Horrific Jewish history (Reformation 502, not Halloween) Part 2 of 2

       This concludes from Part 1, a 2-part series on the use of the "Description of the Destruction of Jerusalem" in Old Missouri's worship services and instructional materials.  Franz Pieper's statement on the Jews fits well as a preface:

"Poor people!  But none of us has cause to rise above the Jews striving for earthly things.  If God's grace would not have mercy on us, we would also act according to our own ways."

      Josephus, the Jewish historian, was largely the basis for the following "Description" and "History". — The first translation presents Walther's Hymnal "Description" from the original hymnbook of the Old Missouri Synod and was read every year in church, as Prof. Schaller explains, though not on Reformation Day:

The second translation is of Prof. Schaller's later "History" from 1887, an essay that explains the usage and history in more depth, and was published in Der Lutheraner:

      But it seemed that a side-by-side reading of both the Hymnal's "Description" and Schaller's "History" would be of benefit for the reader, especially for a fuller understanding of the use of this history in a worship service.  Portions of the text were color highlighted to aid in showing corresponding information between these accounts. — Some might think this History would be more appropriate for a "celebration" of Halloween, but it was actually used in a Church of the Reformation, the Old Missouri Synod:

Description of the Destruction of the City of Jerusalem.

The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem. (G. Schaller) [Der Lutheraner, vol 43 (1887), p 117-118]

When the time approached that God wanted to let the final wrath of Jerusalem and the Jewish people pass over them, as the prophets and the LORD Christ himself had threatened them, and had said before, these following signs preceded them. A comet has been seen in heaven, shaped like a sword, which has stood against the city for a whole year, and has been seen by everyone. Again, just in the days of the unleavened bread, on the eighth day of the month of April, at nine o'clock in the night, such a bright shining light appeared at the altar in the Temple that everyone thought it was day.

It was on August 10, the year 70, after Christ's birth that the temple in Jerusalem went up in flames, whereupon soon (on September 7th) the complete conquest and destruction of the city itself took place. The anniversary of the first-mentioned event coincides closely with the 10th Sunday after Trinity [Luke 19:41-47]; so the Gospel of the destruction prophesied by Christ with tears [Luke 19:41-47] was quite appropriately transferred to this Sunday. At the same time it has become church custom to read the history of the destruction of Jerusalem, which is of extraordinary importance for us Christians as well, in the churches on this Sunday, according to the report of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. But now in the reading of this history, as it can also be found in our St. Louis hymnbook, it remains somewhat dark and incomprehensible in certain places for the devout listeners. So we now want to provide some explanations in the following remarks. The city of Jerusalem was protected from hostile attacks on three sides, namely from the east, south and west, by deep chasms and gorges. Only to the north did it come up against undulating land; only from this side was it exposed to the attacks of its enemies. From the north came all the enemy armies, including the Romans. So when our lesson says, among other things, “The city of Jerusalem was very strong in the place where one could come to the city, and had three walls,” So it means the northern side of the city; for from all other sides it was unassailable. But what about the three walls of the city mentioned above?  Were they the same also on the north side and were they erected close to each other? Not at all. These three walls crossed Jerusalem in different directions and each included a particular district of the city. Jerusalem had four hills: to the southwest was Mount Zion, to the north <page 117, column 2> of which was Mount Akra, to the southeast was Mount Moriah with the temple and the Fortress of Antonia, and to the north of it was Mount Bezetha. The first and oldest wall ran around Mount Zion and included the Temple Mount and the Fortress of Antonia. It had 60 towers and thus protected the highest and oldest part of the city, which nature already made into an almost impregnable fortress. The second wall then enclosed the so-called lower city on the hill of Akra and was fortified with 14 towers. The third wall finally, the most extreme to the north and the youngest of all, ran in a wide arc around Mount Bezetha and the new city built on it.  It had 90 towers, was 25 cubits high and 10 cubits thick. So an enemy who wanted to conquer Jerusalem first had to break through this strong wall to gain possession of the new city, then he had to break through the second wall and take the lower city. When this was done, the hardest part of his work was to conquer the Fortress of Antonia, the Temple, and the upper city, the city of David on Mount Zion, with its mighty palaces and astonishingly high towers. That the Romans actually succeeded in this was a miracle before all eyes. The jewel of Jerusalem and the ornament of all the East was the Temple where the Son of God Himself had gone out and entered. Herod had constructed it new and magnificently. Thousands of wagons were used to carry the stones; ten thousand experienced workers were hired and thousands of priests, who were allowed to work alone in the inner sanctuary, were adorned by him with priestly robes. The old foundation was rebuilt and a new one laid, on which the Temple of white marble was constructed, to a length of 100 cubits, and a height of 120 cubits. The individual workpieces were about 25 cubits long, 8 cubits high and 12 cubits wide. Hence the astonishment of the disciples: “Master, see what stones and what a building this is” (Mark 13:1) The roof was quite covered with dense gold plates, and especially at dawn <page 117, column 3> was given a majestic shine by the sun. This was the actual temple: around it columned halls of great expanse and splendor were built. Only the outermost halls were allowed for strangers (Gentiles) to enter up to a 6 foot high partition, where they were forbidden by inscriptions to penetrate further under penalty of death. On 14 steps one climbed up to the second row of columns. Twelve steps led from there to the third innermost room, which only the priests were allowed to enter. Among the columned halls, the “royal” one on the south side was the most admirable. It consisted of 4 rows which together comprised 162 Corinthian columns and formed 3 halls. Of the two outermost halls, each was 30 feet wide, 600 feet long and over 50 feet high; but the middle one was one and a half times as wide and twice as high. So the middle part of this temple hall stood out very much. The whole building stood on a high, steep rock, the sides of which had been walled up to the summit with tremendous effort since ancient times. If one stood now on the highest roof (pinnacle) of this royal hall, one thought to look dizzyingly into an abyss of immeasurable depth. If one came from afar and looked at Jerusalem, the great marble building of the temple on its rocky heights gleamed like a distant snow mountain range. “Forty and six years was this temple in building”, the Jews countered to the Lord (John 2:20). So long had it been since Herod had it constructed anew; but it was still being built on, until shortly before its destruction.

