CM9a: Lochner & Craemer on Loehe's Romanizing: co-founder vs. "co-founder"

Pastor Fr. Lochner

   This continues from Part CM8 (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. — I have pointed out in a recent blog how noted old Missouri Synod Pastor Friedrich Lochner pronounced the break with Pastor Wilhelm Löhe as "necessary" and recognized that his replacement Pastor Friedrich Brunn was "faithful" by comparison. 

Missouri Synod co-founder
F. A. Crämer

    But an even more forceful testimony against Loehe was also reported by Lochner in his 1891-1892 16-part biographical essay on Pastor/Professor Friedrich August Craemer (or Crämer; † 1891) after Craemer's passing. Lochner called himself the "oldest friend" of Craemer, indicating their close relationship through the years of Craemer's illustrious life. Both Lochner and Craemer had early close relations with Pastor Loehe in Germany—Lochner more so than Craemer. 

      This blog post is only focusing on one segment of the full biography of Craemer, where Lochner dealt with the subject of Loehe's erring doctrines of Church and Ministry. How did these former students and missionaries of Loehe handle this difficult situation? Were there differences between Lochner's and Craemer's handling of Loehe's errors? We get answers to these questions in the December 22, 1891 Der Lutheraner installment, where Lochner describes the pivotal point in Craemer's career, from a frontier mission pastor at Frankenmuth, Michigan, to the professorship and head of the Practical Seminary at Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1850. At this time Loehe was still sending students and pastors to the Missouri Synod that had been newly formed just 3 years earlier in 1847. At the time of Craemer's nomination in 1849, both Lochner and Craemer were as much Loehe's men as they were Missouri Synod men. This situation is described by Pastor Lochner in Der Lutheraner, v. 47, Dec. 22, 1891, p. 204, [EN]:

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Honorary Memorial

for the blessed

Friedrich August Crämer.

Professor of Theology and Director of the Practical Theological 

Seminary at Springfield, Ill, by his oldest friend F. Lochner.

(Continued.)

But now the time had come for Crämer to lay down the pastoral staff he had held in Frankenmuth for only five years and be placed in a completely different field of work. The first professor of the practical theological seminary, the unforgettable August Wolter, who was only 31 years old, had fallen victim to the terrible cholera raging in our country on August 31, 1849, after barely three years of blessed work, by voluntarily submitting himself and his students to the care of the church members affected by the epidemic, and Professor A. Biewend, who had provisionally taken over the teaching after Wolter's death, had been transferred to the preacher's seminary in St. Louis. In October 1850, Crämer was unanimously elected professor of the Practical Seminary.

The electoral college's nomination of Crämer as a candidate for the vacant professorship in Der Lutheraner at the beginning of August [vol. 6, p. 200, August 6, 1850] hit him and his congregation like a bolt from the blue. Not only had the initial conditions of the settlement been overcome and the congregation well organized, but now the bond between the pastor and a congregation whose purpose and origins had been so peculiar and which, after five years of living together under such peculiar conditions, had become ever more firmly knit, was suddenly to be severed. But there was something else why pastor and congregation could not find a solution to this relationship. These were the differences that were now coming to light between Pastor Löhe and the Missouri Synod regarding the doctrine of Church and Ministry, ordination, church authority and church constitution.[Lochner's emphasis]

Even when this writer [Lochner] had sent Löhe a copy of the draft of a synod constitution that had been drawn up in St. Louis immediately after his return home [~ July 1846], the latter [Löhe], for all his joy at the establishment of a synod union between his missionaries [Sendlinge] and the Saxons, expressed a number of reservations. He believed he saw democratic, independentist principles in the church constitution. He also missed the episcopal element in the provisions on the synod leadership, and the equality of the parish deputies with the pastors at the synods seemed to him to be "democratizing" and "Americanizing". When, however, as a result of this, some of the missionaries had doubts as to whether they could also drop the representation of Löhe's thoughts on church constitution without internal disloyalty by accepting such a constitution and therefore turned to Löhe for advice and instructions, the latter [Löhe] nevertheless wrote to Dr. Sihler on October 12, 1846: 

