Guenther's Walther, A Life Portrait, now in English (A BTL book)

      This is an "excursus" to follow a Der Lutheraner essay (Part DL3b, Table of Contents in Part 1) on the life of Martin Günther.  In it we publish Guenther's 1890 German language book Dr. C. F. W. Walther: Lebensbild, a biography of C. F. W. Walther, in English. Guenther was the editor of Der Lutheraner during the last 14 years of Walther's life.  He would have worked closely with Walther as editor and fellow professor at Concordia Seminary.  And he was one of Walther's earliest students.  When I translated and polished the text of this book, I was quite surprised at its quality, details, and spiritual insight. It brings to light the life of the father of the Missouri Synod.

Notable excerpts:

6: "God did not want him to become a musician,… worked in him the decision to choose theology"

15: "the High Consistory forbidding him to continue teaching the doctrine of man's natural perdition,"

17: "'I sometimes argued with my principal about whether everything in the Bible was reliable, divine truth'"

24: "He was under a godless rationalistic superintendent,… unbelieving and hostile village schoolmaster,… Walther was repeatedly put on trial"

31: "…forbidden to practice confession, to suspend even the most unrepentant people…, 'such preachers in Saxony who did not even baptize in the Trinity'"

32: "How gladly the Lutheran preachers and laymen would have … separated from the deeply corrupt apostate national church!… Therefore, they saw emigration to a country where religious freedom prevailed as the only way out of the increasingly unbearable oppression of conscience, "

32: "…, the above-mentioned pastor in Dresden [Pastor Martin Stephan] called on all Lutherans, …, who were under pressure of faith, to emigrate"

44: Walther"… immersed himself, as far as his weakness allowed, in Luther's and other fathers' writings"

46: Altenburg Debate: "…was the Easter Day of our hard-trodden congregations, where they, like the disciples of old, saw the Lord again"

54: "…if anyone believes that priestly rule still exists in our congregation, he should … read the statutes of our congregational order"

55: "Walther expressed the wish: 1. that the name of the church not be that of a man"

62: "God had led them out of dangerous, Romanizing teachings [to]… Lutheran doctrine of church, preaching ministry, [or]… lost forever"

63: "But now the time came when Walther's effectiveness was to extend into the widest circles…to publish a leaflet … ‘Der Lutheraner’"

65: "A first, a main fruit of the "Lutheraner" was the formation of the German Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, &c. St."

69: "How much light was shed on church and ministry, especially by Walther!… a synodical association… only a consultative power,"

70: "…far from diminishing the congregation's rights, sought rather to preserve them"

74: "Walther was intent on publishing a new Lutheran hymnal… the main consideration in selecting [hymns] was that they be pure in doctrine…"

77: "…the writers of our daily papers,… have mocked with impunity that there are still people in our city who believe in a God"

83: "On festive occasions… nothing to be seen or heard of insipid merriment or mere carnal gaiety… occasional jokes" [There were indeed "jokes".]

86: "The Romanizing Lutherans of America, to whom Walther referred… were Pastor Grabau…"

87: "…a protest against the assertion of hierarchical principles within the Lutheran church"

89: "For Löhe [or Loehe] and his friends … took a wrong, Romanizing direction.… a doctrinal difference between Pastor Löhe and our synod" 

90: "Prof. Walther declared that he had no pleasure in traveling to Germany as a delegate of the Synod."

93: "In Erlangen, Walther met his childhood friend Dr. Delitzsch"

93-94: "a friendly relationship [with Loehe] was only temporary… [for him] the confessional writings … did not have such a unifying power"

94: Walther: "…that one could always get cheap and good Bibles that contained the correct Luther text"

94: 1853 Synod: "…[Der Lutheraner's] style of writing would henceforth be adapted to the capacity of the people even more than it had been before"

98: "in 1854 — as an opposition synod — the Iowa Synod came into being, to which Löhe wanted to assign his disciples"

99: Iowa Synod: "strive for further development of the doctrine…church and ministry, to be 'open questions'"

99: Iowa: "a result of these chiliastic views, they denied… that the pope was the Antichrist." [just like today's LC-MS]

100: 1855 Walther on Iowa Synod & Loehe: "having gained prestige in the church through their former faithfulness, want to use this prestige to lead us away from it again. Here we mean men like Löhe."