The balance of this synchronized presentation is available 

in the >>  Read more » << section below:

Amish German (Luther's) Bible still available: fraktur font, Luther’s original translation

      A trip to a place that included Amish settlements in Indiana included a visit to one of their supply stores.  These are quite interesting to see how they live in their self-imposed austerity.  I have blogged about the Amish before, but what continues to amaze me the most is how they speak some kind of "low German" among themselves and have German language Bibles available.  How did they maintain their use of the German language in America through 2 World Wars with Germany?  How could they do it when the "Midwestern" Lutherans did not?  One can read of the hardships the Wisconsin Synod (and Missouri Synod) Lutherans had by government restrictions and antagonistic popular opinion against them in a dissertation "The War to End All Germans: Wisconsin Synod Lutherans and the First World War" available here. 

      What appears to be a "top of the line" Bible for the Amish (~$70) is pictured on the upper left and right. This Bible is not from Germany, it is from an American store!  But as I examined it, I was greatly surprised at several  things about it:

(1) The copyright page (right side, 2nd) indicates that it was printed in Grand Rapids MI in 2012 with the following indication:

Copyright © 1978. the Amish Book Committee.

(2) Then came the real surprise: the "Vorwort" was not written by an Amish theologian of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but by a Lutheran of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, August 8, 1904 by:

Prof. August Pieper (Wisconsin Synod - Lutheran)

The text appears to be the old original German translation of Luther – Genesis 4:1 is still the unrevised wording.  The spelling was modernized like the one that Ludwig Fuerbringer wrote about and recommended instead of the revised butchered "Luther's Bible" that Germany started putting out in the 1800s.  I suspect this Bible was what the Wisconsin Synod obtained from the Missouri Synod and sold to its Lutheran members before World War I, but it could be that the Amish added some prefacing pages of their own that I could not identify. -- The numerous line-drawing pictures of Biblical people and events show the great reverence for the truth of the Biblical account. — Why cannot some former Synodical Conference Lutherans translate Luther's German into English and make our own (English) Luther Bible?

Fundament 10: Means of Grace 1: Deniers of the Means; Nafzgers' folly

[2019-10-27: added Appendix in red at bottom]
      This continues from Part 9 (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"). —  Pieper now begins his very extensive coverage of the doctrine of the Means of Grace. Surprisingly this is by far the largest topic in Pieper's essay – I have split it up into 9 sections. A previous blog post covered this subject as Pieper wrote about it in his later Christian Dogmatics.
      There is much talk of the "means of grace" in today's LC-MS, but Franz Pieper's defense is on a firmer foundation.  How so?  Because he stated elsewhere (LuW January 1890):

“All praise of Christ, of grace, and of the means of grace, without the right doctrine of justification,… is nothing.”