Wilhelm  Löhe

"To overcome the concerns of the Saxon brothers, my thought would require representation, which is currently impossible. But I value unity much more than the realization of my dearest thoughts in this matter. I am very serious that unity is the main thing on the basis — not on the basis of all Luther's words (for the Church did not follow him in everything) — but on the basis of the Book of Concord of 1580. Therefore, I also hereby release all my friends who have some reservations about the new synod constitution from any real or believed obligation to assert anything other than what was adopted in the Fort Wayne conference. They may, in my judgment, join the Synod with full peace of mind, and, were I over there, I would also join." 

And even though he resisted the interpretation that he had changed his convictions, he concluded: "Unity is to me the most beautiful point in the whole development of the matter; before it is given up, everything else should give way." But when Löhe's Aphorisms on the New Testament Offices and their Relationship to the Congregation appeared in 1849, it became apparent that the difference that had emerged concerning our synod constitution had deeper roots, and our synod realized with dismay that Löhe was following hierarchical principles in the doctrine of the Church, the Office of the Ministry, and the like, and had entered the path of Romanism. [Lochner’s judgment also.]

Crämer could have had no trace of the above concerns [of Löhe] about our synod constitution. He, with whom I had already occasionally perceived in Germany from disputations he sometimes had with Löhe that he feared a Romanizing tendency in Löhe, welcomed in the draft of our synod constitution the expression of his innermost convictions, and therefore, after returning from that Fort Wayne conference in August [1846], introduced his congregation [in Frankenmuth] to it and instructed them about the biblical doctrine of Church and Ministry on which it was based. The result was that the congregation joined the synod all the more joyfully in the spring of 1847, or rather, helped to found it. It was therefore inevitable that Löhe's aphorisms upset the congregation and Crämer felt compelled to instruct them about their [Löhe’s “Aphorisms”] errors and to speak out openly against Löhe in a letter.

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      As I was reading carefully what Lochner reported above, I wanted to know if Lochner was in full agreement with Craemer regarding the seriousness of Loehe's errors on the doctrines of Church and Ministry. Craemer had noticed Loehe's errors even before he left for America, whereas apparently Lochner had not.  But Lochner shows above that he indeed had learned from Scripture, Walther, and  Craemer that Loehe's "hierarchical principles" were wrong, and reports his dismay along with that of his Missouri Synod. Lochner, Craemer's "oldest friend", found himself in full agreement with him.

      We note that Lochner specifically indicates that Craemer's congregation helped found the Missouri Synod, making Craemer a "co-founder".

     I was surprised, even shocked, to read of Loehe's duplicitous nature during this period, where he said that "unity is the main thing", explicitly stating that he "would also join" the Missouri Synod if he were here, yet it was Loehe who founded the opposition synod, the Iowa Synod, shortly thereafter. Although this would have been especially painful for Lochner, we find that Lochner stood firm against the errors of Loehe as he started and edited a periodical in 1857-1858 (see here) to counteract these errors. (Too bad for Prof. Benjamin Mayes)

      And so we see once more that the praise being given to Pastor Lochner by Pres. Matthew Harrison and the organization "Gottesdienst" for his knowledge of liturgical matters rings hollow for they would rather praise Wilhelm Loehe more than Lochner in the doctrines of Church and Ministry, certainly more than Friedrich August Craemer who directly disputed with Loehe on his errors.

      What an honor it is for me to be able to honor these men of the OLD Missouri Synod, formerly Loehe's missionaries who would not be misled by Loehe's later errors. Would to God LC–MS President Matthew Harrison, and the LC–MS, would heed and honor the true co-founder Craemer, as Pastor Lochner did, and not put Loehe in place of him. It seems the LC–MS is more Loehe's Iowa Synod than Walther's Missouri Synod. — In the next Part CM9b we present a "lovely, heart-warming thought" from the dear Prof. Craemer.