W-Ltrs3: When to leave a church, when not. Walther’s Letters, Part 3 (Response to Rev. Paul McCain)

       This continues my series (Table of Contents in Part 2) on the Letters of C. F. W. Walther. — One of the letters struck me, a letter in answer to a Lutheran student in Germany who had evidently sent him a letter requesting counsel on the question of when one should leave a church fellowship. 

After I had translated this letter, I discovered that Pres. Matthew C. Harrison had also translated the same one and published it in his 2011 book At Home in the House of My Fathers (CPH 2011) , p. 180-182.  Harrison highlights especially the following quote from Walther's letter in his prefacing comments: 

“In God’s Word, orthodox Christians are not commanded to forsake the corrupt church, for example, in Corinth or Galatia. Instead, they are to reform it. They are to seek absolutely everything possible to this end and only to separate when the corrupt church is revealed to be an irreformable sect, such that practicing fellowship with it is inseparable from participation in its errors and sins. Luther also acted according to this principle.”

We will comment further below about this.

      Since I have left the LC-MS, this letter certainly applies to me, even though I am not a student studying for the ministry. And I can add that there are rather high officials in the LC-MS who are concerned about my spiritual welfare since I have so clearly left their fellowship.

      Walther speaks plainly in this letter, as he does in all his letters.  He touches on his own sorrow over a wrong justification for leaving his post as pastor of a congregation in Germany, but gives a surprising scenario had he not left Germany with the Saxon Lutheran Emigration of 1838-9. Again, the following is my own translation (utilizing DeepL), not Harrison's translation:

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To Mr. Joh. Fackler, student of theology

Erlangen, Bavaria.

St. Louis, May 24, 1870.

My dear Mr. Fackler!

…True as it is that mere adherence to pure doctrine does not make an ecclesiastical body an orthodox one, there is no doubt that there is a great difference between a fellowship which is inherently false and one which is avowedly and principally gathered around false doctrine or doctrinal fusion. There is no doubt that the one who comes to the knowledge of the truth, for example, in the Roman or Reformed or United Church, without 

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consulting flesh and blood, must leave these fellowships if he does not want to deny the truth. But it is different with a church which originally stood right, but into which all kinds of abusus [abuses] in doctrine and practice have gradually penetrated. In this case, it is not necessary to take the walking stick immediately, but to first try everything to see if a renewal is not possible with God's help. As sad as the situation was in the churches at Corinth and in Galatia, Paul did not give the righteous the advice to separate, but punished the whole fellowship in order to make way for the righteous to host a reformation. The counsel that the Lord gives to the orthodox Christians, for example, concerning the Nicolaitans, is completely different. In this, our fathers are an important example. What a wonderfully irenic character the Augustana has! But how the language changes in the Smalcald Articles when the Pope made a show of having the abuses sealed by a papal council! My guiding star in such questions has always been this word of Luther and similar ones:

 

“The holy church sins and stumbles or even errs, as the Lord's Prayer teaches; but she neither defends nor excuses herself, but humbly asks for forgiveness and corrects herself as she always can: then she is forgiven, so that her sin is no longer counted as sin. If now, in the midst of obedience and stubborn disobedience, I should not recognize nor distinguish the right church from the wrong one, I know no more to say of any church,” (“Luther's Letter Concerning His Book on the Private Mass of 1534”. XIX, 1579.) [W1 XIX, 1579. § 19-20, col. 2 W2 19, 1294 § 19-20; AE 38, 229 – Harrison gives incorrect reference for St.L edition.].

