its opinion (Gutachten) after careful examination and consideration of the facts. This went against Pastor Krause, and the Buffalo Synod gathered in 1848 was so indignant about it that in its second synodical letter it says that the pastors "Loeber, Walther and their comrades not only live in false doctrine, but one must now because they have increased in sins and become strong in iniquity despite all the enlightenment and admonition given, consider them wanton false teachers and public bold sinners who must be avoided according to God's Word until they turn over a new leaf, repent and sincerely seek reconciliation.” The entire Missouri Synod is called there an "Ahab Synod", "Synod of Abominations" and so on. Loeber, Walther, etc. are already called "protectors of the rabble" [Rottenbeschützer] on the title of that synodical letter. According to 1 Peter 4:15 and John 10:1, the pastors Bürger, Keyl and so on are not Christian pastors, but only heads of rabble in the service of Satan. "In this temple of Babel it resounds and roars: No obedience in external church matters, for this is not necessary for salvation! — The Lord rebuke thee, Satan! We do not want that kind of freedom." — Strangely enough, after a few years, Pastor Krause was sued again by Pastor Grabau, who traveled to Wisconsin, and in view of what Krause had done, finally dismissed him as well and declared him a tyrannical hypocrite. However Grabau did not take back the abuse which he had poured out against the Missouri Synod chiefly on account of the judgment which this synod had pronounced against Krause; however Krause himself subsequently proved the Missouri Synod right, for when he asked for admission to the Missouri Synod, he confessed everything that had been accused of him, especially that he had often done unjust excommunications, and publicly abused the Missourians. Pastor Grabau, however, founded the Informatorium in July 1851 as an organ of the Buffalo Synod, in which, for example, it says: “Professor Walther and those attached to him,
are certainly heretics!” — If friends, such as Pastor Loehe, thought in good faith that it had not yet been proven that the congregations in question, which had appealed to the Missouri Synod, were rabble, if one could not at least assume that what Grabau regarded as wanton, godless protection of the rabble could have been done out of a mistaken conscience, Grabau answered already in the first volume of his Informatorium: "Truly, one would only have to assume such a mistaken conscience in the case of the devil himself.” —
While everything was still being offered from the other side [Missouri Synod] to settle the dispute, which had arisen for the sake of the doctrine, Pastor Grabau continued to reject the offered hand and to regard and treat his opponents as heretics. If the pure Evangelical Lutheran doctrine itself had not been so blasphemously vilified even then, as long as there was still hope for mutual understanding, the people who were troubled in their conscience would have been directed to their pastor for the time being. Meanwhile it became more and more clear that Pastor Grabau and his ministerium often acted unjustly and papistically in the public exercise of the ban. If Pastor Grabau considered a member of the congregation to be a dangerous man if he dared to contradict him, the first opportunity was taken to declare the same to be banned; if Pastor Grabau was asked whether the ministerium, which could see about the ban, could not also pronounce an unjust ban, he replied: in such a case, however, an unjust ban must be respected; indeed, the person so affected, if he had already been undeservedly banished, should rather abstain completely from the Holy Sacrament than seek it in another congregation or synod! He said that the person so affected, if he had already been banned undeservedly, should rather be banned from the sacrament completely than seek it in another congregation or synod. But the Missourians were not so despotic and unloving. After the Buffalo people had laid such emphasis on the existing doctrinal difference that they condemned those who taught differently and thereby caused the division of the church, the Missouri Synod would have neglected its duties if it had been partly to blame for the sighs and tears of so many apparently honest
souls who in their moral distress turned to the Missourian pastors and congregations. Although Pastor Grabau refused to be heard in regard to his former congregation members, and rejected all requests to negotiate through delegates or to discuss doctrinal differences at a colloquium, the Missourians still followed the principle of not accepting a soul who had separated from the Buffalo people, or not recommending a pastor to such congregations until the Synod had been clearly convinced by reliable, irreproachable testimonies, that those who separated from Buffalo were in the most perfect right, either because they had separated themselves for the sake of conscience, because they could no longer profess the false doctrine and unjust practice of their previous pastors and had been rejected by their previous church court, or because they themselves had been banned against Christ's order and in an unjust manner by their previous pastors and had been excluded from the enjoyment of the means of grace. They were aware that such spiritually tyrannized souls should not be denied the help they had asked for, even though they were for this reason given a bad name for it here at home and in Germany; just as Pastor Grabau, through his pamphlets and on his travels, believed he had to report the "fratricidal" proceedings of the Missourians to the church. Strangely enough, he did not only use coarse insults, but also contradicted them, because while he from the beginning put the Missourian doctrine on a par with the liberalism of the Prussian Union, he nevertheless thought that for the sake of some doctrinal differences, as they exist between Buffalo and Missouri, nobody should separate from his previous synod. No one should be allowed to go over to Missouri for the sake of conscience. On the other hand, if there were unhappy people in Missouri churches who separated from them and turned to Pastor Grabau, the Buffalo people would visit and accept them into the Buffalo congregations without any inquiry with the Missourians. This is what happened in Cincinnati and elsewhere.