Yes, there is a stark contrast between Pieper's defense and that of today's LC-MS. One glaring example is given after Pieper's essay below.

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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 9 - page 129]

The Deniers of the Means of Grace and the Foundation of the Christian Faith.

The primary fundamental [or foundational] teachings also include the teaching of the means of grace. According to Scripture, God has taken everything into his own divine hand as far as the attainment of man’s salvation is concerned. It was only through the vicarious satisfaction of his Incarnate Son that He had the forgiveness of sins and thus the salvation acquired for mankind, which was under the curse of His Law. Then He—God himself—also determined the means by which he appropriated the forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ and thus the salvation of mankind. 

They are external means in the human sense, namely the Word of the Gospel in its manifold forms of testimony, as a Word heard, read, moved in the heart, spoken as absolution, also expressed in signs. In every form, the Gospel is the divine proclamation of the forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ. In the Gospel, in whatever form and when and where it comes to us, God calls out to each one of us: “Peace be with you”. The apostle Paul summarizes both the acquisition and the manifestation of the forgiveness of sins as follows: “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” [2 Cor. 5:18] For a more detailed explanation, the apostle adds: “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation” [2 Cor. 5:19], that is, of the reconciliation which took place 1900 years ago [now 2000 years] and was directed by Christ. Baptism is also part of God's Gospel, by which he distributes the forgiveness of sins to men, because according to Scripture it also happens “for the forgiveness of sins”, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (Acts 2:38). [page 130] When the converts on the first feast of Pentecost asked: “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Peter replied: “Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins”. [Acts 2:37-38] The Holy Communion also serves the same purpose, namely the distribution of the forgiveness of sins. Christ gives us in the Holy Communion, under bread and wine, the wonderful gift of his body and blood for the continuing remembrance of the fact that through his body given for us and through his blood shed for us we have a reconciled God, that is, the divine forgiveness of sins. “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” “This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν (Luke 22:19; Matt. 26:28)  It is according to Scripture when we confess in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (Apology M. 202, 3ff. [Trigl. 398-399, § 3-5; BoC]) that the oral word of the Gospel and the “external signs”, that is, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, have the same purpose and the same effect. “Idem est effectus Verbi et ritus.” “The outward signs [the sacraments] have been established for this purpose, that by them the hearts may be moved, namely by the Word and outward signs at the same time, that when we are baptized, when we receive the body of the Lord, they may believe that God truly will have mercy on us through Christ.” [after German text; BoC here, §4-5] In the Latin text, “Certe debent statuere corda, quum baptizamur, quum vescimur corpore Domini, . . . quod vere ignoscat nobis Deus propter Christum.” God promises us in many ways the forgiveness of sins, because He wants it that we sinners believe the forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ. From the forgiveness of sins flow all other spiritual gifts and goods. Hence the multiple forms of his means of grace. 

To these means ordered by God we men are bound in this life. After we have come to the knowledge of sins through the law, let us ask: “Where do I find God’s own explanation and promise to forgive me my sin for Christ's sake”. The answer is: In the external means ordered by him for the forgiveness of sins, in the Word of the Gospel and in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And let us further ask: “How do I come to believe in the offered forgiveness of sins, and how is my faith, when it is shaken, awakened again and again, strengthened and preserved?” This is the answer: God does this by the same external means by which he offers us the forgiveness of sins and promises it to us. Dogmatists express this in such a way that the means of grace have not only a vis exhibitiva or dativa [effective or giving power], but also a vis effectiva or operativa [working power]. It's like this: Where the divine presentation of forgiveness [page 131] 

of sins, there is also always the Holy Spirit with his effectiveness for the generation and preservation of faith in the offered forgiveness of sins. According to Scripture, it is, so to speak, the “real business” of the Holy Spirit until the Last Day to work faith in men. This is what Christ teaches us when he says in the promise of the mission of the Holy Spirit: “He shall glorify me.” (John 16:14)  Glorifying Christ in the hearts of men (δοξάσειν) [John 13:32 – doxasei, glorify], is but nothing else than working in the hearts the faith that they recognize Christ as the only mediator between God and man, who gave Himself a ransom for all (ἀντίλυτρον) [1 Tim. 2:6 – ransom], that is, by whose vicarious satisfaction they have the forgiveness of their sins. But this is also the reason why all those who deny the means by which God distributes to men the forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ, thereby also abandon the foundation of the Christian faith.

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Is the reading of Holy Scripture a “Means of Grace”… or not?

