Delitzsch 6: German layman, hymns; “Luth. Judaism”; “lay circles” - Fundamentalists

      Continuing from Part 5 the series on Delitzsch and German church conditions from Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1.  (Table of Contents in Part 1) …
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      Pieper now breaks off from his report on the Delitzsch, and looks for signs of life in Germany of his time, the years after World War I.

Translation by BackToLuther; all green shaded text was omitted in the 1950 English edition and is first published here in English; all underlined words emphasized in the original German; red text and/or red bold text is my emphasis, all notes inside square brackets [ ] are mine; many items hyperlinked for reference; hyperlinked page numbers in square brackets [ ]; all unshaded text was included in English edition but re-translated to avoid copyright complaint by CPH.

—————————  Part 6  ———————————

Versailles Treaty – Big 4

[204  >]
A layman (a lawyer) in the Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift (1923, p. 116) [“New Church Magazine”], points to the unfortunate political situation in which Germany is at present, and which is probably most heartfelt for the American Lutherans of the “strictly confessional direction.”   Would that by God's grace, as in other countries, so also in Germany, their theology be led out of the marsh of Ego-theology!  

Battle of White Mountain
Thirty Years's War

The layman writes, among other things: “The German people have sunk as deeply as they did in the period after the Thirty Years' War [1618-1648]. But let us remember that at that time the religious life in the evangelical church was the richest. At that time, the most beautiful hymns of our church were created, which, from our childhood, are an indelible treasure of the heart.  Let us hope that precisely in the storms and temptations of the modern age, our Church will prove to be a great force of life.”  

“most beautiful hymns
of our church”

This would happen, and the Church would also now by faith and prayer remove the political plight as after the Thirty Years' War, if Church conditions were as they were back then.  At that time the teachers  [205  >] of the people held almost unanimously to the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God and the Christian doctrine derived from the Scriptures. From this faith, the divine singers of the Lutheran Church sang the beautiful hymns of the church, which still refresh our hearts. Now unfortunately it is different, namely, that the public teachers of the Church almost unanimously deny the infallible divine authority of Scripture, and reject as repristination theology the Christian doctrine which is sung in those splendid church hymns.  This is also the case in the same issue of the Neuen Kirchlichen Zeitschrift, on the part of a theologian who speaks with a considerable factual ignorance of an “irretrievable fall of the ancient dogmatic doctrine of inspiration” and, with a corresponding lack of truth, accusingly points to “Lutheran Judaism” “where they believe they have fulfilled their task in mechanical, external appropriation of the authority of the Scriptures as well as of the confessional writings.”  We theologians are very difficult to convert when we have once thoroughly departed from the right path, for example, we no longer know whether we should teach from Holy Scripture or from our own inner being. That is why in Germany, as in the previous century, salvation will have to come mainly from “lay circles,” perhaps under the leadership of pastors who have been little noticed.  Just as with us in America, the laity among the Baptists are now seeking to bring about a union which extends through the whole country, with the purpose of protecting the Church and the world from a generation of unbelieving pastors who are the product of the universities and seminaries,  in which “for divine creation is inserted evolution, for the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures is the faith consciousness of the individual, for Christ the Son of God is the ideal man Jesus, for faith in the vicarious satisfaction of Christ is moral strivings according to the model of the ideal man Jesus, for heaven and eternal salvation is earthly bliss (social gospel).” 620

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620). See p. 146 f. The reports from The Fundamentalist, Vol. II, No. 1.

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      I have been unable to locate a digital copy of the essay by the German theologian who made the charge of “Lutheran Judaism” against the Old Missouri Synod. And Pieper does not name him.   But after reading the early Delitzsch, this same charge would have to apply to him as well.