In vain, on the other hand, he was reproached that the practice which was so annoying to him flowed from the difference of doctrine which he himself held in the highest regard; he should therefore, according to 1 Peter 3:15, give an account of his own doctrine at a public colloquium and, if he could, refer the Missourians from God's Word and the symbols! As early as January 1847, the Lutherans at Kirchhayn in Wisconsin had urged him to convene such a meeting to resolve these disputes, and finally, in 1867, the congregations in Humberstone, Canada, requested such a colloquium. Since at that time the vast majority of the former Buffalo congregations and pastors had already turned away from Pastor Grabau, and the Humberstone congregation itself was without pastors, Grabau was thought to have prevented a schism by allowing himself to hold a colloquium with Professor Walther in the midst of the local congregation. According to the success of this discussion, the congregation would then decide when they would chose a preacher. Although Pastor Grabau initially agreed to this request, he finally refused the colloquium with Professor Walther. As soon as he was informed by telegram, he declared that he owed it to the Humberstone congregation to attend such a colloquium, but Pastor Grabau sent a written statement to Humberstone that he had no more business with Prof. Walther than with the clergy in Spain. He also urged the pastors associated with him to either not answer at all to any inquiry made in regard to such persons who wanted to separate, or to send a Bible verse calling the Missourian pastors false prophets, instead of an answer to them, for example Matt. 7:15. — At the end of the fifties Pastor Grabau, in order to give the ministry more control over the church property of the congregations, set up a general building fund from which those congregations that insured their church property for permanent connection to the
Buffalo Synod, were to be supported in the construction of churches and schools. For this purpose, the Buffalo ministerium ordered a monthly tax of one cent, and the support which the individual congregations had previously given each other for such buildings was to be discontinued from that time on, in so far as the congregations concerned were to turn to the ministerium which administered the building fund in such cases. Since these monthly collections were ordered as a condition with the individual congregations, this led to divisions and very angry scenes. The Missouri pastors instructed the discontented not to separate for the sake of such a small gift; only the one thing they should do to preserve their freedom was to ask the Buffalo ministerium to admit that such a change in an indifferent matter, as made by this order, would have to be brought about by mutual agreement between the pastors and the church members! Pastor Grabau responded that he would rather die than be denied the right to make orders. He had the ministerium impose suspension and excommunication on the reluctant church leaders. As a result, several large congregations near Buffalo parted from Grabau. The Missouri pastors and their district synods once again consulted with one another and conscientiously proceeded even in the face of these violent actions of Grabau. The writer of this, who at that time was a deacon next to Pastor Grabau, once in the 1860s, when he had to look for another sheet on Pastor Grabau's desk, found an official letter from a Missourian pastor, in which he reported to the Buffalo pastor in question that seventy men had registered with the Missourians, who had, as they said, left Buffalo because of the cent per month tax [or per DeepL: ‘penny-pinching’!]. He, the Missourian pastor, now asks that all those persons be named to him who should be in church discipline for the sake of the cause. “Should you,” the letter concluded, “refuse to name these persons to me or do not appreciate this letter,
I shall hold you responsible on judgment day if I unconsciously administer the sacrament to some of those who are unworthy of Holy Communion.” — This letter, too, had remained unanswered; but by God's will, after some time when it was written, it would be eye-witnessed by a man [Hochstetter himself!] who until then had also blamed the Missourians for vain recklessness and a domineering desire for opposition. — More and more clearly the work which Pastor Grabau had so laboriously built up fulfilled what Pastor Wyneken, as President, judged in his synodical address of 1852 [p. 201-202]:
"If we could and were permitted to accept the principles and the conduct of our brethren, who are hurling the grave accusation of heresy against us on account of our doctrine of Church and Ministry, and charge us with divesting the holy ministry of its divine dignity, and of catering to the carnal desires of the congregations for licence; if we could, like them, lay claim to any other power than that of the Word, then it would be easy for us to lay consciences captive, to coerce them to outward obedience, and to introduce discipline and order in a manner that would be quicker and more pleasing to the flesh. But what would be gained? We would perhaps erect a beautiful, eye-catching building, in which, however, it would not be free Christians living in God, but poor slaves who, with captive, enslaved and martyred consciences and sighing hearts, eked out their stunted existence under the pressure of a miserable human yoke, would not dare to shake off the pressure they feel, because according to their misguided consciences their souls' salvation would be bound to this slavish submission. And how long would this structure last? No longer than until the hidden displeasure took its pleasure and tore down the building and its builder. Yes! what would be gained if it stood until the end of the world? The Lord would have to consume it at the end of days with the fire of His wrath, like all things that were not built by His Spirit.”
