Fundament 16: Means 7: Papists’ “infused grace”; LC-MS falsifies Church History

      This continues from Part 15 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a translation of Franz Pieper's essay on the foundation of the Christian faith ("Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens"). —  What does "grace" mean?  The word itself sounds nice to our ears but it is a much abused word, especially by those who deny the Means of God's Grace – the "enthusiasts" of all kinds.  And Pieper lumps the Papists in the camp of "enthusiasts", as we learn in this segment.

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Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Pieper's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] is mine.

Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens.

The Foundation of the Christian Faith.

[by President Franz Pieper, Concordia Seminary; continued from Part 15 - page 256]

Also the Papists are by no means sparing with the use of the word “grace”. They assure us, as often as we want to hear it, that also according to their teachings man becomes righteous and blessed by grace. But they understand by the justifying and saving grace not God's mercy or God's gracious disposition, according to which God forgives sin for Christ's perfect merit—this doctrine is expressly cursed in the Tridentinum—but by “Grace” the Papists understand the so-called “poured in grace” (gratia infusa), that is, a good quality found in man (illis inhaeret); in short, they understand “grace” as sanctification and good works. 86) Also the enthusiasts, if they point away from the external means of grace, cannot understand by “grace” God's graciousness, but only a poured in grace, a good nature or renewal in man, which is worked by the Holy Spirit without means. Why? The reason is this: His graciousness (Luther: “grace or favour”), according to which God forgives our sin or justifies us for the sake of Christ’s satisfactio vicaria, reveals God only in the means of grace ordered by Him and can be believed by us only on the basis of the means of grace. So far as the enthusiasts [the “swarmers”] now set aside the means of grace, they are forced to refer sinners who ask for God's grace to an immediate effective renewal in the heart of man as a basis for confidence in God's grace. But that is a doctrine of works. 

It should not be forgotten that this immediate [or direct] spiritual effect, on which the enthusiasts of Zwingli and Calvin up to Hodge and Shedd lead a poor sinner, only exists in man’s imagination. According to Scripture, we men cannot expect any revelation of grace and any effect of grace besides and beyond the means of grace. “The words that I speak unto you,” Christ teaches us, “they are spirit, and they are life.” (John 6:63) Thus, for a man who has fallen under the treatment of a consistent enthusiast, there is nothing left to do but to produce from himself, from his own natural inner being, such soul moods, states, changes and works, which have an external resemblance to the true product of the Holy Spirit, and to base his faith on them. Luther therefore says of the enthusiasts, when they let the Word (the means of grace) go: 88) “They hold and teach just the same as was taught in the Papacy: that a man who does what is in him is saved.” Thus the setting aside of the means of grace of necessity drifts towards the Roman doctrine of works. The 

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85) Sessio VI, can.12.          . 

86) Sessio VI, can.11.

88) St. L. II, 1828. [On Genesis 47:26; Am. Ed. 8, p. 134]

[page 257] 

enthusiasts didn't want this. They wanted the opposite. By reforming the divine revelation and the grace of the Holy Spirit from the “vehicle” of the external means of grace, they wanted to reform better and more thoroughly than Luther, and sweep away the papist leaven that Luther still overlooked. But by replacing the external means ordered by God with an immediate effect of the Holy Spirit in their own carnal wisdom, which does not even exist, they got stuck in the religion inherent in the flesh, the righteousness of works, and returned to the Papist camp as far as the attainment of grace and salvation was concerned. 

So the practical result for papists and enthusiasts, if they remain consistent, is the same, namely doubt and despair of the grace of God, because from the works of the Law no flesh becomes righteous before God. That in the camp of the Reformed fellowships, which officially put in the place of the means of grace an immediate revelation and effect of the Holy Spirit, there are Christians who become and are certain of the grace of God, is only because, as has already been stated, contestation and need of death drive them to the Lutheran standpoint. They leave the sandy ground of an immediate action of the Holy Spirit and take hold of their faith in an external Word of the Gospel that promises them the forgiveness of sins for the sake of the Blood of Christ. Even the famous representatives of the immediate effect of the spirit take up the inconsistency even in their positive doctrinal presentation. Calvin can serve as an example. Although Calvin, just like Zwingli, advocates the axiom that the Holy Spirit does not need a “vehicle”, and even expressly warns against judging God's will of grace against mankind from the general vocation that occurs through the external word (per externum Verbi praedicationem), (Inst. III, 24, 8) he can nevertheless – in contradiction with it – occasionally say: (Inst. III, 2, 6) “The Word is the basis by which faith is supported and preserved; if it deviates from it, it falls away. So if you take away the Word, there is no faith left,” 

so that it is admitted, of course, that the Zwinglian-Calvinist Reformation, to the extent that it was carried out alongside and against Luther's Reformation and was intended to improve it, was actually a pseudo-reformation, a reformation through which the souls were not led to the foundation of the Christian faith, but were led away by it. 

