Walther's letter to A. C. Preus on Slavery (Norwegian Synod) (Slavery 3)

      This continues from Part 2 (Table of contents in Part 1) on the Bible and slavery.  (Also it follows Part 4 in a 2021 series on the Letters of C. F. W. Walther) — In  the Letters series Part 2, I highlighted a snippet from Walther's 1860 lengthy letter to the first leader of the Norwegian Synod in America (now ELS), Pastor Adolph Carl Preus.  That letter is perhaps the greatest personal writing of Walther on the issue of Slavery to a fellow Lutheran church body leader in America.  The matter of Walther on Slavery is much like that of Luther and the Jews — quite agitating in the Lutheran Church, and a weapon of the world against Luther, Lutheranism, and especially Holy Scripture.  But the true Church does not listen to the world for its wisdom, it turns to the Word of God, and if Luther were alive today, he would respond to the matter of Slavery just as Walther did, Biblically.  Let the unbelievers and agitators burn as many Bibles as they want, they can never destroy the Truth. 

      This 1860 letter precedes Walther's major series of articles in Lehre und Wehre in 1863, during the Civil War, which was published in English on LutherQuest here (or here) One may also read the English version from the machine translation of Lehre und Wehre vol. 9 (January through June) on the Internet Archive. But the letter published below is a private correspondence with another synod leader, one who struggled with the slavery issue. Here we see Walther's masterful Biblical counsel to Pastor A. C. Preus, the first leader of the oldest Norwegian Synod in America. He also happens to be a forefather of the Preus family in the LCMS, including those involved with the planned Luther Classical College in Wyoming: 

To repeat the core of Walther's counsel, Pastor Preus should proceed by

“drafting such theses as were calculated to show that when you say something is not in itself a sin, you are not thereby excusing, glossing over, or even justifying the sinfulness that is bound up with it.”

As Pastor Preus struggled with this issue, so I struggled with it. But Walther carefully delineates the most vexing aspect, the institution of Slavery. Unfortunately today's LC-MS is very much like the old Norwegian Synod in that it does not teach what the Bible teaches, at least not to the public, that the institution of slavery, apart from circumstances, is not sinful as such. It teaches as Pastor A. C. Preus did in the old Norwegian Synod, and so it needs to hear Walther's counsel. It needs to turn away from the wisdom of the world and not condemn an institution that God allowed. Would to God the LC-MS leaders and teachers would learn from this letter. — In the next Part 4a, Walther's personal report on a Presbyterian controversy on slavery.

[For further information on Old Missouri and slavery, click on the "Read more…" section below]

      Gustav Seyffarth left the Missouri Synod over the issue of slavery in 1859 (A. Suelflow, Servant of the Word, CPH 2000, p. 103). CHI Director Suelflow did not address Walther's teaching on slavery in this book. Seyffarth wrote a letter to Walther in 1862 officially breaking fellowship with Missouri and he threatened to publicly testify against the Synod if it did not repent on this issue.  Walther replied to express his surprise and deep disappointment.  One may read more from this letter here.

      In a letter of Jan. 22, 1876 to Wm. Sihler, Walther stated that a pastor Alwin Wagner in Germany had “dreadful obsessions of slavery”, and revealed the situation within his own Synod, that “the preachers here in our [Missouri] Synod ostensibly linger.” The Civil War was over, but not the agitations in the Church.

      Carl S. Meyer, in his Introduction to his 1969 book Letters of C. F. W. Walther: A Selection, p. 25, stated: “His attitude toward slavery in the antebellum days brought him into opposition with the prevailing sentiments of the Union, although this opposition was not an overt one.71) (71 Paul M. Kavasch, "The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod During the Early Years of the Civil War,” Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly, XXXI (October, 1958), 65-78; XXXI (January, 1959), 104-9.)” Meyer side-stepped discussing the spiritual aspects himself.