of the Missouri Synod was opened on October 2, 1850, under special circumstances, as indicated by the synodical address of the then President, Prof. Walther. After recalling the trials which the Synod had suffered through the death of several faithful ministers of the Church, in particular of the sainted Pastor H. Loeber, he indicated the importance of the struggle in which the Synod had now fallen, while witnessing against the Romanizing tendency which was now appearing in the midst of the Lutheran Church, both in Germany and in America, was becoming more and more necessary and important. [p. 117-119, paraphrased]
It can not be denied that the Lutheran Church is once again moving mightily after it has begun to awaken from its long sleep of death. More and more men recognized the depth of the apostasy into which rationalism had plunged the German people; many had already opened their eyes with horror that the church Union which had come into being at that time was nothing but a new fraud, whereby Satan wanted to destroy the new work of God and deprive German Christendom of the blessing of the new visitation of grace which had been given to it; some have also come to the conclusion that the only true union founded by God already exists in the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, but that every other union, made by man, is an evil distorted image with which Satan apes the barely awakened Christianity.
“But has one dealt faithfully with this God-given knowledge?” Prof. Walther continues: “Has one really returned to the faith and confession of our fathers? Except for a few witnesses of the truth, this has not happened. There are not only those who claim the right to develop the doctrine further and want to exploit it for its so-called scientific character, there are also men who do not want to stop halfway, who regret with all their hearts that the bonds of the Church are becoming increasingly loose, that the holy office is increasingly stripped of its divine dignity and that everything old is thrown away. — But what are they doing now?
By wanting to be quite strictly Lutheran, their zeal leads them far beyond what is Lutheran, against their will and without their knowing it. In their good opinion they bring into the Church things from which a Luther once purified the Church as as of something which grievously defiled the church with great labor and a hard fight; and with the best of intentions to purify our church from accumulated rubble and filth, they put out jewels of holy doctrines and ordinances, for the achievement of which our fathers once joyfully risked goods and blood. In contrast to the abandonment of the idea of the one holy Christian Church and against the syncretism of our days, they are unmistakably returning more and more to the concept of the Church as a visible, well-organized external institution. [as Theodore Graebner did in 1950; translated.] Contrary to the contempt for the means of grace, they are again approaching the doctrine of the power of the sacraments ex opere operato. In contrast to the contempt for all that is old and to the rejection of all foreign authority and established church institutions, they are now again seeking to unite consciences to some human statutes and church orders. In contrast to the degradation of the office of the ministry, they fight against the important and just rights of the spiritual priesthood of all Christians as illusions of proud enthusiasts, and they deny the so-called laity the right to choose their pastors and the right to vote in synods and church courts. In this contrast, they also derive the office of the ministry from the power of ordination by preachers who declare it to be a divine order; make the office and ministry of those who are to be mere stewards of God's mysteries a special status preferred to the lay priesthood; grant to Gospel preachers a power and dominion de jure divino (according to divine right) even in those things which are neither commanded nor forbidden in God's Word; thus they transform the Christocracy of the congregations of the saints and the chosen, of the free, who are the Mother of us all, of Jerusalem above, into the aristocracy of a Papal State,
and finally make the power of the Word and Sacrament dependent on the office of the one who handles these means of grace.”
