GB2: The “theology prevailing at German universities”; Church separation

      This continues from Part GB1 (Table of Contents in Part GB1) in a series presenting C. F. W. Walther's defense against a Saxon State Church theologian Georg Buchwald, who attacked both the Lutheran Free Church in Germany, and the Missouri Synod in America. — Walther now presents excerpts from Buchwald's pamphlet and addresses them individually. The issues of logic are prominent in this segment, and I had to work to follow the logical arguments. But Walther never misuses logic to twist his opponents words, and in fact turns Buchwald's logic against him. The spiritual issue? Doctrinal unity. 

      The green shaded areas I have marked are my attempts to highlight the misuse of logic employed Buchwald, which Walther unravels. — The following translation is from Lehre und Wehre, vol. 32 (1886), pp. 98-100:

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Latest Defense of the State Church against the Free Church.

[by C. F. W. Walther]

Already on the first page Licentiate Buchwald writes: 

"When Pastor Willkomm says in the passage just quoted that his desire for 'clarity in doctrine remained unsatisfied in the study of the theology prevailing at German universities', that is, when he speaks of the theology prevailing 1) at German universities, he seems to assume that the One thing 1) is theology, that there is therefore unity 2) of doctrine among us as well." 

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1) Underlined by Buchwald himself.

2) Underlined by us.

A strange conclusion! Can a theology not prevail whose characteristic consists precisely in the fact that it regards doctrinal unity as a pure phantom? And this is indeed the case with regard to the theology now "ruling" in Germany. Or can the Licentiate name only two leading contemporary theologians who are united in doctrine? Or — assuming (but not admitting) that there really is unity in "doctrine" — is abstract unity already something praiseworthy? Even unity in false doctrine?

Buchwald continues on p. 4: 

"We would also like to ask about the logic of what was said on p. 9: 'Leaving, separating oneself, is something originally German'. Is this supposed to justify religious separatism? Do we have to pay homage to a mistake because our ancestors had it? Should we not rather rejoice that in our time the spirit of separation has finally been defeated in the political sphere? Shall it now do its mischief in the <page 99> religious sphere?" 

To this we have two things to say. Willkomm only wants to prove that "leaving, separating oneself is something originally German". We too would therefore like to ask "according to the logic" of the objection: "Is this supposed to justify religious separatism?" Is the Doctor philosophiae [i.e. Ph.D] not thereby committing an obvious mutatio elenchi [misrepresented original argument]? But this should least happen to a man who has just attacked the logic of his opponent. Incidentally, Mr. Willkomm immediately adds: "Or would the Reformation have come about without separation?" Hereby Willkomm shows, after having declared separation, which the 41 clergymen had declared to be something American and un-German, to be, on the contrary, something originally German, which separation alone he considers not only to be something originally German, but also at the same time something originally Christian. In this respect, too, Buchwald's objection is an inexcusable mutatio elenchi. Indeed, when Buchwald begins the following new section with the words: "On the same page Pastor Willkomm asks: 'Or would the Reformation have come about without separation?'" it does indeed seem as if the reader should not realize that these words of Willkomm are added directly to the previous one in order to prove what kind of separation he alone approves of among the original German ones. But, God be commended, the announcer of the heart.

To Willkomm's words just quoted: "Or would the Reformation have come about without separation?" Buchwald makes the following remark in the following section: "He thus places the separation of the Free Church from the state church on the same level as Luther's Reformation." — Where is the logic here again? Or are you putting things that you compare with each other or classify as one and the same category on the same level?!

The Licentiate adds: 

“What drove Luther out of the Roman Church was something completely different from what gave rise to the Free Church. Or does the latter have the nerve 1) to assert that the situation in our Evangelical Church at the present time is such as Luther complains of the Catholic Church of his time 2) and by which he justifies his departure from the Roman Church (Erl. Ausg. Zweite Aufl. Bd. 10, 57.): 'Greater error, sin and lies have not reigned on earth, from the beginning, than in these hundred years. There the Gospel is publicly condemned at Costnitz. — It is not possible that greater lies, abominable error, terrible blindness, obstinate blasphemy should ever increase than has hitherto reigned in Christendom." 

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1) Underlined by us.

2) The latter two sentences underlined by Buchwald himself.

 

We only remark here that we regard this whole apostrophe, which begins with the <page 100> indignant words: "Or has this (the Free Church) the nerve to assert" etc., as a rhetorical device employed only for the purpose of alarming the uninformed; for Buchwald knows as well as we do that it does not occur to us to equate the Saxon Church with the Pope’s Church of 1522.

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      Buchwald has been called out for his belligerent, deceptive manner of argumentation. Will he get better or worse as we go? Find out in the next Part GB3…