“In the life beyond we will forever find our joy and delight in this, that the Son of God so deeply abased Himself that He takes my sin on His back; yes, not only my sins, but also those of the whole world, from those of Adam down to the very last man, … On this now stands the basis of all Christian doctrine; whoever believes this is a Christian…” — Martin Luther

Back To Luther... and the old (German) Missouri Synod. Below are thoughts, confessions, quotations from a Missouri Synod Lutheran (born 1952) who came back to his old faith... and found more treasures than he knew existed in the training of his youth. The great Lutheran lineage above: Martin Luther, C.F.W. Walther, Franz Pieper.
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Saturday, April 26, 2025
EC4: Justification — LDJ essay revisited (Western District 1859) (LDJ)
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Martin Luther on the Pope
“Similarly, the world does not hate us for teaching the Gospel and the benefits of Christ in pure form. All accept this and approve of it, unless they are manifestly ungodly. But the mischief [caput mali] results from our attachment of a comparison [of our doctrine] with the doctrine of our opponents, from our statement that the Pope is the Antichrist [Pontificem esse Antichristum], and from our disapproval of the teachings and the wicked deeds of the adherents of the pope.” (Am. Ed. 3, p. 221; StL 1, 1186; WA 43, 33)
Sunday, April 20, 2025
EC3a: Loehe & the Last Unction (reckless, betrayal)
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Romanizing Lutheran |
The Last Unction [performed by Loehe].
Even this institution is being repristinated by the Romanizing Old Lutherans in our day. We learn from the Noerdlinger Correspondenzblatt, published by Bauer in Neuendettelsau and Stirner in Fürth, that Mr. Loehe has done so. He does, however, cite a passage from Luther, who, according to this saying, wanted to allow the sick person to be anointed with oil in addition to other treatment. But if Luther, in his great prudence, allowed the Papists to retain this practice, provided they did not add anything to it, it would hardly be possible to dismiss it as if it were in Luther's spirit for Lutherans to reintroduce this ceremony now, when it is impossible to offend any Lutheran by omitting it. It does not occur to us to accuse Pastor Loehe of the already established doctrine that the Last Unction is a sacrament, but there is no doubt in our minds that the reintroduction of the same on his part arises from a certain sympathy for a cult, such as the Roman one, and that, however innocent the matter may now appear, it could easily become the seed of the most dangerous vines in the garden of our church. If Herr Pastor Loehe had a truly Lutheran spirit, it would not occur to him to commit such extravagances, and indeed such extravagances with which he tramples on the feelings of all Lutherans, indeed of all Protestants, with unparalleled ruthlessness. History also teaches us that most of the atrocities of the Roman Church started out as harmless enough. There is no need to paint the devil on the wall; he comes of himself.
We will print the relevant passage here, recording it as a sign of the times from the December number of the Correspondenzblatt from 1857: …[see the Last Unction liturgy used by Loehe on pp. 90-94]
Pastor Loehe and the Last Unction.
A member of the Synod drew the Synod's attention to the report in the March issue of Lehre und Wehre [v. 4, p. 90-94] about the Unction [Oelung: "oiling"] performed on a sick person by Pastor Loehe in the Deaconess Institute in Neuendettelsau.
The Synod recognized it as its duty to address this in the following resolutions.
Resolved:
1. The Synod deems it a reckless presumption that a minister of the Church who is bound to the confessions of the Church should presume on his own hand to introduce a ceremony which must give offense to the whole Church.
2. The Synod considers it outrageous when Pastor Loehe invokes Christian freedom and thus performs the ceremony in obedience to an apostolic command.
3. The Synod declares it to be a betrayal of the Lutheran Church to say that the latter had only evaded its duty to obey this command, which was supposedly not temporary but given for all time, by subterfuge.
4. The Synod declares it to be a blasphemous offense against God's Word and an antichristian denial of the Gospel to say that this ceremony is performed in obedience to a divine command, and yet at the same time to cast doubt not only on whether the Lord will grant the sick person bodily healing, but even on whether he will also grant him peace, i.e. the forgiveness of sins.
5. The Synod cherishes the confident hope that, as a result of such atrocious phenomena, the eyes of all honest Lutherans in Germany, too, may be opened to the goal to which such a Romanizing direction as that of Pastor Loehe, deeply mourned by the Synod, necessarily leads.