In the following, Prof. Walther draws attention to four important points. [p. 119] “The first one is this: this is not at all adiaphora (things indifferent), measures, customs, ceremonies and constitutional questions on which Christian wisdom decides; it is rather about doctrine, that is, about something that is not ours but God's. … Here the apostolic exhortation is valid: ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump’, Gal. 5:9. Secondly, [p. 120] it is also impossible in our synod congregations to treat different doctrines as having equal rights in these matters. If a church wanted to allow this, then it would be giving up on itself. Thirdly, that the doctrines at issue here do not belong to those which have not yet been discussed in the Church, but rather to those which not only the most enlightened scholars of God have clearly set forth in their private writings in accordance with the Word of God, but on which the whole Church has also made her confession in her public symbols. Yes, the whole struggle of the Reformation era was actually about these doctrines. The fourth thing Prof. Walther reminds us of is that, although these points in dispute do not concern fundamental articles of the Christian faith, and we do not want to belittle those who err in them, they are nevertheless so closely connected with the fundamental articles of our Christian faith that the deviations in their conclusions must at last necessarily overturn the foundation for the faith. —
Already the emphasis of the first of these points disproves the objection raised by R. Hoffmann and others in Germany in view of the protracted dispute between Pastor Grabau and the Missouri Synod over the doctrine of the Church. R. Hoffmann writes: “Although the greater right lies with Missouri, the democratic Missouri constitution belongs to the
the dark side of Missouri; however, it is not just a constitutional question that has created the rift between the Missouri and Buffalo Synods. The differences between these two or between the real Old Lutherans and today's neo-Lutheran Romanists are much deeper, they are far-reaching doctrinal differences! It is a question of: With whom is the spiritual power, the power of the Keys that Christ has given to His Church on earth, the power of the Keys that is inherent in all church governance? Grabau, as pointed out above, attributed it exclusively to the ordained ministry (Lehrstand), which he contrasted with the household (Hausstand), as if the members of the household, when they hear the Word of God, and the saved, were the same. The members of the household, when they hear God's Word and receive the sacraments, may only live by the grace of the ordained pastor. According to this doctrine, the congregation itself had only the honor of obeying, which even the Roman Jesuits still leave to the laity. In accordance with his teaching, Grabau logically claimed that even a person who was undeservedly excommunicated had no right to turn to another orthodox church, for since Grabau made the true existence of the sacrament dependent on the right call of the pastor, to which many requirements belonged, he considered such a pastor a rabble-priest who wanted to administer the Holy Sacrament to.a member of a rabble. Such a pastor would destroy the church and rob the Grabau church government of the souls that belong to it! — According to the doctrine of the holy Apostles, they refuse to be intermediaries between Christ and the congregations; “Therefore let no man glory in men,” St. Paul exclaims, "for all things are yours,… And ye are Christ's!” [1 Cor. 3:21, 23] The faithful are thus directly attached to Christ the Head, and even the treasures of grace which the Apostles administer and communicate through their ministry are taken from the treasure of the believers, which is why the orthodox pastors of God and of the Church are servants, just as the Pope claims to be the only giver of spiritual power and grace, and in fact claims: "Everything belongs to me and to the ordained priests who are my
creatures, nothing belongs to you laymen, so it was said of Grabau and his ministry, spiritual power belongs to us, and he to whom we refuse absolution and the holy sacrament may not seek it anywhere else. Quite logically in his mind, the previous Pope Pius IX wrote to the German Emperor ten years ago: "All that is baptized belongs to me". Similarly, Pastor Grabau included all Lutherans whom he recognized as such in his association. He declared that the visible Lutheran Church is the only one to be saved, and claimed that those excommunicated by him, even if they had already converted to Missouri and been expelled from the Buffalo Synod, belonged to him, and that he would sue, for this reason, the Missourian pastors who had stolen his own, on the Last Day. — Since Pastor Grabau hereafter used his Papist doctrine of the Church and office of the Keys in favor of his hierarchical practice, and, e.g. excommunicated those who contradicted him in such matters, one must be surprised that even those who completely approved of Pastor Walther's actions against Stephan — not only in regard to the annoying way of life, but also to the Stephanist false doctrine — still think that the Missourians had acted hastily, in that they finally (after a proper, thorough investigation of the individual cases) received and accepted those who separated from the Buffalo Synod as a result of the Romanizing Buffalo doctrine and the tyrannical practice that followed, and who were usually expelled from the Buffalo Synod, as already noted above. It was just now revealed that Prof. Walther and the Saxon pastors had not yet fulfilled their task by overcoming Stephan's heresy and tyranny. Should not the same man, of whom R. Hoffmann writes that he had been called by God to redeem the Stephanists from their madness, should not the same man have been right to fight the Buffalo hierarchy, which is even more finely woven? Pastor Loehe's fear of an American church democracy was also unfounded, the
the Missouri Synod did not want to learn from the sects, which usually also put Christianity into a legal constitutional form and into several favorite statutes; but on the Missouri side one was forced to confront also those theologians in Germany who wanted to ward off the overthrow of the old orders in church and state by raising human authorities and orders to the throne and forgetting about the only remedy of which it is called Wisdom of Solomon 16:12: "For it was neither herb, nor mollifying plaister, that restored them to health: but thy word, O Lord." Conditions may have their needs according to the times or the country in which one lives, and there are different constitutions that the Lutheran Church can support, but the truth is always only one, and doctrine must not be modeled on human desires and conditions, but rather on the pure doctrine of the divine Word.
