CM6c: Harrison's “tension”, Walther's “loving bond” (Iowa 1879)

      This continues from Part CM6b (Table of Contents in Part CM1) in a series defending Walther against a false portrayal by LC-MS President Matthew Harrison on the doctrines of Church and Ministry. — In support of the title of this blog post, I quote again from Walther's 1879 Iowa District essay, page 47, the famous paragraph that follows his quote from the Formula of Concord, X, 9, but this time my translation: 

O dear brothers of the laity, remember this passage! Our dear Church has given you a treasure from her best days. You must hold on to it; for what good are all rights if you do not know them or do not use them? — Where God's Word has neither commanded or nor forbidden something, the congregation [Gemeinde; Walther's double emphasis] has the decision, not a synod, not a pastor, not a presbytery, not a consistory. That is what our church confesses. It is a liberal [or free] church. It is not a clerical ruled [pfaffenherrschaftliche] community, but a community of members of Christ who are united by an evangelical, gentle, loving bond.

Just how important this passage was to Old Missouri can be demonstrated by Pres. Friedrich Pfotenhauer's verbatim citation of it in his essay "Walther as the Founder and Leader of Our Synod", in Der Lutheraner, vol. 67 (Oct. 1911), p. 341. Note well! Pfotenhauer does not call Walther a "co-founder" with Loehe as Harrison does, but "the Founder". — Where does New Missouri LC-MS Pres. Matthew Harrison teach like Walther above? He does not.

      I want to compare the final phrase of Walther, highlighted in green above, with the teaching of Pres. Matthew Harrison. Along with a mistranslation of the Formula of Concord by Harrison and the LC-MS (see Part CM6a and here), this paragraph shows another glaring difference:

Iowa District, 1879, p. 47; Der Lutheraner, vol. 67 (1911), p. 341	Church and Office, p. 76
“the congregation… is not a clerical ruled community, but… are united by an evangelical, gentle, loving bond.”	“Wilhelm Löhe promoted Luther's ‘from above’ teaching of the office.… Höfling…promoted the ‘from below’ teaching. Walther held both in all their challenging tension.”

Walther and Pfotenhauer teach that where the Word of God rules, the congregation and the pastor are not in opposition to each other in a “challenging tension” but are “united by an evangelical, gentle, loving bond”. How different is the doctrine of Harrison, Prof. Benjamin Mayes, and the LC–MS from that of Walther and Pfotenhauer! — One will also notice that Harrison apparently wants to assert that “Luther's so-called ‘from above’ teaching of the office” is different from Walther’s teaching of both "from above" and "from below".

      Another example exposing this one-sidedness of Pres. Harrison is Walther's statement made in a footnote to an essay evaluating the theology of Dr. Kraussold of Germany, a "Romanist Lutheran" (Lehre und Wehre, vol. 4 (1858), p. 354), my emphasis:

Unfortunately, it has come to the point that anyone who rejects the Romanist doctrine of the Office of Ministry [Harless, Preger, Walther, Pieper, J. T. Mueller, etc.] is now considered a follower of Höfling in this doctrine and is suspected of being such, whereas Höfling's doctrine of the office and that of the Romanist Lutherans are the two opposite extremes, between which the pure Lutheran doctrine, to which alone our Synod has professed and still professes, lies in the middle.

Harrison wants to place Walther in his own “Romanist Lutheran” “challenging tension” camp, while Walther sharply rejects such a position. So does Pfotenhauer.

      Walther's famous paragraph in the 1879 Iowa essay clearly demonstrates that he was not only a strong defender of the divine institution of the Ministry, but also the rights of the congregation, the laity. That is the Lutheran doctrine, "in the middle" Old Missouri's doctrine. Pres. Harrison is only promoting an "extreme" doctrine, "pfaffenherrschaftliche" rule, that comes from Romanist Lutherans, like LC-MS "co-founder" Wilhelm Loehe. Is it not fair to say that the LC-MS leaders and teachers do not want to be "stuck in the middle" with Walther? A supposed agreement between Walther's teaching and Harrison's is pure fiction. — In the next Part CM7…