Prof. Peter Nafzger,
Concordia Seminary

      LC-MS teachers today do not promote the reading of the Word of God as a “means of grace”. Although Prof. Peter Nafzger of Concordia Seminary admits  (Towards a Cruciform Theology of Scripture, p. 111) that: “…Luther would also refer to Scripture as a ‘means-of-grace-word.’”, he immediately follows this with the comment: “But this was not his normal way of speaking. He usually emphasized the need for the oral proclamation [over reading?] of the Word, as well as Paul’s comment that faith comes through ‘hearing’".  What Peter Nafzger is clearly asserting with his "cruciform" theology is to eliminate the reading of the written Holy Scriptures as a "means of grace".  An analogy to this is when the Roman Catholic Church denied one of the elements of Holy Communion, a means of grace, to its members in Luther's day.  A refreshing antidote to this is Prof. Steven P. Mueller's book Called to Believe, Teach & Confess, where he states (p. 46): “… one should rather journey more confidently into the Scriptures as a means of grace, where the power of God for salvation rests for all who believe.”  Mueller does not hint at excluding the reading of Scripture in this statement. — But the best defenders of Holy Scripture in all its forms were Martin Luther, the Lutheran Church, and Old Missouri… as Pieper writes.  And of course Holy Scripture itself counsels us to “Give attendance to reading…” 1 Tim. 4:13.

The Nafzgers’ dangerous path

Dr. Samuel H. Nafzger
Confessing the Gospel books

      The clear assertion by Prof. Peter Nafzger, his "cruciform" theology, to demote the reading of Holy Scripture as a Means of Grace, is against God's own Word.  It is against Martin Luther, as even he admits.  It denies one of God's means of grace. And Franz Pieper gives the clearest warning that to deny any of the Means of Grace is essentially an abandonment of the foundation of the Christian faith.  Prof. Peter, by his direct assertions, and his father, Dr. Samuel H. Nafzger, by his recommendation of his son Peter's book (in Confessing the Gospel, p. 741), are on a very dangerous path indeed. Dr. Samuel Nafzger's textbook, far from "updating" Pieper, is destroying Pieper's work of pure Lutheran teaching. — In the next Part 11…

2019-10-27: Appendix- on reading the Scriptures:
Jesus condemned the unbelief of the Pharisees with the words: “Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner” (Matt. 21:42). He denounced the Sadducees: “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. … But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God?” (Matt. 22:29, 31). Again Jesus challenged the Jews: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” (John 5:39)
The Formula of Concord also speaks on the reading of Scripture (Solid Declaration, 45):

“We are certainly in duty bound …with simple faith and due obedience to receive the words as they read, in their proper and plain sense.” 

Jerusalem's Destruction… in Old Missouri's hymnbook? (Reformation or Halloween?) Part 1 of 2

Destruction of Jerusalem
70 A.D.

      Although there is a Wikipedia article on the history of the Destruction of Jerusalem which gives much information, yet it does not affirm that it is indeed the fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy, Luke 19:41-47, Luke 21:20-24. What the world largely does not know, including most people within the LC-MS and the other former members of the Synodical Conference, is that this history was not only printed in many of the popular hymnals, but it was also read in the worship services on the 10th Sunday after Trinity. This day in the Church Year most recently was August 25, 2019, next year – Aug. 19, 2020.

      I would not be surprised if Walther himself had this "Destruction of Jerusalem" included in his Hymnal.  He may have obtained it from old orthodox hymnals from Germany, but this is speculation on my part.  It was printed in the final pages in many editions.  Perhaps LCMS Senior Assistant to the President Dr. Jon Vieker could answer this question.
      As far as I can determine, this history has not been included in any of the English translated hymnbooks after the transition from German to English.  Neither was it included in the most recent translation of Walther’s Hymnal (CPH 2012) by Matthew Carver.
      There is much talk and commemoration of the misfortunes of the Jews in more recent times. Although these misfortunes were not foretold by Christ, the Destruction of Jerusalem was foretold in Holy Scripture – it is an historical event agreed upon by virtually all modern historians. And this history was not only not avoided by Old (German) Missouri, it was given a full reading in a regular worship service once every year… but never by the (New English) Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. 

      For additional details on non-spiritual matters of this history, see Wikipedia Siege of Jerusalem and the First Jewish-Roman War. There are a few maps on these Wikipedia sites, and there are several more helpful maps available at this site, although their accuracy in detail is unknown.