Finally, we remember that in the setting aside of the means of grace by the enthusiasts, a disease appears, [page 258] which we, too, have to combat throughout our lives. What the enthusiasts officially and fundamentally do, namely to make the “poured in grace” [or “infused grace”] the foundation of the Christian faith, is also done by these Christians, who teach correctly about the means of grace and also believe correctly in the rule, often unofficially and in contradiction with their right teaching. They do this as often as in the knowledge of their sin and damnableness they want to base the certainty of God's grace or the forgiveness of their sins on their personal nature, on the feeling of grace, etc., i.e. on the “poured in grace”, instead of on God's promise of grace in the objective means of grace. “We are all born enthusiasts.”  Luther: 91) “Flesh and blood always gropes at other consolations than the Word; for it always wants to have something that it can see and feel and hang on to with senses and reason.” 

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      Pieper's teaching on the Lutheran doctrine of the Means of Grace is crystal clear and is based on the Holy Scriptures.  Comparatively, today's LC-MS enthusiastic "sacramental theology" wants to exclude the reading of the Word as one of the Means of Grace, thereby distancing themselves from Lutheranism (and Walther), and so end up as Romanizing Lutherans.

      This is confirmed in the massive 2011 CPH/LC-MS book of church history The Church From Age To Age as it refers to the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church, p. 844:

“… the long-held Western Christian confession of the Athanasian Creed, which is an official confession for Roman Catholics as well as orthodox Protestant churches. The creed states that only those who worship the Holy Trinity and confess the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ can be saved.”

This affirmation of Roman Catholicism by the LC-MS willfully ignores the Papists' denial of the foundation of Christianity, the Doctrine of Justification. Pieper shows, as do the Lutheran Confessions, that the Roman Catholic Church understands "'grace' as sanctification and good works", and thereby denies the fruit of the Incarnation and Resurrection.  Rome did not overturn their "infused grace" theology in Vatican II, a theology that Luther so earnestly contended against. Is it any wonder that the college textbook Religion in America (4th edition, p. 58) by Unitarian "minister" Rev. Julia Corbett-Hemeyer says the LC-MS is a "consensus religion" and "is now a part of the broad consensus". — In the next Part 17…

Florida's true martyrs: massacred by “holy Catholic faith”; “evangelical catholicity”?, Part 2

      Continued from Part 1. Pastor Piepkorn, after his introductory remarks, now gives his summary of the history of these "Lutheran Martyrs" of Florida. Afterwards we will compare it to the report by C.F.W. Walther 68 years earlier:

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The Lutheran martyrs of Florida [1] were members of a naval mission sent by the king of France [2] upon the urging of Admiral de Coligny to colonize the east coast of Florida in the name of the French crown, and a settlement was established at the mouth of St. John’s River [Ft. Caroline].

Philip II of Spain sent Captain General Pedro Menéndez to destroy the colony, and in 1565 he established a base at St. Augustine. Taking the offensive to ward off this threat to the peace of the French colony, Jean Ribault of Dieppe endeavored to attack St. Augustine by sea, but was prevented from achieving victory by the tide and by the outbreak of a violent storm, which shipwrecked his flotilla off the coast. Menéndez immediately attacked the French settlement by land and destroyed it. The shipwrecked French sailors landed on an island near St. Augustine, where Menendez succeeded in inducing about 215 to surrender unconditionally. Ordering them bound, he demanded that they declare their faith. Ten confessed themselves to be Roman Catholics and were spared, along with a few artisans whose services were required by the Spaniards. The remainder, having refused to renounce their Lutheran belief, [1] were ferried to the mainland in small groups and marched northward. As they reached a line which Menendez had drawn in the sand they were set upon and murdered in cold blood.

Kill Lutherans
and Lutheranism in America.