Already at this Fourth Synodal Convention Prof. Walther was asked to write a treatise, in which the true doctrines of Church and Ministry were to be presented, to counter the many false allegations and accusations contained in the second Grabau Synod Letter. [See here, p. 37]
The submission and acceptance of the book on the Church and the holy Office of the Ministry.
At the fifth meeting of the Synod held in Milwaukee in 1851, [German text; English translation] Prof. Walther accordingly presented the draft of this book to the Synod. The book bears the title: The Voice of our Church on the Question of Church and Ministry. A collection of testimonies on this question from the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other states, as a testimony of their faith in defense against the attacks of Pastor Grabau in Buffalo, N.A., presented by C.F.W. Walther, theol. professor of St. Louis and pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation there.
A clear insight into this book can be aided by the Preliminary Remarks preceding it.
Since especially in Germany some people [Loehe, etc.] were of the opinion that the doctrines of the Church and the holy Office of the Ministry were still an “open question” about which the Church had not yet spoken, as if these doctrines had only now to be issued or “further developed”, Prof. Walther, when writing this book, had made it his task to show that the great decisive struggle of the Reformation, which our Church fought against the papacy in the 16th century, was already about these doctrines. The pure doctrine in regard to these topics is therefore already an achievement of the Lutheran Reformation and whoever wants to exploit this doctrine must first sit down again at the feet of Luther. Therefore, in the questions that have now become controversial, the voice of our Church should be heard and appreciated, as it is contained in the public Confessions, in Luther's writings, and in the private writings of the oldest Lutheran teachers that are linked to Luther. — The book contains nine theses (doctrinal statements) about the Church and then in the second part ten theses about holy preaching Ministry. Under each thesis there is: 1) the basis and proof from God's Word; 2) the testimonies of the church in the private writings of its teachers. [NB: Kramer inserts for #2 above “Testimonies of the church in her public Confessions”] It can be seen that not only is a certain order of precedence maintained, but that a distinction is made between the basis and proof given by the Word of God alone and the testimonies of the Church, especially of her individual teachers. Although some newer theologians thought that the Missourians were too fond of these old dogmatists, it was nevertheless necessary to let these testimonies follow on from the proof that the Missouri Synod did not teach anything new, neither in substance nor in expression, even when it emphasized the glory of the Church of the Saints and the freedom and majesty of the Christian man. This was especially necessary for the sake of those who wanted to pass off their hyper-Lutheran way of seeing the Lutheran Church
as the church (in which the communion of saints were decided) as the only legitimate Lutheranism, when in doing so they were deviating from Luther's doctrines. The God-appointed reformer Luther must know best what Lutheran is, so this book contains plenty of evidence from Luther's writings. Prof. Walther writes in the introduction: “Not because we believed in him, but because we recognized that the doctrine he preached was not his doctrine, but the pure Word of the eternal God, we have been careful to give particularly rich extracts from Luther's writings.” — In eight sessions, the author of the book of Church and Ministry presented the individual theses and their justification to the Synod, to each of which the Synod gave its approval. The hearts of all the synodical members were filled with great joy at the Scripturalness, clarity and sweetness of this genuinely evangelical doctrine, and the peace of the Spirit of God proved to be the fruit of the true certainty of faith.