      This blog post is providing the full digitized German text from the original German hymnbooks for German speaking readers:



     Not only was this Description ("Beschreibung") in the hymnbook, an essay explaining and giving additional details on its history was published in Der Lutheraner, vol. 43 (August 1887) by Prof. Gottlieb Schaller. just a few months before he passed away in November.  For German speaking readers, the original digitized text is provided below:

      In the concluding Part 2, more information will be provided along with separate English translations of these two publications.  It will then present a side-by-side synchronized presentation that gives the fullest picture of how the Old (German) Missouri Synod took their instruction for repentance seriously. —  It will be presented on Reformation Day, a day that is more commonly "celebrated" as Halloween – a day "celebrated" for its images of terror and horror.  Can you believe that a story of a mother eating her child was read in church?... in the next Part 2.

Churchman 4: Walther's Hymnal; rejects Loehe's Romanizing

[2020-02-24: added quote from Loehe at bottom; 2019-10-24: added reference from David Scaer at bottom in red]
      This continues from Part 3 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a series presenting Ludwig Fuerbringer's 1936 essay "Walther as Churchman". — The history of the development of the original hymnal for the Missouri Synod is described along with the order of service or "Agenda".  Fuerbringer does a service for the Church by pointing out that Walther not only preserved the Reformation way of worship, he also kept it from returning back to Romanism – more on that below.

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Original German essay in CTM, vol. 7 (October, 1936), p. 721-730, full text here. Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Fuerbringer's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] are mine.

Walther as Churchman.

[by Ludwig Fuerbringer; continued from Part 3]

One of Walther's outstanding works as a churchman is his collaboration — and, I may say again, his leadership — in the publication of our hymnbook [Walther’s hymnbook, Google Books] and our agenda. From the hymnbook we read in the handwritten chronicle of our synod the note: “In the summer after that” (after the foundation of the synod in April 1847) “the first Lutheran hymnbook appeared in the publishing house of the congregation of St. Louis.” 8)  And Walther said of the work on this book: “The choice of prayers was for me very, very difficult.” “We have chosen the hymnal with much effort and with much sighing. God grant that it is worthy to be used by the communion of believers!”  9)  <page 727> The principles which our fathers followed when publishing the hymnal are so correct and important that we will once again bring them to life. Walther writes in Der Lutheraner from the year 1847, p. 48 [? source error]: 

“As far as the recorded hymns are concerned, the fact that they are pure in doctrine, that they have already found as general a reception as possible in the orthodox German-Lutheran Church, and that they have thus received as unanimous a testimony as possible that they have flowed from the right spirit, has been taken into consideration in the selection of these hymns; that, since the book is first intended for public worship, it does not include also the particular changing conditions of individual persons but rather contains the language of the whole Church and that, although they bear the imprint of Christian simplicity per se, they are finally not rhymed prose but products of true Christian poetry. The editors have been vividly aware of the great task they had to accomplish; they have desponded entirely of their own wisdom and called upon God earnestly for His Holy Spirit's enlightenment and government and especially for the gift of testing and discerning the spirits; you can be assured that they have worked with fear and trembling and have chosen only those hymns from the immense treasure that the Christian Church possesses of German songs, of which they recognized, by the grace which God has given them, that they are worthy of all others, bequeathed from child to child and preserved as an inventory, an inalienable property, of the Church of the German tongue.” 

Again, history has confirmed the work of the fathers. Our hymnbook has remained essentially unchanged for almost ninety years and is still fulfilling its purpose in an excellent way and is still giving blessings that cannot be expressed in words. 10)

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8) This chronicle is kept in the collection of our Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis.

9) Walther’s Briefe, vol. 1, 39. [Walther’s Letters]

10) Perhaps some readers may be interested that a diligently used, but otherwise well preserved, copy of the first edition of our hymnbook from 1847 [1855 ed.], which has various peculiarities, is in my possession. In 1922, on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of our hymnbook, it was given to me by Prof. F. A. Schmidt of St. Paul, Minnesota, who had received it from his parents when he entered the block college in Altenburg, Perry County, Missouri, as a pupil, and used it daily (“still used every day”) at the age of eighty-five, as his daughter wrote me then. 