Kirchen-Gesangbuch
1905 (1892)

     It is interesting to see that the CPH book Walther's Hymnal, the English translation of the Old German Missouri Synod's Kirchen-Gesangbuch, never seems to be offered at a discounted sale price, nor are there any low cost used copies showing up on Amazon.  Could it be that true Christians are interested in pure Christian hymns that came as a result of “one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history”?  Hmmm... why is it that modernists cannot write hymns like those written during the Thirty Years' War?

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      Pieper appeals directly to all Christians, to the priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2:5), and to the “pastors who have been little noticed", for when the teachers and leaders have departed from the authority of Holy Scripture, then it is up to these to steer the Church Universal.  And it is in this light that Pieper holds up those Baptists (and others) who organized a lay group to stand against the rationalism of scholars, and called themselves “Fundamentalists”, with praise from President Franz Pieper of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. (I will post a blog on this subject later.)

“Lay Circles” and “Little Noticed Pastors”
      As I read Pieper’s emphasis on these for the true leadership of the Church in troubled times, I could not help thinking of the Association of Confessing Evangelical Lutheran Congregations (ACELC) – are these perhaps the “lay circles” and the “little noticed pastors” for the LC-MS? — Now I would like to nominate for the award of the first “Little Noticed Pastor” for today's LC-MS:

——— Rev. Gerhard P. Grabenhofer ———

God Grant It
translated by Pr. Grabenhofer

Rev. Gerhard P. Grabenhofer

1st Pieper 

“Little Noticed Pastor”

to lead today's LC-MS

What?  Can anything good come from New York?  Oh, what tremendously strong Lutherans there must be at Faith Lutheran Church in... Corning, New York.

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In the next Part 7, Pieper reports of correspondence from the later Delitzsch... a grieving Delitzsch.

Delitzsch 5: You, Walther, ingrained in me… grace; Missouri Synod fathers

      Continuing from Part 4 the series on Delitzsch and German church conditions from Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1.  (Table of Contents in Part 1) …
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      Now we see Delitzsch look beyond the sea, to those who left Germany, emigrated, to go to America to practice the true Lutheran faith without persecution from the government, or from the church leaders and teachers who were overpowering the Church with their destructive rationalism.
      Delitzsch's book that Pieper references in this segment was not translated into English, by the Scottish Church or by anyone else.  It is not available on Google Books or HathiTrust.  It took some searching to find a digital copy on the web in Germany.  But found it I did!  To think: why is it so difficult to learn about this side of Delitzsch apart from Franz Pieper's detailed report?  Could it be that the world welcomed the fall of the later Delitzsch, and still hates the Old (German) Missouri Synod?

Translation by BackToLuther; all green shaded text was omitted in the 1950 English edition and is first published here in English; all underlined words emphasized in the original German; red text and/or red bold text is my emphasis, all notes inside square brackets [ ] are mine; many items hyperlinked for reference; hyperlinked page numbers in square brackets [ ]; all unshaded text was included in English edition but re-translated to avoid copyright complaint by CPH.

—————————  Part 5  ———————————

But ten years later (1849) when he was a professor of theology in Rostock, Delitzsch not only renewed his greeting to his American friends of the “strictly confessional direction”, but also renewed his commitment to the Lutheran Confessions and added the reminder to hold to this confession because in it the “future” of the Lutheran Church was decided.

the “strictly confessional direction”
(in America)

Delitzsch dedicated his writing Vom Hause Gottes oder der Kirche [PDF, TIFF b/w; From the House of God or the Church] [203  >] to “the Evangelical Lutheran pastors Brohm, Bünger, Bürger, Fürbringer, Geier [= Geyer], Gönner, Gruber, Keyl, Löber, Schieferdecker, Ferdinand Walther, Wege in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and New York”.  We use a part of the dedication words here to further illustrate the ecclesiastical context of Germany with the “strictly confessional direction” of the Missouri Synod.  At the same time the words bear a strongly dogmatic character and are therefore also in place in a dogmatics work. They read: “With the greeting of old, unwavering love, I salute you, you who are of the Lord's house, you companions in my first love for Christ, companions with my first joy in the Church of the pure confession and the unfettered household of God, companions tormented but now, by God's mercy, passed the struggles.  