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Wednesday, April 16, 2025
EC3: Confessional Subscription (of Pres. Harrison?) (Western 1858, again)
In a similar spirit [as the Reformed and Calvin!], a few years ago an entire conference of Lutheran preachers gathered in Fuerth in Bavaria, headed by Pastor Loehe in Neuendettelsau in Bavaria, encouraged our Synod to understand and interpret the Symbols according to Scripture in order to come to an agreement on the controversial doctrines of Church and Ministry. …these additions [of Loehe] rather indicate that one cannot accept them as they read, and that one therefore requires to be able to connect with the words of the symbol a meaning which does not lie in them, but which one considers to be the right Biblical one. [Compare Harrison's translation here, p. 124-125.]
"was an abridgement, which unfortunately left out most of the critical references to other American Lutherans (an indication perhaps of where the Synod was headed already in 1947)."
"A fourth way of subscribing the symbols only conditionally is to declare that one can only profess what is confessional in them. Pastor Loehe, for example, only subscribes the symbols with this condition. He writes: 'I distinguish in the Book of Concord what is confessionally said and what is not confessionally said, — and I distinguish even more. It does not occur to me to stick to the letter and be guilty of symbololatry. I accept what is confessedly (confessionally) said in the confessional writings.' It goes without saying that this excludes a significant part of the doctrinal content of the symbols from what can be professed as one's faith; just as Pastor Loehe, in the same writing where he states the above, openly declares several parts of doctrine found in the symbols to be not pure and therefore capable of purification." [Compare Harrison's translation here, p. 125.]
Sunday, April 13, 2025
EC2: "Gerhard on Baptism" — faith in Baptism
"the Sacraments were … instituted to awaken and confirm faith in those who use them"
“For the sacraments should not and cannot be received without faith, or are received to greater harm.” (StL 19, 1333)
What follows is a translation of the "oral discussion":
Concerns regarding several statements by Joh. Gerhard reported in Der Lutheraner regarding the effect of Holy Baptism, etc.
(See: 1. Report of the Eastern District Synod, p. 21; and 2. Report of the same, p. 28.)
The paper prepared and read by Professor Walther on this topic (cf. attachment E. in the Appendix [unavailable due to LCMS failure to scan the whole 1857 report and all its attachments and was cut off at page 395]) was followed by a further oral discussion of this topic, and first of all of the first point, concerning the effect of Baptism. The Synod endorsed the analysis presented in the paper and passed a resolution to the effect that the petitioners in Pastor Keyl's parish [in Baltimore] would be informed that the general Synod concurred with the Eastern District Synod's declaration that there is no real contradiction between the teachings of John Gerhard and the teaching of Luther and the symbolic books: Baptism (in which water is held in God's commandment and connected with God's Word and promise) works faith; and the Word (whether before or in baptism) works faith. Baptism, like the Word, demands and works faith at the same time.
On this occasion, the question was raised: how the godparents could answer “yes” in the name of the child to the question, “Do you believe?” since the child had not yet been baptized, unless the word had already worked faith in the child.
The reply was: the godparents, like the child's parents, together with the preacher, proceeded to the baptism of the child in the confident belief that God would grant it faith, which they also implored Him for in faith. They were certain that God, who demands faith, also gives it. God is not bound to the act of pouring water over someone; He can also give the person being baptized faith beforehand.
The Synod also agreed to the discussion and response to the second point in the presentation, namely that, according to the judgment of the Eastern District Synod, there is no real contradiction when John Gerhard says that Paul was converted without a sermon; Luther, on the other hand, says that Paul was converted by Christ's word as a preaching of the Law and the Gospel; and decided that this too, along with the above, should be reported to the applicants.
Incidentally, the Synod also had to criticize the fact that the petitioners had immediately gone public with their concerns about the orthodoxy of a teacher of our church [Gerhard] who is generally recognized as orthodox, instead of first informing the editor of the Lutheraner, who had prompted them by publishing the article in question [in the missing attachment in the Appendix], and asking him for the desired information and instruction, what the Synod would like to recommend to them for similar cases in the future.
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Walther answers the problem of a seeming difference between Gerhard and Luther: The issue is clarified by the context, Luther was against ex opere operato use and Gerhard was not dealing with ex opere operato use as Luther was. The gist of the essay and discussion may be summarized in the statement concluding the first paragraph:
"Baptism, like the Word, demands and works faith at the same time."