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Our agenda, which appeared for the first time in 1856 under the following title, can also be traced back to Walther's activity as a churchman: Church Agenda for Evangelical Lutheran Congregations of the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.. Compiled from the old Orthodox Saxon Church agendas and published by the General German Evangel.-Lutheran Synod of Missouri,  <page 728> Ohio and other States. [HathiTrust 1922 ed.; 2020-01-11: 1902 ed. at Archive] Our Synod had in fact expressed the following at its eighth assembly in 1854: 

“The St. Louis conference had been commissioned at the conclusion of last year's synod meeting with the revision of the Saxon agenda to prepare for publication of an agenda corresponding to our local needs. The same had now submitted such a written review to the Synod, which was now set aside for examination and deliberation. The individual proposed changes were carefully considered and finally the further consideration and execution of this matter was referred to the St. Louis local conference again.” 11) 

And how urgently such a work was needed, a passage from the report of the Central District of the Synod says: 

“The lack of a good agenda corresponding to local needs is becoming more and more tangible. Many of our pastors have no agendas and can not get any. This is most unpleasant. Therefore, the Synod instructed its Secretary to write on its behalf to the Venerable St. Louis Pastoral Conference, to which the publication of a good agenda has been referred by the General Synod, and to urge the latter to urgently publish the agenda in question”. 12) 

The fact that this matter had been transferred to the St. Louis Conference was always an indication that the matter would be under Walther's leadership and direction, and this now explains a peculiarity of our agenda which has been discussed several times. It is a matter of fact that our agenda goes back to the old orthodox Saxon church agendas, namely to the electoral, later royal Saxon agenda. This may well explain why, although it has all the essential parts of the Old Lutheran order of worship, it is not as richly liturgical as it would have been if other agendas had been taken into account. The power of tradition and custom was not entirely removed from our fathers either. That they were otherwise oriented in this field is shown by a series of articles in the fifth volume of the Der Lutheraner, pp. 121 ff. [German text p. 139 ¶ here, last paragraph  here] by E.G.W. Keyl, the brother-in-law of Walther, which were based on Kliefoth's valuable work The Original Order of Worship in the German Churches of the Lutheran Confession, its Destruction and Reformation. [Mecklenburg, HathiTrust, 2nd ed.] 

Wilhelm Loehe:
“well-known Romanizing”

And in particular they also knew Loehe's agenda; for this outstanding liturgist had worked out his agenda in 1844 directly for America and dedicated it to “the venerable pastor of the Lutheran congregation of Fort Wayne in the state of Indiana, Mr. Friedrich Wyneken”. Without being able to prove this now, I strongly suspect  <page 729> that Walther, in this matter, could not follow Loehe’s well-known Romanizing views and inclinations, but rather rejected them. 13)

———————

11) Synod Report, p. 10-11. [1854]

12) Proceedings of the First Convention of the Central District of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States in 1855, p. 26.

13) Perhaps, in the interest of history, I may again note that the first edition of our agenda is also in my possession, after it was taken from the library of our Luther editor A. F. Hoppe was transferred by his daughter.

———————

= = = = = = = = =  concluded in Part 5  = = = = = = = = =

      Fuerbringer names the "well-known Romanizing" German theologian Wilhelm Loehe.  His suspicion about Walther is quite correct and Walther's judgment may now be directed at prominent teachers at Concordia Theological Seminary-Ft. Wayne who are failing in this, e.g. Profs. David Scaer, Naomichi Masaki, John T. Pless, and their favorite son, Pres. Matthew Harrison.

What does "Romanizing" mean?
      When Walther complained against the Iowa Synod in his day, he was complaining against what Fuerbringer identifies – the influence of Wilhelm Loehe's "well-known Romanizing". Specifically Walther complained:

"But now, over against the Reformed, [the Iowa Synod] lay the main stress—instead of on the pure doctrine of justification—

1. on outward churchianity,
2. on the visibility of the true church,
3. on its ceremonies, rules, and constitution,
4. on the office [Amt, of the ministry] as a special rank created by ordination and
5. [on] its privileged dispensation of grace,
6. on the ex opere operato effectiveness of the sacraments (i.e., by the mere use of them, regardless of faith)".

Today the LCMS honors Wilhelm Loehe, not so much for his missionary endeavors, but for the areas that constitute his "well-known Romanizing" (see here).  Among the praises for the 2012 CPH book Walther's Hymnal is one by Prof. Richard Resch of Concordia Theological Seminary which states that the book "turned the ship of American Lutheran hymnody away from the influence of pietism, rationalism, revivalism, and unionism". However Resch fails to mention what Fuerbringer does… Romanizing. Fuerbringer confirms his point when he points out that Walther's order of service (Agenda) was "not as richly liturgical as it would have been if other agendas had been taken into account" — In the next Part 5…
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2019-10-24: ADDENDUM – Prof. David Scaer confesses his real father in the faith:
2020-02-24: ADDENDUM II – quote from Loehe added below.