“my Walther”

You, my Walther, ingrained in me the deep earnestness of the divine order of grace. In dealing with you and Bürger, I first met and loved the ancient ascetical writings of our church. In your church, dear Keyl, I held my first sermon; there I saw miracles of official pastoral care, where I lived paradise days among your parishioners. What deadly hatred of the world was aroused by the simple preaching of the way of salvation, I saw in you, dear Bürger. By your word and example, my dear Wege, and Brohm, Löber, and Fürbringer, I was quite sure and glad of the Lutheran confessions. And at a time of repeated fluctuations, I learned from you, dear Gruber, the true marks of the true Church, in which I found them again, never to lose them again. . . .  Each of your names, dear brothers and friends, is a piece of my life story, littered with indelible memories.  We have experienced years of Pentecostal joy, bloody struggle, oppressive excommunications, merciful liberation, and when we look back, then our mouth must be full of laughter and our tongue full of praise. For the LORD hath judged us with mildness, and ruled with much sparing. Still in our hearts is His sweet love, the Word of His truth in our mouths, and we have not become astray in His holy Church. Thus receive this little offering as a life-sign of the love of your friend for the LORD, His house and you, His house-companions. … What a glorious future awaits our Church, when it supplies the lamp of her good confession with oil of the Spirit, and swiftly goes to meet the coming LORD without ceasing!  All you beloved brethren beyond the sea, [204  >] let us watch and pray that we will not lose the inheritance of this future!” — Under the pressure of “unscientific science,” as Walther put it, Delitzsch, as we have already pointed out, departed from his own testimony. But this deprives the truth of his former testimony of the truth just as little as the later Melanchthon's departure from the right path renders void the truth originally confessed by him.  Gradually there was an alienation between our American Lutheran Church and the Church of Germany. We remained with Scripture as the Word of God and the only source and norm of theology and saw in Luther, the reformer of the Church, the right model as to be taught in the Christian Church.  German theology gave up more and more the Scripture as the Word of God, and wandered in the pathways of Schleiermacher, the “Reformer of the nineteenth century,” who did not return the church and its theology to the rock of the Word of God, as the Reformer did of the sixteenth century, but the Church and theology were submerged in the mire of subjectivism by giving the slogan that the Christian doctrine was to be derived from the allegedly pious Ego of the theologizing subject, the “experience”, etc. In this marsh of subjectivism, almost the whole theology of Germany is currently moving, as far as the public teachers are concerned.

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Ah, if only Delitzsch had kept his first love pure!  In a future installment one will read more about Delitzsch's fall and the reason for it. — In the next Part 6 Pieper looks for other signs of life in Germany apart from Delitzsch and finds a stirring example in a layman in 1923... [that's post-WW I].

Delitzsch 4: Lutheran Confessions; old dogmaticians, Old Lutheran Church, “old paths”

      Continuing from Part 3 the series on Delitzsch and German church conditions from Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1.  (Table of Contents in Part 1) …
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      I confess: I am a confessional Lutheran because I believe the Bible, and for no other reason.  Isn't that what the Lutheran Confessions and the old Lutheran teachers are all about – as Delitzsch points out below?

Translation by BackToLuther; all green shaded text was omitted in the 1950 English edition and is first published here in English; all underlined words emphasized in the original German; red text and/or red bold text is my emphasis, all notes inside square brackets [ ] are mine; many items hyperlinked for reference; hyperlinked page numbers in square brackets [ ]; all unshaded text was included in English edition but re-translated to avoid copyright complaint by CPH.