From a degenerate fellowship, formerly right standing, I can only counsel to separate when it is notorious that it has become “hardened”; and this is notorious only when every effort has been made to bring it back, but to no avail. Calling upon my good right in such a fellowship, I do not leave it until I am either put out or indirectly compelled to go out by being put in the position of either doing something against conscience or giving way. If God had wanted

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me to have this realization some thirty years ago, I would probably have been in America as well [as he was then after the Emigration], but not as a runaway from the ministry, but as an exile. I do not judge the Bavarian church with [Julius] Diedrich according to the abuses occurring in it, but according to how it should be in it according to its own principles. According to God's Word, the visible church is always to be judged synecdochically in such a way that the righteous give it the character which has its right in it. —

You ask me: “Do you think that there are Lutherans in the Union?” I answer: Yes and No! Yes, inasmuch as a Lutheran is one who has and confesses the Lutheran faith; No, inasmuch as all such mouth confessors in the Union deny their confession by deed. In short, I regard the Lutheran believers and mouth confessors in the Union as schismatic Lutherans, guilty of the sin of syncretism, with whom I can therefore have nothing to do, even as with my fellow believers and church fellowship. —

As for the concession Luther made to Melanchthon that one should serve Holy Communion for a time under one form to those who are therefore imprisoned in their conscience (for it seems to me that Luther was certainly drawn into this practice by Melanchthon and afterwards, in his great humility, did not want to let him fall; cf. X, 1934 ff; XIX, 1669 f; XVI, 1702), I must confess that I absolutely cannot find myself in it. I do not dare here to make a . . 1)

Make do with this little then! Finally, I remind you of the following two sayings: Is. 8:20; 1 John 2:27. God guide you into all truth and keep us both in it!

Your sincere friend and brother in the Lord

C. F. W. Walther.

————

1) There is a gap in the letter here.

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    President Matthew Harrison, of the so-called The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, uses this letter to ostensibly curb the tendencies within his Synod to adopt Reformed, enthusiastic methods. This is certainly a praiseworthy goal. To do this, his LC-MS should be following the Brief Statement of 1932, an "adopted" statement of faith by Synod for the LC-MS.  But they are not doing this, they are giving all kinds of sophist arguments against it by their teachers and leaders.  This is to be expected because they do the same thing against the Lutheran Confessions, denying that the Pope in Rome is the Antichrist, which is clearly stated in the Confessions, certainly by Luther; openly teaching that the Bible is "divine-human" rather than divine authorship, in contradiction to the Apology IV, §108, etc..   But most importantly, Harrison's LC-MS has left its Hauptartikel, its chief article of sola fide, or “through faith alone”, or in other words, The Lutheran Doctrine of Justification.  For if it had not turned away from this article, they would not be calling the Roman Catholic Church a changed church (one calls it “the glasnost of Vatican II”) which has never denied its chief articles set down in the Council of Trent.

      And so it is ironic that Matthew Harrison's church, the LC-MS, has become like the Bavarian Church that Walther spoke of in a previous letter to student Fackler in Germany, which “now has many analogies with the Roman Church of 1530.” And Luther's word for the Roman Church was that he could not “imagine that they would allow us the pure Gospel. For in doing so, they would have to be willing for us publicly, from the pulpit and in writing, to condemn their errors and everything that is contrary to the Gospel.”

      True, the LC-MS did not officially "throw me out", but Walther also said that 

“I can only counsel to separate when it is notorious that it has become “hardened”; and this is notorious only when every effort has been made to bring it back, but to no avail. Calling upon my good right in such a fellowship, I do not leave it until I am … indirectly compelled to go out by being put in the position of either doing something against conscience or giving way.”

(This series continues in Part 4, Walther's letter on the issue of slavery. Walther's letter to Carl Manthey-Zorn regarding his departure from the Leipzig Missionary Society.)

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[» The following was written before I knew of Rev. McCain's passing on Nov. 25, 2020. «]

      And so this is my response to Rev./CPH Publisher Paul McCain, who some months ago commented publicly on my blog to counsel me to find a church to attend.  I have only just now published his comment here.  [Comment of Sept. 27, 2020, published Jan. 9, 2021] — 

To: Rev./Publisher McCain:  you offered your comment in the spirit of counseling, and I now offer the above as counseling for you in return. Walther in the final analysis does not command one to wait until one is "thrown out", but also allows one to go out when one is “indirectly compelled to doing something against conscience.” That is exactly what happened to me.  Although not the final reason for leaving the LC-MS, I would relate to you the actual situation among the LC-MS parishioners. As I returned to my Christian faith, I wanted to share God's Word with fellow congregation members. I went to visit an elderly man in the hospital and brought my Bible to read some verses to him to comfort him.  When I arrived, the man's son was with him who, I recall, was also a member of the congregation.  When the son saw what I had in my hand (my Bible), and discovered my intentions, he summarily asked me to leave the room.  I may take that as being "thrown out" by the LC-MS. 