106: Walther on Missouri Synod: "It is a return of the days of our [Lutheran] fathers and of Acts. 2"

114: "denying church fellowship to the Iowans for the sake of a difference in the doctrine of Antichrist"

118: "the formation of the 'Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference'"

121: In 1872 "Walther laid the foundation for the 'English Lutheran Conference of Missouri'

129: Walther refused honorary doctorate from German university: "'I would feel a crowned ass…' [erring] doctrinal position of Göttingen faculty."

130: "the … Synod of Ohio … to confer the title of Doctor Theologiae on Professor C. F. W. Walther"

146: Walther in 1881: "Do not think that I am a mere head scholar. Already 50 years ago [c. 1831], by God's grace, I came through a long and heavy anguish of my heart to the realization of my sinful end and thereupon to the knowledge of the truth.

148: "nothing that has been brought forward against our teaching has been able to convince me of an error. My conscience is caught in God's Word"

149: ""it is not right to say: 'I am chosen because I believe', but that one must say: 'I believe because I am chosen'."

162: Walther's and his sermons: "memorized most diligently until he went to church"

165: Delegate Synods: "these dear, good men… have been sent as representatives of the congregations" [Old Missouri sent only men]

166: Walther's visits to sick young girl: she "finally looked forward to her death with great joy"

172: "For the books he published he took not a cent in remuneration… flourishing of the 'Concordia Publishing House'."

175: "… he was able to amuse society with a fine joke, not with jokes that were inappropriate for Christians, but… within the bounds of godliness."

176 & 179: "Walther did not, as some do, have a particular favorite doctrine, but all doctrines, and that from their center, the doctrine of justification." <——> "Again and again Walther returns to justification by faith alone."

180: "He knew Luther's writings exactly…excellent instructions for the study of Luther's writings"

181: "This gift served him well in the … defense of doctrine, in disputations, in religious discussions"

182: On usury question, "… he could not depart from right doctrine even if the synod fell to pieces"

184: "In the Lutheran Synod of Australia, too, Walther is spoken of with high esteem "

196: "The center of his sermons as well as of all his addresses and writings is for him the Lutheran doctrine of justification"

228: Letter to Wyneken: "But, my dear Wyneken, now also recognize with gratitude that your wretched body and your mind, so often sunk in melancholy, are truly nothing other than the hallmarks of the Lord Jesus, so that you are adorned. I am confident that the song of defiance is also yours to sing: "I will not die, but live and proclaim the work of the Lord," Ps. 118" [Walther did not counsel his friend Wyneken, who was in a state of melancholy, to go to earthly counselors or psychologists or psychiatrists, like LC-MS pastors do. Old Missouri pastors certainly did not, and would not, use these modern "sciences" to counsel their congregational members!]

Now I present Guenther's authoritative history of Walther's life in English:

The text of this book may be downloaded here; the German original text is here. Google Book here.

LC-MS judgment of Guenther's book:

     Modern LC-MS historians, such as Walter Forster and Carl Mundinger, downgrade Guenther's history on certain "facts" and use terms such as "purely fictitious" and that Walther was an "extremely zealous Stephanite" and a "rabid Stephanite". Mundinger claims that Walther's "rabid Stephanism had gotten him into endless trouble with both the civil and the ecclesiastical authorities in Saxony", a statement which willfully ignores Walther's own testimony of how these "ecclesiastical authorities" fought against his orthodox teachings, as Guenther's history documents. But pure doctrine seems to matter little to today's LC-MS historians like Pastor Todd Peperkorn, making their "history" fictitious in places. The result, and the aim, of modern LC-MS histories is essentially that people should read their histories, the New Missouri's histories, not the histories by the Old Missouri Synod.  Dear reader, read Guenther's history and judge for yourself whose history is "purely fictitious" and whose is not. (Hochstetter's history is treated in the same way by LC-MS historians.) — We continue our series of blog posts on the publication Der Lutheraner and its writings in the next Part 3c.