—————————  Part 4  ———————————

Concordia Triglotta
"the golden Triglotta"

On his position towards the symbolic books [201 >] Delitzsch expresses himself [pg 18-19]: “The symbolic books, so one says, were good for that time, but now they are ready to be abrogated, since they no longer expose the sworn teachers who are under suspicion of perjury. …  For the doctrines of the neologists contradict the symbolic books, when they do not want to interpret these as equally spiritualizing as one is to make with the Bible.  No one is a member of the Lutheran Church, except those who acknowledge the Scripturalness of this confession, and teaches it, according to the obligation, where he has the teacher's calling. This confession is based on the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Covenant, recognizing both the Old and New Testament books of the Canon by the Holy Spirit as equally venerable and inviolable, consistent and vigorous, clear, perfect, and sufficient to distinguish the lie which is contrary to them from the unmixed truth revealed in them.”  

On the old Lutheran theologians, Delitzsch says [pg 24]: “Those old Lutheran teachers were not only learned, but also sanctified theologians, trained in the school of the Holy Spirit, filled with heavenly wisdom, sweet consolation and a living knowledge of God; God's Word was planted in their heart, mixed with their faith and transformed into sap and strength. God's Word, not human wisdom, also not understood by human wisdom, but experienced by divine grace, was the heavenly fire upon which they kindled their torches. So, look but my people, in the mirror of your ancestors, remember the time before and therefore consider, what God has done with the ancient fathers! Ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee, Deut. 32:7.  Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls’, Jer. 6:16.  I preach that you step back, namely to the Word of God, from which you have fallen. Your enlightenment is for me a dark, starless, scary night; you have confused the terms in your delirium, otherwise you could not compare an Egyptian darkness, which is the judgment of God because you have rejected the light of the Reformation, to a sunny day.”  After expounding the doctrines of justification and the means of grace, which are brought to light by the Reformation again, Delitzsch closes his anniversary publication with these words [pg 97]: [202  >] “To you I turn back, beloved companions of the same city and the same Church, to whom, on the threshold of my little book, I am contented with a festival greeting. I have surrendered myself to be your teacher; then I know that you have teachers who are appointed to teach you and to pasture you. But the Word of God also commands us: ‘Exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching!’  Heb. 10:25.  I have sought for this divine call, for I am one among you, filled with heartfelt love for our much-beloved Leipzig, the city of human friendliness and mildness, and to the dear land of Saxony, the land of honest sense  and fidelity.  What I have spoken, and wanted to defend, is nothing else than the faith of the Old Lutheran Church, confessed by our ancestors three hundred years ago, on Holy Pentecost under fervent prayer of thanksgiving. Search the Scriptures; you will know and recognize that this faith is Lutheran, that it is Christian, founded on the immutable and imperishable Word of eternal truth. This faith has nothing to do with confused doubt, gathering gloom and ailing infirmity, as many think; Oh no, it brings bright eyes, confident courage and vigourous freshness. The enlightened reason recognizes its irrefutable truth; the regenerated heart finds in it heavenly consolation, blessed peace, and abundant refreshment. This faith overpowers the gates of hell and holds an eternal triumphal procession through the gates of death.  Shall we, my beloved ones, give up such a faithful, firm, joyous, and victorious faith for a halved Christianity, which lags on two sides and seeks to unite Christ and Belial, or even for a silly-proud enlightenment which gives the lie to the Word of God and idolizes reason, which amuses us in this life, but cannot comfort us in death?  We would be foolish to ourselves and irresponsible to our descendants.”

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Who were the “old Lutheran theologians” from the 17th Century, sometimes referred to as the “old dogmaticians” or “Lutheran orthodoxy”?  They are typified by the likes of John Gerhard, Abraham Calov, Johannes Andreas Quenstedt and many others.  These teachers did not draw on their own experience or some inner light, they did not harp on "variant readings".  Their theology was taken from the Holy Scriptures.  How heartening it is to hear Franz Delitzsch announce to the Leipzig Christians the Scriptural nature of the Lutheran Confessions and the old Lutheran teachers. — Oh, but 10 years later in 1849, he names more recent men, not from the 17th Century, but from the 19th… from across the sea… in the next Part 5.