Nowhere in this book, which among other things is named by Superintendent Dr. A. Brömel as an important and decisive one through its testimonies, is there a direct polemic. Pastor Grabau's name is only mentioned on the title page, because the author takes a fundamental approach and lays one stone upon another in strict order. The cornerstone on which the other theses are based is the confession of the eternally firm truth that the Church is the congregation of true believers and saints, invisible by nature because Christ dwells invisibly in the hearts of believers, but the Church is the body of Christ, to which no unborn child, no hypocrite, no godless one, no heretic belongs. But the presence of the Church in the pure preaching of the Word and the Scriptural administration of the holy sacraments becomes evident.. This essentially invisible Church is the true owner and bearer of all heavenly goods, rights, offices and powers which Christ gave to His Church. This church therefore also directly possesses the Keys [Kramer: “independently of human mediators”]. It would also be contrary to the basic doctrine of justification
by faith in Christ alone if officials were allowed to present themselves as mediators between God and the believers; indirectly, however, since the times of the Apostles, pastors by God have been called by the congregations. The pastor as the appointed steward over God's secrets, who is entrusted with the public administration of the ministry, and the congregation as the bride of Christ, are both bound to the Word of Christ the heavenly Bridegroom, therefore the Word of God alone is to reign, as Christ the Lord said: “One (only) is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” (Matt. 23:8).
In the theses dealing with the holy preaching office, it is first of all proved that the spiritual priesthood, which all true believing Christians have, and the preaching office or pastoral office according to the Word of God are not one and the same; that a common Christian, because he is a spiritual priest, is not yet a pastor, and again a pastor, because he holds the public ministry of preaching, is not yet a priest; that neither the spiritual priesthood is a public office in the Church, nor the public ministry of preaching a particular rank different from the state of Christians, but that this is a ministry of service (but ordered by Christ himself in the establishment of the apostolic office); that furthermore pastors publicly administer the offices in the name of the congregation which belong originally to the Church, as the true royal priestly lineage, and thus every truly believing Christian has. — The VI and VII Theses then demonstrates that the public ministry of preaching, though not one and the same as the spiritual priesthood, is nevertheless the fruit of the latter, "rooting" itself in it, as the ancient teachers say, because the one who becomes a minister of the Church, while not becoming a priest (but rather being removed from the band of priests), is the Christian priest who administers holy offices (Rom 15:16). For this reason, the pastors are given their ministry and their authority by God through the congregations and through their
call prescribed by God, and so the ministry of preaching, by its very nature, can be nothing other than the authority conferred by God through the congregations, as holders of the priesthood and all church authority, to exercise the rights of the spiritual priesthood in the public office in the name of the congregation.
The proofs of this and the testimonies follow by name under Thesis VII, as Luther writes in the name of all faithful Lutherans: "We firmly insist that there is no other Word of God, only that which is offered to all Christians to preach", — — — that no one should judge the doctrine, except only the Christian. These are but the priestly and royal offices. Thesis VIII reads: “The office of the ministry is the highest office in the Church, from which all other Church offices flow. Thesis IX: The office of the ministry is worthy of reverence and unconditional obedience when the pastor leads by God's Word. But the pastor has no dominion in the church; he has no right, therefore, to make new laws, to arbitrarily establish the meanings and ceremonies in the church, and to impose and exercise excommunication [or the ban] alone without the prior knowledge of the whole church. Thesis X: Although the ministry of preaching, according to divine right, includes the office of judging doctrine, the laity also have the right to do so; hence they also have a seat and vote in the church courts and councils with the pastors. — As clearly and unambiguously as the above confessional doctrines of the Church and the Ministry are founded and testified, they are still subject to many objections on the part of Romanizing theologians in America and in Germany.
In the first place, it was objected that one could not see how it was in the power of Christians to give away and transfer their spiritual priesthood. However, this does not take into account the fact that the ecclesiastical office is only the service through which the public exercise of the rights of the spiritual priesthood according to divine order
is transferred to those who are recognized as capable of teaching publicly. The duty to teach is and remains a basic spiritual right of every Christian, just as it is in the common life, e.g. in the state system, the public exercise of a right is not granted to each and every one in his own person, so also, by virtue of the divine institution of the ministry of preaching, from the very beginning of the New Testament, through the separation of the apostles, this order is established in which the ministries of the spiritual priesthood (as: baptism, preaching, etc.) are publicly administered in behalf of the congregation and serve to edify the body of Christ. The believing congregations retain their spiritual priesthood, just as, to paraphrase, a woman landowner retains ownership of her property if she appoints a caretaker in accordance with the commands of her lord and husband, who, in her and the lord's name, provides the children and the servants of the house with what belongs to them and supervises them; the housewife is not thereby released from her power. — As surely as the believing Church has power and command everywhere to carry out and continue the sacred ministry of preaching out into the world as a public ministry of words, so surely she has the power to entrust the administration of this ministry to those whom God gives as His gifts *) and to use the pastor as an instrument.
