RH1: German pastor: Yes & No on Missouri; Hochstetter's critique (Part 1 of 12)

Pr. Christian Hochstetter

      While reviewing the essays in the Old Missouri Synod journal Lehre und Wehre, a lively article from 1882 caught my eye, for it concerned how Germany's pastors and theologians viewed the Missouri Synod in Walther's day, in the 19th century. The essay was by Pastor Christian Hochstetter, the one who would 3 years later write the well-known book The History of the Missouri Synod, 1838-1884 in 1885. This 1882 essay was prompted by a pamphlet published in Germany in 1881 by a young pastor. Here is what Pastor Hochstetter stated about this pamphlet: 

To this day no report from German state-church circles has appeared in print which acknowledges so much about the Missouri Synod as this lecture by the late Pastor R. [Rudolf] Hoffmann [RH].

I suspect that Pastor Hochstetter became motivated to write his later great history in part because of the false judgments reported in this pamphlet. But the striking part about the pamphlet was just what Hochstetter alluded to, that Hoffmann did not ignore the incredible successes evident in the (Old) Missouri Synod. And so this pamphlet represents what I would call a "Yes and No" judgment on the Missouri Synod. Hochstetter uses this to reveal the remarkable ironies that Pastor Hoffmann presents.

    Hoffmann's 33-page pamphlet was entitled The Missouri Synod in North America, Historically and Critically Examined: A Lecture (Gütersloh, 1881) (WorldCat). Although there was no online availability of the original publication before, there is now: >> here <<. One discovers that Pastor Hoffmann was young when he wrote this pamphlet, about the age of 31. And he passed away at the end of 1880, just before his writing was published. His history is remarkable for his depth of reading in Old Missouri's early writings. Unfortunately I was unable to obtain a picture of him.

      Here are some examples of Hoffmann's "Yes and No" judgment of the Old Missouri Synod, most of which Hochstetter addresses in his critique:

"Yes":

• "Walther's [Altenburg] theses were a resounding success" (p. 9)
• "The greater right lay on the side of Missouri" vs. Pastor Grabau (p. 16)
• "The doctrinal unity is built on the Lutheran Confession" (p. 20)
• "the unshakeable consistency with which they rest on the symbolic books" (p. 23)
• Walther's "astonishing wealth of thorough scholarship" (p. 24)
• "highly commendable that they have uncovered the hidden treasures of doctrine" (p. 25)

"No":

• "… difficult for anyone to agree with their democratic conception of Church and Ministry" (p. 16)
• "excessive language" (p. 19)
• Confessions are a "paper pope" (p. 28)
• "exaggerated Lutheranism" (p. 28)
• "arrogance of having pure doctrine" (p. 29)
• "unbiblical and un-Lutheran radicalism" (p. 32)

We find judgmental "whiplash" throughout Hoffmann's writing that will be evident to the reader, German or American. — I first translated Hochstetter's critique, and learned much of what Pastor Hoffmann wrote about.  So I became motivated to locate and scan a copy of Hoffmann's pamphlet because I wanted to learn all of what was being said about Missouri in Germany, because so little was written in Germany about the Missouri Synod, other than by Friedrich Brunn's Free Church. In the next Part 2, we publish the translated text of Pastor Hoffmann, then in subsequent posts, we present Hochstetter's incisive critique of it translated into the English language. 

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  Table of Contents  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

RH1: Introduction; "Yes" and "No" judgments against the Missouri Synod

RH2: Hoffmann's pamphlet: The Missouri Synod in North America, historically and critically examined.

RH3: Missourians disturb United Church in Germany; "must we sit at their feet?" 

RH4: “historical description” sourced from Köstering's book; constitution and congregations

RH5: Missouri restricting church freedom?… compared to United (or Union) Church; Missouri grows

RH6: Clouded impressions: "democratic view of Church &, Ministry" finds no agreement

RH7: Hochstetter defends against Grabau (and Hoffmann); Grabau’s use of erring Lutheran teachers

RH8: Not constitutional question, but doctrinal; calling not by Church as a whole, but whole Church

RH9: Christocracy, not democracy; State churchmen = servants of state authority, "only a glittering misery"

RH10: Walther: Hoffmann criticizes, “Thank God Missouri also errs”; Hochstetter defends; Yes & No theology

RH11: Irony of Hoffmann and his United (State) Church; Repristination theology?; Chiliasm

RH12: Walther’s lament—don’t be another United Church; Iowa & Ohio shamed by German pastor

RH13: Appendix: Exegesis; Revelation; Confessionalism

RH14: Antichrist, Usury, Lutheran Orthodoxy, Predestination, Regeneration, Sunday/Sabbath