Thursday, April 10, 2025
EC1a: Christianity Today comments on Walther's writings
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Selected Writings of C. F. W. Walther |
Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther (1811–1887) is one of the great figures of American church history. … a dynamic preacher, a faithful pastor, a learned professor, a diligent scholar, and a prolific author. His views on the church (which favored a Congregationalism adapted to the free air of America) and on salvation (which advocated such a high view of grace as to be called “crypto-Calvinistic” [!]) shaped the Missouri Synod during the years in which it emerged as a mighty American denomination. Yet no one beyond the Lutherans, and not even many of them, pay much attention to Walther today. One reason for this regrettable neglect is that all his writing was in German.…No longer do evangelicals have any excuse to overlook this forceful teacher, whose work cries out for comparison with his better-known [Reformed] contemporaries. Walther’s sermons and letters reveal a Christian zeal as fervent as [Dwight L.] Moody’s. His editorials and convention essays rank him with Charles Hodge as a defender of the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the Reformation. His essays on the church speak as boldly for Lutheranism as C. I. Scofield did for dispensationalism [!]. And his masterpiece, The Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel (here presented in a competent abridgment), is one of the few truly significant works of evangelical theology produced in the United States. This series makes available some works from a mighty man of God. Our only regret can be that it has taken so long for them to appear in English.
"Some 30 years ago [~1962] several of us felt that our beloved Synod would shortly be losing its Biblical-Confessional heritage if steps were not taken to translate Walther’s writings.
Sunday, April 6, 2025
EC1: Suelflow’s “years of effort” restored: Walther’s early essays (Part EC1 of 15)
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Essays for the Church (CPH 1992) Volume I Volume II Essays from 1857-1879 Essays from 1877-1886 |
* Confessional Subscription—Western District, 1858 p. 19-29 [CF p. 11-28] [EC3]
* Communion Fellowship—Western District, 1870 p. 202-228 [CF p. 145-192] [Also available from CTS-FW bookstore for $3.99]
* Sixteen Theses—English District, 1872 p. 229-243 [CF p. 193-216]
Justification — Western District, 1859 p. 30-63. [EC4]
Church and State—Western District 1862 p. 64-68 This essay was erroneously identified as Walther's but was actually delivered by District Pres. J. G. Schaller and so I have not included it. But Walther's essay was published separately as Die rechte Gestalt…. or The Proper Form of an Evangelical Lutheran Local Congregation Independent of the State. I am publishing a new English translation of this complete book, not an abridgement. [EC4a]
Calling a Pastor—Synod, 1863 p. 69-87 [EC5]
The True Visible Church:
Theses I—III, Synodical, 1866 p. 88-104 [EC6]
Theses III—VI, Western District, 1867 p. 104-125 [EC7]
Theses VI-X, Central District, 1867 p. 125-144 [EC8]
Theses XI—XIII,. Eastern District, 1867. p. 145-160 [EC9]
Theses XVII—XVIII A, Western District, 1868 p. 160-170 [EC10]
Thesis XVIII A-C, Central District, 1868 p. 170-178 [EC11]
Thesis XVIII C-D, Eastern District, 1868 p. 179-190 [EC12]
Thesis XVIII D, Adiaphora, Central District, 1871 p. 190-201 [EC13]
Conversion—Northern District, 1873 p. 244-263 [EC14]
Certainty of Salvation—Illinois District, 1879 p. 264-297 [EC15]
Immediately after the six [CPH] English volumes appeared [© 1981], the undersigned enlisted several men to complete translating the convention essays. All of them have now been completed after years of effort. Some of the early translators were Herbert Richter (four essays), Fred Kramer (three), Alex Guebert (with Theodore Tappert), Robert Smith, Lawrence White, and Jim Ware (one each), for a total of 11. (Reinhold Stallmann later also did one.) Unfortunately, some of the earlier translators were unable to continue. At that time the undersigned contacted his old friend, the Rev. Everette W. Meier, in a letter of 28 March 1985 and hesitantly asked:
“Are you interested in doing more translation work? For the Walther anniversaries (the 175th of birth in October 1986 and centennial of death in May 1987) I hope that we could translate as much as possible of the Walther literature which consists largely of convention essays.. . . If you are interested in translating some, please let me know. There still is extremely much to be done.”
Pastor Meier immediately jumped at the opportunity. Just at that time he suffered from ill health and retired from the active ministry. This presented a fortuitous opportunity to have Pastor Meier translate large segments of the Walther essays. In these two volumes he translated half of the essays.
It was our fervent hope that, even if all these translated essays could not be published immediately, at least the English version could be made available to those who were especially interested. Accordingly, over a number of years the undersigned accumulated these essays at Concordia Historical Institute until such a day when they could be published.
When Pastor Meier’s work was completed, Concordia Publishing House was persuaded that it could serve the church best by issuing the essays in print. Excellent support for publication came from several sources, such as Dr. Will Sohns, president of the Wyoming District; Dr. J. A. O. Preus, former president of The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod; Dr. Karl L. Barth, president of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; and Dr. Ralph A. Bohlmann, current president of the Synod.