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*) Although the Missouri Synod did not make the expression “übertragen” [transferred] into a shibboleth, it is nevertheless noted that this expression has not only been applied today, but that such Latin words are used by M. Chemnitz, Polykarp Leyser, Hülsemann and others, which are best reproduced with "übertragen". Also the opponents of the “theory of transference” need the word “transfer” themselves. For that is not at all the question whether the office is transferred at all, but: by whom it is done and who has the right to do it. When St. Paul writes 2 Cor. 2:10 I forgive this in Christ's place for your sake, it can only mean: In your place! So the apostle also absolves "for the sake of the congregation", “On this,” Walther writes in the “Foreword” to Lehre und Wehre, 1876 [p. 66, footnote], “the newer theologians are horrified. ‘We are to administer our office by citizens and farmers?’ they say contemptuously. To be called royal Prussian or royal Bavarian priests, that is their
Originally, it is the Holy Spirit Himself who moves the hearts of believers and is active in the life of fellowship of Christians, which is why it is also said of the pastors called indirectly (namely by the congregations): “the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers” [Luther: bishops]. (Acts 20:28).
Seconndly, until the most recent times (e.g. on the part of W. Rohnert), the doctrines of the holy ministry, which are contained in the above-mentioned book Church and Ministry, are said to be equal to the doctrines of the late Professor Hoefling of Erlangen, who taught that the pastoral office did not exist according to divine right, but belonged in the realm of human church and service regulations, if it had to be created with inner necessity. On the other hand, already in Thesis II in that book it reads: “The preaching office or pastoral ministry is not a human ordinance, but an office founded by God himself.” The proof from God's Word begins there with the words: “That the holy ministry is not a human order, not an ecclesiastical institution, but a work of divine wisdom, a foundation of God himself, is illuminated 1) from the prophecies of the prophets that God Himself would give shepherds and teachers to the Church of the New Covenant, Psalm 68:12; Jer. 3:15; Joel 2:23. 2) from the call of the holy apostle to the teaching ministry through the Son of God according to Matt. 10:28, 18-20; Luke 9:1-10; Mark 16:15; Joh. 20:21-23, 21, 15-17 (“Feed my sheep”). 3) from all those passages in which even those indirectly called are presented as being called by God. Acts 2:28; 1 Cor. 12:28-29; Eph. 4:11. Therefore 4) the holy Apostles join the indirectly (mediately) called ministers of the church as their fellow ministers”.
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glory. How blind are they that they seek their glory in reproach and do not realize what a great honor it is to administer the office on behalf of Christians. There are no greater people in the world than Christians; angels serve them, heaven is opened above them, God descends upon them, they are clothed with the priestly adornment of Christ's righteousness.”
— — — From this follows testimonies of the Church. — The travel report that follows in the next chapter (Chapter VIII) also contains a note of the disputation that Prof. Walther had with Hoefling in Erlangen because of his erroneous theory of the Ministry. —
Thirdly, although it is certainly in accordance with Christian wisdom and love that an individual congregation, for example, when it has to elect a pastor, should seek advice from close pastors or from synodical officials, if any, it would nevertheless be contrary to the freedom of the Christian man and the autonomy of the congregation if it were to be placed under the law and under the authority of a higher or, as some express it, a government of the church as a whole. Since in the entire New Testament there is no establishment or foundation of a special church government in contrast to the office that preaches reconciliation, the Romanizing Lutherans referred to the historical development which had led to regional bishops and to the present consistories even within the regional churches. The latter at present also want to govern from their own power, while Luther only wanted to see advisory representatives of the church in the consistories, and lamented the political rule which they gradually exercised so severely that he exclaimed: “We must tear up the consistories, because in short we want neither the jurists nor the Pope in them.” — Although the Holy Spirit is certainly not bound to a special doctrinal position or supervisory office, as the Breslau High Council of Churches claims to have by divine right, the statutes of the Roman Church and of the Episcopal Church are so common that in Germany, in particular, for apparent reasons of utility, namely to prevent the infiltration of mob democracy and divisions *), the preaching office is to be derived from
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*) The Breslau Supreme Consistory, which used to represent the entire separated Lutheran Church in Prussia, has caused a split in that it wants to be a supervisory body according to divine right.