A fortnight later, on Oct. 12, an additional seventy-five, among them Ribault himself, were similarly dispatched in a repetition of the gory tragedy. In recording the event, the Rev. Fr. Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, the chaplain of Menendez’s expedition, notes in his chronicle that the martyrs of Florida “were executed because they were Lutherans and enemies of our holy [Roman] Catholic faith.” [3]

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Notes:

1. Piepkorn offers no explanation, as Walther does in 1872, that Ribault's French party did not call themselves Lutherans but Huguenots – essentially Calvinists – a separated sect from Lutheranism.
2. The "king of France" was Charles IX of France, also the namesake of Florida's Fort Caroline.
3. Piepkorn omits a detail that Walther covered in 1872, a juicy postscript revealing that 2 years after this massacre the French harshly avenged this crime, but not as Lutherans, rather as Frenchmen.

What gives this history notoriety is that the one who gave witness to the true reason for the massacre was not a Frenchman or any “Protestant”, but the Roman Catholic priest.
      When one just begins to research the history of this incident on the Internet, one is bombarded with web sites that cover not these martyrs executed as Lutherans, but rather the "La Florida martyrs", or Roman Catholic "martyrs" who were put to death by native Americans and Carolina Colony soldiers (Colony history). They do not speak of the French retaliation that followed 2 years after this massacre.  But it was the Roman Catholics who first made their intentions clear for the "holy Catholic faith" in America, that those Lutherans or any who were considered to be harboring the faith of the Lutheran Reformation were targets to be executed, nay, massacred. —

      However the reason why I am publishing this essay is not so much to bring the Florida massacre to memory again, since Walther already did that 68 years before this essay, but to highlight the irony of the writer of this essay, Arthur Carl Piepkorn.
      Today's defenders of Piepkorn and his "evangelical catholicity" may interject that his account of this incident was not so different from Walther's in 1872.  That may be true to a certain extent, but Walther knew the papists better than Piepkorn.  Walther, unlike Piepkorn, knew that he did not need to gloss over that the martyrs were not actually Lutherans, he told the history exactly as it was.  The French party of Ribault were Huguenots, i.e. Calvinists.  And the story would lose its notoriety except for the fact that they were considered Lutherans by the Catholics, as their own priest proudly proclaimed!

      Lest any reader wonder that I am improperly characterizing the theology of Pastor (and Professor) Piepkorn, I would point to the testimony of the well-known Father Richard John Neuhaus (see appendix below), a Concordia Seminary trained Lutheran pastor who famously left Lutheranism to be a Roman Catholic priest.  In his 2006 book Catholic Matters, p. 55-56, he revealed who was the greatest influence in his decision to turn away from Lutheranism… to Catholicism (my emphasis): 

“Although he remained a Lutheran until his death, at age sixty-six, in 1973, Piepkorn gave me an understanding of Lutheranism that required my becoming Catholic. … The Church is not…formed by…formulas such as ‘justification by faith alone’”.

Another witness to this would be Robert Louis Wilken, another LCMS Lutheran-turned-Catholic.

A confessed catholic,
not with ambivalence.

America's Luther:
C.F.W. Walther

      The last line of Piepkorn's hymn stanza asks "Who follows in their train?" But how is one to be a Lutheran today in America, one who "follows in their train"?  Is it not to stand with the "Old Lutherans" of the old Missouri Synod of a century ago, the ones so vilified in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia?  Is it not to understand that “The pope did not propose that the [Vatican II] council revise or change Roman Catholic doctrine.” (Meyer-Tjernagel, A History of Western Christianity, p 271)  Is it not to stand fast against not only the Roman Catholic Church, but against the Romanizing Lutheran teachers in the LCMS, epitomized by the writer of this essay, Arthur Carl Piepkorn?  True Lutherans stand fast on sola fide, "without the deeds of the law" (Ro 3:28), that salvation is entirely and alone by God's grace.  Therefore they do not join in spirit (or work) with those who vilify (i.e. massacre) true Lutheranism. 

      What did the father's of the United States of America have in mind with their ideal of "freedom of religion"?  They had in mind to prohibit the civil power of the Roman Catholic Church to rule, so that in America one would not be forced out for not bowing to the Pope.  George Washington hardly had in mind to allow papal power to rule religion in America in his farewell address.
[Other Florida massacre histories available here and here]
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2019-05-26: Appendix I: For additional material on Neuhaus, see Robert Preus's citations from him in his 1970 essay "Confessional Subscription" p. 45 n. 12 & 13.

