Un6: Fundamental doctrines, narrow vs. broad sense

      This continues from Part 5 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting an English translation of Walther's "Foreword" on Unionism to the 1871 volume of Lehre und Wehre. — In this installment, Walther gives special effort to intersperse comments into a defense writing of an orthodox Lutheran theologian against a Reformed-leaning theologian.  This was especially important for me as the traps that unionists set can be quite deceiving, even for those who consider themselves strong in faith. I took the time to separate Walther’s comments, in parentheses ( ),  from these writings to aid in my understanding. I learned about the distinction of fundamental doctrines in the narrow sense and the broader sense. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  continued from Part 5  - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

V. E. Löscher expresses himself similarly to Musaeus. He, too, recognizes the existence of truly believing Christians in the sects, and nonetheless rejects church fellowship with those who wish to remain in their sect. When in 1719 a theologian from Tübingen, who was of a unionist mind, pointed out in his paper "Die nöthige Glaubens-Einigkeit der protestantischen Kirche" (The Necessary Unity of Faith in the Protestant Church), as proof that one could also cultivate church fellowship with Reformed Christians, firstly that even our strictest theologians did not count the doctrine of the holy sacraments among the fundamental doctrines, and secondly that one could not declare all Reformed Christians under excommunication as unchristian, (page 9) Löscher answered him in a review of this paper: 

"From Hunnius and Hülsemann, he (the author) particularly states that they considered the point of justification by faith alone to be the actual foundation, but especially the doctrine of the sacraments not to be fundamental. But he deliberately does not want to see that sometimes, for good reasons, they take the foundation in the most exact sense, but sometimes in a proper and laudable amplitudine (breadth). The passages they cite refer to the first understanding" 

(to the fundamental doctrines in the narrowest sense, without the knowledge and acceptance of which no saving faith is possible); 

"but otherwise they also confess that all important doctrinal points, everything that the church must conserve, is in a sense" 

(that is, in a broader sense) 

"fundamental, hence they clearly remember the fundamenti organici" 

(the Scripture John 10:35, which cannot be broken at any point) 

"and make all kinds of other distinctions. The Consensus fundamentalis in the first and narrow sense entails nothing more than that one may hope something for the salvation of persons, but certainly no church unanimity. — On the other hand, he" 

(the author of that writing) 

"exaggerates greatly that ours excommunicated, banished, etc., so many thousands of souls of the Reformed. This, however, is entirely false; for we must beware of the church fellowship of the Calvinist-Reformists, and this must be done out of necessity, lest we be infected by them and have to bear their indebtedness before God." (Unschuldige Nachrichten [Innocent News], 1719, p. 890 f.)

But as little as our fathers wished to declare the members of erring fellowships banished by their rejection from our communion, so little did they mean to pronounce a sentence of condemnation upon them. They certainly condemned the errors of them, but not all persons who have them. Here, too, Löscher says:

"The question here is not of the Eventu (success) whether all are condemned who cherish the same" 

(condemned error of absolute predestination) 

"but of the inward duality, and whether this error in and of itself lies under divine doctrinal condemnation." (Ibid. 1733. p. 831.) 

Nor did our fathers declare heretics all those who were in error and with whom they had no church fellowship for the sake of the confession. They made a precise distinction between formal and material heresy, that is, between errors which supply the material for heresies and those which really are heresies, that is, which have become heresies through the attitude of those who cherish them. Thus, for example, Abraham Calov writes: "If a main article of faith, a fundamental dogma, an article from the system of that which is to be believed, is denied or overthrown, then this is materially a heresy; if (page 10) obstinacy is added to it, it is a formal heresy." (System, locc. th. Tom. VIII, 226. s.)

- - - - - - - - - -  concluded in Part 7  - - - - - - - - - - -

I am told that in Germany, Calvinism has taken over much of Protestantism at the expense of Lutheranism. And this has happened in the land of Luther!  How could this happen?  Through Unionism. And Walther gives the best defense against this menace. — Walther's stirring conclusion follows in Part 7.