and made dependent on a special power above the congregations. Pastor Loehe taught that the office first creates the church, only those who possess this office can transfer it to others, as his Three Books About the Church [Drei Bücher von der Kirche] show. Whoever then wants to derive the pastoral office from an episcopal succession is obliged to finally recognize the Pope as the supreme dignitary and purveyor of the office, even though Luther asserted the entire right to church reformation by opposing the Pope and his ordained mass priests with the spiritual priesthood of true Christians, in which the scriptural preaching office has its seat. Others want to avoid this episcopal succession mentioned above by placing a high church authority composed of pastor, congregation and church government as a representative of the whole Church, above the congregations and accordingly teaching that the preacher is not the servant of his congregation but the servant of the Church in the individual congregation! At all times when and where a preacher is elected, or where, in an emergency, a lay Christian gives baptism or absolution, this may only be done with the consent of the universal Church. — The most important thing here is the fact that the entire New Testament knows no difference between church and congregation, that the Lord Christ, in the stages of the exhortation which He demands, gives the visible congregation, as it exists in every place where Christians are, the highest and final judgment, according to Matt. 18:17. Even there He also says: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them,” [Matt. 18:20] and so He hereby gives the same spiritual power to the smallest part of the church, which may have a large particular church, no matter how large it is, no matter how many church members are gathered together. “Wherever the Church is, there is the authority [command] to administer the Gospel. Therefore it is necessary for the Church to retain the authority to call, elect, and ordain ministers. And this authority is a gift which in reality is given to the Church, which no human power can wrest from the Church.” So the Smalcald Articles [Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, §67] confess, which know nothing of an organized total church, with which one wants to establish spiritual authority
over the congregations today, as if the Christian had to come to salvation not only by faith in Christianity, but also by the obedience to his church superiors which is necessary for the time being. Although faith is generated by the Word of God, neither the pastoral office nor any ecclesiastical government is a condition of faith, or a means of grace besides the Word! Rather, it must always be: “I believe, therefore I speak;” [2 Corinthians 4:13] even the Apostles were believers before they were sent out as Apostles, so the preaching ministry grows out of the congregation of believers, even if (in special circumstances) it were small. It is not, therefore, as Pastor Loehe said, that the pastoral office is always first and that this is what creates the congregation. In contrast to the erroneous opinion that only the church as a whole has the Keys and thus the office of the Gospel, Professor Walther also refers to the Smalcald Articles and the passage of Matt. 18:20 and teaches [p. 318]: “Our Church confesses here that the whole Church, that is, not only as a large, structured [gegliedertes, or divided] whole, but also it again and again in all its smallest parts has the Keys and thus the office of the Gospel — just as the same image that appears in the whole mirror, also appears again in every fragment of it, even when the mirror would also be smashed into a thousand pieces — and that the church therefore has the right to elect and ordain ministers of the church [Kirchendiener].” When it is further stated in the Smalcald Articles [Treatise, Tr, 67]: “Hence, wherever there is a true church, the right to elect and ordain ministers necessarily exists. Just as in a case of necessity even a layman absolves, and becomes the minister and pastor of another; as Augustine narrates” etc., this proof also shows that the spiritual power of the Keys is with the whole church, and if there were only two or three, yes, that originally every believing Christian has the right to administer the means of grace, otherwise necessity [or emergency] alone could not give him this right. Hence Luther already in the writing
to the nobility of the German nation [“To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation”, AE 44, p. 128, StL 10, 271, 9]: “That is why in cases of necessity anyone can baptize and give absolution. This would be impossible if we were not all priests!”
Although it seemed at the outbreak of the doctrinal dispute concerning the church and the holy ministry that the Missouri Synod, which at that time was not yet large, would now also be abandoned by its previous friends in Germany, what Pastor Wyneken, who was elected President at that Synod in 1851, said afterwards with the following words was nevertheless also fulfilled under this struggle: “The more the enemy seeks to darken this light, the brighter, clearer and more full of blessing it will shine into the lands and penetrate with its living power into those hearts that love the light more than darkness.”
— In the next Part 12, Chapter 8.
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