2023-11-07: See the Catholic "Coming Home" based website here on Neuhaus.

Stoeckhardt on Missouri-3: "Confessional Lutheran"; substantive changes in Roman Church?

This continues from the Introduction publishing the English translation of one of George Stoeckhardt's major convention essays, The Missouri Synod (Table of Contents in Part 1).  In this part 3, the misuse of the label "Confessional Lutheran" is highlighted.  George Stoeckhardt knew well this misuse as he recounts in numerous places in his Missouri Synod essay the errors of the modern theology of the German State Church from which he came out of.  But what strikes me is that these modernists would call themselves "Confessional Lutherans".  Franz Pieper also spoke about those who would call themselves "Confessional" in Germany in 1930:

Confessional Lutheran theologians are just that in their theology.  Knowledge is encouraged to the extent that they have recognized the doctrine of the Lutheran Confessions as scriptural and are able to teach effectively.

These so-called "Confessional Lutheran theologians" in Germany, some of whom likely taught Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were just using that "Confessional Lutheran" label to appear more authentic, but were in reality using it under false pretenses.  —  Here are 2 passages comparing Stoeckhardt and today's LC-MS:

Stoeckhardt: Missouri Synod, page 253

The Lutheran Difference, page xvi

In our day a theology is come in to the fore which is struggling for credibility, which directly calls itself Confessional-Lutheran, but which seeks to make Lutheran belief plausible to reason and to placate the spirit of the age.

Without question, congregations and denominations of the twenty-first century are different from those of the sixteenth century when the Reformation was so needed. The ecumenical movement during the twentieth century increased dialogue among Christians worldwide. Vatican II (1962–65) brought substantive changes to Roman Catholic practice and attitudes, which is evident when you visit their services.

Now the Editor(s) of The Lutheran Difference would certainly call himself a "Confessional Lutheran".  But when he says that Vatican II "brought substantive changes" to the Roman Church, he thereby is directly targeted by Stoeckhardt's warning against modern theology, that it seeks to "placate the spirit of the age", for modern theology does not use the forceful language of the Confessions or the old (German) Missouri Synod.  He may cry foul all he wants, but today's LC-MS continually points to "Vatican II" as proof of "substantive changes", all the while he would claim to be a "Confessional Lutheran".  But Stoeckhardt saw through this weakening of Christian doctrine first hand in the German State Church, where differences were blurred.

NO! -- There were no "substantive changes" from Vatican II and today's CPH editors could learn from the Romanists themselves for even they say themselves (per Wikipedia):

As Dei Verbum reads, "Therefore, following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council, this present council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation and how it is handed on…”, Vatican II did not deny previous councils' correctness.

It does not matter what the CPH editors and writers say about "The Lutheran Difference" after the Editor says "Vatican II brought substantive changes"... the damage is already done.  Perhaps the CPH editors and writers need a lesson on what "substantive" actually means.  Here is what Google popped up when I asked for a definition:

sub·stan·tive

adjective

ˈsəbstən(t)iv,səbˈstan(t)iv/

1. 1.

   having a firm basis in reality and therefore important, meaningful, or considerable.

   "there is no substantive evidence for the efficacy of these drugs"
2. 2.

   having a separate and independent existence.

Of course Google's definition isn't concerned with spiritual matters.  We have to go Back To Luther to get the spiritual meaning:

      3.  having a firm basis, an objective existence in the truth of the Gospel, "by grace, not by works"

Now that we have established the proper meaning of the word "substantive", does the reader believe that Vatican II, with its continued anathema against the truth of the Gospel, brought substantive changes to the Roman Church?  –  Did you see that "wink" in their eye as they attempt to explain the "Lutheran Difference" vs. the Pope's Church, the Church of the Antichrist?  ... the Antichrist that George Stoeckhardt plainly speaks of in his essay?

Could it be the CPH book "The Lutheran Difference" lacks substance and is not actually Confessional Lutheranism when it mixes false teaching with truth?  And that Lutherans should rather look to George Stoeckhardt for truly Confessional Lutheran teaching?

In the next Part 4...