2017: Reformation 500th Anniversary year

      Today marks the beginning of the 500th anniversary year of Luther's Reformation.  For my celebration, I would repeat a portion of Franz Pieper's essay reviewing C.F.W. Walther's essay “The Fruitful Reading of Luther's Writings” given in a 2012 blog post.  Just a small portion will do:

Walther's … first thesis points out that a unique meaning comes with Luther's writings in comparison with all other theological writings. The first thesis is:  “To desire and love the reading and studying of Luther’s writings, it is necessary before all things that one vividly recognizes that Luther is not to be reckoned with the usual pure theologians, but the Reformer selected by God of the Church and was the revealer and slayer of the Antichrist.”  In carrying out this thesis, it states: “Luther is the only theologian who is prophesied in Scripture. He is beyond all doubt, the angel that Revelation 14:6 speaks of. He is no doubt the one who after 2 Thess. 2 reveals the Antichrist and should destroy him.”

You can also find a full translation of this very same essay by Pieper in Matthew Harrison's book At Home in the House of My Fathers, pages 686-690.  LC-MS President Harrison prefaced his translation of Pieper this way:

“It is not self-evident that all pastors will be familiar with the writings of Luther. But what a homiletical gold mine! What a source for insight into care for souls! What a glorious invitation to understand the Gospel is given us in the writings of Luther!” 

        – Matthew Harrison

I invite LC-MS President Matthew Harrison to begin his celebration of this year of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation by reading again his own translation of

Franz Pieper's review of
   C.F.W. Walther's essay extolling the fruitful reading of
       Luther's writings.

Then I would ask Harrison to review my series on Franz Delitzsch… and ask himself:

How was it that the great German Lutheran theologian Franz Delitzsch fell from the pure Christian doctrine that C.F.W. Walther pointed him to?

Delitzsch 3: Holy Scripture & Luther; LC-MS & Luther – "You flatter yourselves…"

      Continuing from Part 2 the series on Franz Delitzsch and German church conditions from Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1.  (Table of Contents in Part 1) …

K&D Commentary on OT

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      Who was Franz Delitzsch? … why is he a famous German theologian, even today?  One indication is that many of his German writings were translated into English – mostly by Scottish (Reformed) Church people (T & T Clark).  These works are actively sold today by Reformed book distributors.  At right is the 10 volume series Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament, sold for the amazing CBD price of $99!  (That's $10/volume.  Hmmm... maybe CPH should figure out how to sell Luther's Works at such a ridiculously low price so more people could read Luther!)  More can be read about Franz Delitzsch at both the English and especially the German Wikipedia sites.  But what you will not find at practically all other sites is what Franz Pieper reports of both the early Franz Delitzsch, and the fall of the later Franz Delitzsch.

      One could think of Delitzsch as the ultimate expert on Biblical Hebrew language.  He most certainly was an expert!  But we see from the writings of the old (German) Missouri Synod that he was not the ultimate Biblical Hebrew scholar.  No, that remains for the likes of… Martin Luther, and the teachers of the old Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.  An example of their strength and Delitzsch's weakness is displayed especially in comments on Genesis 4:1 (note Prof. Eduard Pardieck). —  Now I present Part 3 of my translation:

Translation by BackToLuther; all green shaded text was omitted in the 1950 English edition and is first published here in English; all underlined words emphasized in the original German; red text and/or red bold text is my emphasis, all notes inside square brackets [ ] are mine; many items hyperlinked for reference; hyperlinked page numbers in square brackets [ ]; all unshaded text was included in English edition but re-translated to avoid copyright complaint by CPH.