[Now see the next blog post, an Excursus on Rev./Publisher Paul T. McCain's passing.]

W-Ltr2: Walther's Letters, full listing: W. shot at by liberals; on slavery; against Methodist hymns, etc.

[2025-02-22: updated several links]

      This continues my series (Table of Contents below) on the Letters of C. F. W. Walther. — What follows is the result of many days (weeks) of work compiling, cataloging, organizing, translating, polishing, and hyperlinking the following:

• Prof. Ludwig Fuerbringer's 2 volumes of Walther's letters, Briefe  (2025-02-22 updated link), and
• Martin Guenther's included letters in his 1890 biography of Walther Lebensbild

But the published letters of Walther were not all made available in their original German text.  Carl S. Meyer and Roy Suelflow each published books of English translations of Walther's letters taken from originals held by Concordia Historical Institute (CHI).  So these German texts are unavailable to the public, and German speaking readers are at a disadvantage.  The bulk of the English translations are:  

• CSM69: Carl. S. Meyer, Letters of C. F. W. Walther : A Selection, Fortress Press 1969 (*) (2025-02-22 updated link)
• CSM73: Carl. S. Meyer, Walther Speaks to the Church, CPH 1973
• RS80: Roy Suelflow, Correspondence of C. F. W. Walther, Roy Suelflow 1980
• RS81: Roy Suelflow Selected Letters of C. F. W. Walther, CPH 1981 (2025-02-22 updated link)

Along with these, the following books translated a sampling of Walther's letters:

• WGP47: W. G. Polack, The Story of C.F.W. Walther, CPH 1947
• AS00: August Suelflow, Servant of the Word, CPH 2000 
• MH11, M. Harrison, At Home in the House of My Fathers, CPH 2011 (2025-02-22 updated link)

      The reason I undertook this project was to give public access to as many of Walther's letters as possible. All German letters have separate links to my BTL English translations. Along with my translations, I also linked to the English translations of Roy Suelflow's 1980 work previously made available.   Not yet hyperlinked are the CPH books of Carl S. Meyer and Roy Suelflow/CPH 1981, although see my note below (*) about a possible change on this.

    After I had made my compilation, I discovered that Prof. Thomas Egger published a similar listing in his contribution for the 2011 CPH book C. F. W. Walther, Churchman and Theologian (2025-02-22: updated link).  The listings are similar except my listing is, I believe, more extensive since it includes references to the German letters from Guenther and the English translations by Polack, August Suelflow, and Matthew Harrison. Prof. Egger had the advantage over me with full access to CHI's extensive holdings (“approximately 1200”) of original Walther letters and their transcriptions.  It it too bad that so many letters of Walther at CHI are held there untranslated and are not even publicly listed. Whose fault that is, I will leave open. (Why has Prof. Egger not translated any of these?)

Some notable quotes:

1. Liberalism & radicals (1849-03-19): “The liberals of our city are already much aroused against me. On New Year's Eve somebody fired a shot through the glass window just over my bed, which stands very close to the large window and in which I was fast asleep with wife and child. It appears that the shot was only intended as a scare, but it might also be a prelude to real intentions. You can well imagine that I, though not afraid of a martyr's death, do not consider myself worthy of the death of a martyr, yet would not really care very much to seek martyrdom.”
2. On Slavery (1860-01-08): “What God permits even for Christians in the New Testament and does not command to be abolished, but regulates, cannot be a sin in itself.…Therefore, what the apostles did not condemn in Roman slavery, we must not condemn either, if we want to be Christians.… After all, we are only servants of the Word, not lords of the Word; therefore, we must stick to the Word and leave the consequences to God.… Fight only against the abuses, not against the use.”
3. To Friedrich Brunn in Germany (1865-11-08): “I cannot express how much we owe you here. Our practical seminary is by far the greatest part filled by your dear sendlings.…”
4. On Methodist hymns (1883-01-23): “The singing of such hymns would make the rich Lutheran Church into a beggar that is forced to beg from a miserable sect.”