Stoeckhardt: Missouri Synod (Pt 1): True Ev.-Luth. Church

George Stoeckhardt
† 1913

I have blogged in the past about another well-known professor from the old (German) Missouri Synod – George Stoeckhardt.  In one of them, I responded to a report of his "nervous breakdown", a report that even now seems suspect because it came from sources not commonly available, the common ones such as 80 Eventful Years; Reminiscences of Ludwig Ernest Fuerbringer, etc., (by L. Fuerbringer) and other sources inside and outside of the Missouri Synod, those who knew him best.  It was not mentioned by those who covered Stoeckhardt's life after he passed away.  Even now, I wonder about the motives of Prof. Joel Pless of Wisconsin Lutheran College who felt compelled to present this "exposé".

Stoeckhardt is close to being in my masthead, for he taught, preached, and defended the pure Gospel, the Gospel that C.F.W. Walther uncovered again in America and set on the pedestal.  Stoeckhardt wrote many essays and conference reports for the old Missouri, but I am going to highlight one in particular, partly because it testifies to a fact that almost no one today acknowledges – that it was C.F.W. Walther, not F.A. Schmidt, who wrote the report delivered at the inaugural meeting of the Synodical Conference in 1872 – the essay title I abbreviate as SCR 1872.  This testimony was included in a sub-section regarding the Doctrine of Justification as taught by old Missouri, and I want to highlight this in the next post.

So to refute the image of Prof. Stoeckhardt, where he "escaped one evening from the [Missouri Baptist] sanitarium and after a chase of several blocks was apprehended by members of the St. Louis police force and returned"... to refute this, I want to present the true George Stoeckhardt, the dear theologian who fled his native Germany because of its modern theology in the German State Church and came to America, where the Ev.-Lutheran Church was flourishing under... C.F.W. Walther.  I would add that Stoeckhardt also bowed to Walther's successor, Franz Pieper.  This is shown by the following report of Fuerbringer:

At first he preached rather lengthy sermons, but when Dr. Pieper, his neighbor and friend and regular visitor in his church, told him, “Stoeckhardt, du predigst zu lang,” he at once took it to heart and limited himself to so and so many pages of manuscript. — 80 Eventful Years, page 112.

Stoeckhardt also, to his credit, corrected his earlier tendency for synergism as he came under the influence of the Missourians Walther and Pieper.

Essays and Papers
by G. Stoeckhardt

Stoeckhardt was the author of much theological material, both in periodicals and in books.  But I have selected perhaps his best "dogmatics" work, an essay delivered to successive years of the "Central District" – first in Cleveland, Ohio in 1894, then in Indianapolis, Indiana, 1895.  And the translator of much of Stoeckhardt's works, Erwin W. Koehlinger, included these in his Essays and Papers collection and it was published by CTS-Seminary Press in the 1980s.  I have learned that this book is still available from Concordia Theological Seminary bookstore by calling them since it is "Print-on-Demand" and not online. This book has several other district convention essays and is well worth the modest price of ~ $20.

"The Lutheran Difference"
Reformation Anniversary Edition

As I reread this essay again after 15 years, I found it to be a worthy example of pure old (German) Missouri Synod teaching – already translated into English! It is much more valuable for Christian teaching than most of what is sold today by CPH and CTS-FW, like the new "500th Anniversary Reformation Edition" of their book The Lutheran Difference. where the Editor (Engelbrecht?) says

Vatican II (1962–65) brought substantive changes to Roman Catholic practice and attitudes... (Preface, xvi)

Note to CPH and today's LC-MS: how could Vatican II bring "substantive changes" when it did not repeal the anathema of the Council of Trent on all Christianity? —  I was especially refreshed by Stoeckhardt's essay since it is also a timely weapon in refuting today's "here and now" LC-MS that is intent on mixing false teachings with truth – see Stoeckhardt's section below on the Antichrist.
Koehlinger's translation does not have the emphasized words in the original German text.  However I have highlighted certain passages and will use them in the upcoming blog posts to refute current erring teachers. Hypertext links added for ease of navigation.  (View full text in separate window here)

                  Table of Contents
Part 1 – Intro, full text window (this post)
Part 2 – Justification and Synodical Conference 1872 (vs. Marquart, Schuetze)
Part 3 – "Confessional Lutheranism"; substantive changes?  (vs. The Lutheran Difference book)
Part 4 – Sun, moon, stars (cosmology)... in the Bible (vs. Hermann Sasse)
Part 5a – Means of Grace: Which is the primary one? (vs. Berthold von Schenk)
Part 5b – Means of Grace: What is Absolution? (Baseley's attack on Walther)