—————————  Part 3  ———————————

He [Delitzsch] says of the Holy Scripture [pg 6-7]: “It alone is the foundation upon which the Christian Church defies the gates of hell, the touchstone according to which it distinguishes between truth and falsehood, according to which it is judged, but also by which it is judged. To this Word it [the Church] must submit itself with reverence, with humility, with self-denial.  It is not placed as a judge, but as a housekeeper, from whom God will demand accountability; if it does not want to invite the curse of God, it should neither add to nor take away anything from this Word; without any fear or favor of men, it should confess its faith in this Word and defend it from all injustice or heretical doctrine, according to the express command of God.”  Through disregard of Scripture, Rome has fallen.  [pg 8:] “The fathers of our Lutheran Church, however, did not fight anti-Christianism with anti-Christianism, they did not place a source of knowledge, such as tradition, alongside or even over the Holy Scripture. They did not substitute for the long-running darkness the natural light of human reason, nor the supernatural of an immediate enlightenment, but the light of the Holy Scripture, without which human reason, whether philosophizing or swarming over it, remains forever blind and unenlightened. Of course, you [neologists] separate between the letter and spirit.  [pgs 20-21:] You flatter yourselves that Luther is your patron. But never does Luther understand by the Word of God anything other than the letter of the Holy Scriptures, never the inspiration of an inner light, the ideas of blind reason, or the illusions of perverted feelings, but always the written Word according to the simple Word excluding of all human mediation, falsification and spiritualization — the Holy Scripture, by which alone, but by which also always God the Holy Spirit works, they become  to the listener or reader a smell of life to life or a smell of death to death.” [2 Cor. 2:16]  

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      Could it be that the Church History taught by Prof. Erik Herrmann does not follow the early Delitzsch but rather the later Delitzsch, the later Delitzsch who fell to “scientific theology”?  Prof. Herrmann, chairman of the historical theology department at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, follows Prof. (emeritus) Robert Kolb as director of the Center for Reformation Research and is a staunch defender of the teaching of Prof. Jeffery Kloha (the Bible is a “plastic text”).   Hmmm... seems like an easy question to judge... what do you think, dear reader?... especially in light of what our Saviour says –

The Scripture cannot be broken. — John 10:35

To you, Profs. Herrmann and Kloha, I shall use the words of the early Delitzsch:

“You flatter yourselves that Luther is your patron.” – Franz Delitzsch

Nay, more than these, I say to all the teachers and leaders of today's LC-MS:

“You flatter yourselves that Luther is your patron.” – Franz Delitzsch

lutheranreformation.org

Today's LC-MS proposes to be at the forefront of the celebration of the 2017 500th anniversary of the Reformation.  On their new website lutheranreformation.org they have emblazoned the quote from Luther shown at the right: ==>>

One could take heart that they at least quoted this defining statement of the Reformation and even included the disputed portion "Here I Stand".  But that rings hollow when its teachers call these very same Scriptures... “plastic text”.  Now some will protest that Prof. Kloha has retracted these words, but Kloha has not retracted his teaching that effectively says “The Bible is a book of PLASTIC TEXT!” Delitzsch's words above ring out against Kloha and Herrmann:

“To this Word it must submit itself with reverence, with humility, with self-denial.  It is not placed as a judge, but as a housekeeper, from whom God will demand accountability”.

Today's LC-MS teachers are placing knowledge of “variant readings” over Holy Scripture and so doing what the early Delitzsch charged Germany's theologians of doing: fighting anti-Christianism with anti-Christianism.

      Nay, to more than the teachers and leaders identified above... to anyone in the LC-MS who does not reject the erroneous teaching of Prof. Kloha (and so also of his defender Prof. Herrmann) but yet fancies themselves followers of the Reformer of the Church, I apply Delitzch's statement:

“You flatter yourselves that Luther is your patron.” – Franz Delitzsch

How is that for an introduction to the so-called Reformation 500 “celebration” of the LC-MS...

the Lutheran Church-“Missouri Synod”, “Missouri Synod” so-called? 

In the next Part 4, Delitzsch addresses the Lutheran Confessions and the “old dogmaticians” of the Lutheran Church.