Notes on the DeepL/BTL machine translations – LF-xx, MG-xx: (1) Page breaks were not accommodated so sentences which spanned across page breaks were not universally corrected, although some were. (2) Some letters were polished, but most were not; some terminology was corrected, e.g. Gemeinde to congregation. (3) I have assigned a serialized number to each of Fuerbringer's and Guenther's published letters and so my English translations indicate that number in the hyperlink and heading.

      I will be using the following spreadsheet for reference on Walther's Letters in the future and this blog post will be labeled “Old Missouri Resources”. It will join my popular posts for Luther's Works - St. Louis Edition, Der Lutheraner, Lehre und Wehre, Convention Essays, and others. — There are tabs at the bottom of the window for four different sort orders which allows for ease of cross-referencing. Click on each tab to observe the benefit of each: 

The above spreadsheet may be accessed as a web page > here <.

    If the reader should find any errors in the above spreadsheet or have additions to it, please advise by comment below, or better still, send me an email, as I do not get automatic notices of incoming comments. — As with Luther's Letters, may the Lord bless the Biblical, Lutheran counsel that was communicated in Walther's Letters! — In the next Part 3, Walther's letter on when one may leave a church fellowship.

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Part 1 - Ludwig Fuerbringer's “Forewords” translated into English

Part 2 - This post, a spreadsheet, with translations, of all published letters of C.F.W. Walther

Part 3 - Walther's answer to “When should one leave a church fellowship?” (answer to Paul McCain)

  Excursus: Paul McCain- last comment to BTL; his passing (The Book in his hands)

Part 4 - Walther's 1876 letter to Carl Manthey Zorn: “you have not been ashamed of us”

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(*) Because Prof. Carl S. Meyer's 1969 work is out of print, was published by a disinterested Fortress Press, and is not complete in its translations, I am considering overlooking its copyright and hyperlinking to its material, especially since several of its letters have no public access to their German text.  Meyer used an eclectic group of translators who are largely not known for following the doctrine of the Lutheran Church as taught by Walther. If and when I introduce the links, I will announce it prominently in this blog post.  It will then be up to the copyright holder, Fortress Press, to notify me if they want to pursue their copyright against me.

Fuerbringer's Letters of Walther: Forewords translated (Part 1)

      In my last series of blogs (here) I made use of one of Walther's letters translated from the 1916 book of his letters edited by Prof. Ludwig Fuerbringer, volume 2.  As I translated that letter, it seemed to me that all of these letters, from both volumes 1 and 2, should be translated and made available for English speaking readers so that they are not locked away from us.  Of course a sampling of these have been translated, most notably by Prof. Carl S. Meyer (†), Prof. Roy Suelflow (†), and to a lesser extent by Prof. W. G. Polack (†), Prof. August Suelflow (†), and Pres. Matthew Harrison. So I undertook to catalog practically all the published letters to get a survey of them and found that a majority have never been published in translated form. 

      But before I present my spreadsheet and the file of all translations, I would present Fuerbringer's two Vorworts. The first is to Volume 1. — 

      In the next Part 2, we present perhaps the most extensive listing of published letters of Walther. Then it is anticipated to highlight a few of the more significant letters.

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From Briefe von C. F. W. Walther an seine Freunde, Synodalgenossen und Familienglieder; translation by BackToLuther; highlighting, hyperlinking added.

Foreword 

For years and from the most diverse sides, from individuals and from entire conferences, the wish and the request has been expressed again and again that the letters of our blessed Dr. Walther be published in print. To mention only one word, in the year of Walther's jubilee (1911) an older member of our synod, who has an authoritative judgment in such questions and who was personally close to Walther, wrote to the editor: “In my opinion, a selection from his incomparably beautiful letters, which also bring to view the purely human aspects of his God-blessed personality, would be even more valuable.” The editor considers this judgment fully justified and is convinced that no one will read these letters without deep inner movement and manifold benefit. If letters give us the most accurate insight into a man's heart and teach us to understand him correctly, then in these letters we encounter the most diverse sides of Walther's personality, and we recognize anew his great importance for the Lutheran Church of the 19th century in general and for our Synod in particular. We see his burning zeal for pure doctrine and the spread of the kingdom of God; we hear how he knows how to comfort the fainthearted and the despondent and how he conscientiously advises those in need of counsel; we gain an idea of the intimate relationship that existed between the fathers of our synod in those first difficult times; we take a look at Walther's beautiful family life. That the letters also offer a valuable contribution to the history of our synod and its struggles, that they provide the right information about some events, will soon be recognized by anyone who has looked around in this area. [See balance in » Read more « section below]

Bible translations: God's Word? Walther, Pieper speak

      There are many attacks on the Bible today... from many sides.  Sometimes these attacks aim at a Christian's faith in his particular translation of the Holy Bible as opposed to the original languages – Hebrew and Greek.  Can a Christian be divinely certain even if he does not know Hebrew or Greek... do the scholars have an advantage in this respect?  Must a Christian be made uncertain in his faith when scholars “lord it over” Christendom?

      This is where the Lutheran Church shines in its teaching.  In Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1, p. 420-421 (Archive), (Christian Dogmatics I, p. 348), he writes the following, including a quote from Walther (translation by BTL, all emphasis mine):

[Holy Scripture] is by divine arrangement a light that cannot easily be extinguished even by translation. We find confirmed what Luther says of the Scriptures: “There is no clearer book written on earth than the Holy Scriptures.” (St. L. V:334) [On Psalm 37:40; not in CPH Am. Edition] We should not say, therefore, that even the best translations are merely a human conception or view of God's Word. No, in so far as the translations are really translations, and right translations are especially difficult to avoid in the sedes doctrinae, so they are also God's Word itself. Walther therefore correctly says: (Northern District 1867, p. 34.) “Even he who is ignorant of the basic languages can nevertheless be divinely certain that his German Bible [also his English Bible] is the Word of God, because he receives the testimony of the Holy Spirit through it.” As the Scriptures in the original text prove themselves to be the Word of God, so this also happens through a translation, provided it is a correct translation. Nor is there any lack of Scriptural proof of the fact that Holy Scriptures do not lose the character of the infallible Word of God through translation.

      So the next time someone challenges my faith in the Holy Bible, I, as a Christian, can be assured that there is no basis for the argument that translations are not the actual Word of God.

Psychology today, 150 years ago- Mueller overview: “criticism of modern psychology”

      I have blogged several times where the field of “Psychology” was at least partly the subject matter.  Being a former patient of that field, and having come out of it, I have wondered where and why this field of study went wrong, and why so many Christians are fooled by modern "counseling" today.  Before I comment further, I am republishing Prof. J. T. Mueller's brief book review on this subject – of an author who has been grouped with B. F. Skinner and is labeled a “radical behaviorist.”  Translation was not needed, but I added some reference hyperlinks and an image of the book's author. The text is taken from Concordia Theological Monthly, vol. 1, no. 9, (September 1930), p. 719-720:

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Prof. R. H. Wheeler

The Science of Psychology. An Introductory Study. By Prof. R. H. Wheeler, University of Kansas. Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York. 556 pages. Price, $3.75.

There is an abysmal difference between the psychology of half a century ago [~1882] and that of the present time. The old psychology, known as mental philosophy, purposed to “ascertain the facts and laws of mental operation” and occupied the middle ground between metaphysics and natural science. It presupposed the “soul” to be an entity distinct from the body and regarded man as endowed by his Creator with a “moral consciousness,” or conscience, which functioned on the basis of a natural knowledge of God and His divine Law. (Cp. Dr. J. Haven’s Mental Philosophy.) [p. 15] The theory of Evolution, with its corollary of man’s descent from the primates, has wielded so tremendous an influence also on the science of psychology that its metaphysical content has been entirely eliminated. Psychology has become a matter of biological study, of laboratory and experimental investigations, of reactions to stimuli, of (page 720) social attitudes, etc. Professor Wheeler’s text-book is one of the most modern and forward-reaching of any published on the subject. It is written from the so-called configurational and organismic standpoints. Psychology, according to the author, is the “study, first, of social behavior with its various limited and specialized activities, and second, of those forms of behavior which can be abstracted from it” (p. 3). Behavior is “the activity of an organism-as-a-whole.” The organism is living in an environment which furnishes constant stimulation. Stimulations are the “activating influences of physical forces or social situations upon the organism.” Whatever the organism does as a result of this stimulation is called a response. The mechanisms of response in man are the nervous system, the muscles, and the glands. With these bodily structures the human being sees, hears, thinks, fears, loves, hates, and carries out all forms of overt action, such as locomotion, manipulation of objects, and talking. From the time of its conception the organism commences to grow and mature in certain definite directions which are laid down in the history of the species or race. The history of the species or race is therefore a remote condition of behavior (p. 3). These are some of the guiding principles of modern organismic psychology as presented in this book. Of course, the Christian student cannot satisfy himself with such a foundation for his psychological studies. It leaves out the fundamental facts of man’s original creation in the image of God, of the tremendous problem of sin as sin, of the divine Law inscribed in the heart, of conscience, etc. The human being “sees, hears, thinks, fears, loves, hates,” etc., not merely with the “bodily structures of nerves, muscles, and glands.” To understand his intellectual, volitional, and emotional acts, we must go beyond the “bodily structures” to the hidden realm of the soul. Psychology is more than a “biological science from the standpoint of the individual.” The “physical, chemical, and physiological facts” do not explain all the causes of “human behavior,” nor do the “social stimulations” account for it. All this must be stated in criticism of modern psychology, which is built up entirely on evolutionistic premises. But although the student of the Bible cannot agree with such psychology, he will recognize Prof. Wheeler’s Science of Psychology as a notable text-book on modern psychology.

J. T. Mueller

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      Prof. Mueller's identification of the “theory of Evolution” as the major contributing factor in the downfall of “psychology” showed that he was not blind to what was actually happening 90 years ago. It was refreshing for me to read that this “psychology today” means something quite different than in times past.  And Mueller at least partially answers the question: “Just what was psychology in times past?” I read in one of C.F.W. Walther's articles where he used the old field of “Psychology” when discussing a matter, before it changed into what “psychology” is today.  But today it is used as the source of “counseling” when people, including children, are in greatest distress, like I was.  I was in that group a few decades ago, and I sought counsel from my LC-MS pastor, which was helpful.  But I recall now that he did not warn against secular counseling and I ended up going to the care of a psychiatrist and a psychologist, attending “Group Therapy” for a number of years.  I always felt ashamed that I, a born-and-raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, would go to… worldly counseling.  Now I know why I felt ashamed, for I knew even then that this was a matter for spiritual counsel, something that modern secular counseling knows nothing about.  But even today's “spiritual counsel” is woefully lacking because it does not trust the Word alone, but mixes it with the methodology of modern psychology.  I recall distinctly how one of my psychological “counselors” groaned when I told them I attended a Lutheran church. They knew that their counseling did not mix with Christian counsel. 

      May other Christians caught in the trap of modern psychological “counseling” rather seek counsel and comfort from the Holy Scriptures, i.e. Christ's Word, and from those counselors faithful to it.