Latest Defense of the State Church against the Free Church.
[by C. F. W. Walther]
In short, our [i.e. Germany’s and Walther’s] Free Church takes the <page 132> declaration of principles of our church in its final Confession very seriously:
"We believe, teach and confess that the only rule and guideline by which all doctrines and teachers are to be judged and sentenced are the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments alone, as it is written: 'Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path', Ps. 119:105, and St. Paul: 'If an angel came from heaven and preached otherwise, let him be accursed', Gal. 1:8." (The symbol. Bücher der ev.-luth. Kirche, ed. by Müller. Epitome of the Formula of Concord, p. 517 [FC Ep 1, Trigl. 577, 1])
Although Dr. Buchwald wants to justify the hideous picture he has painted of our Free Church from the proceedings of our Synod in the years 1856 and 1857 1) with a chiliast, the caricature he creates by picking out this and that tendentiously from it is not worthy of consideration. If you want to find out about our procedure, read the relevant synod reports yourself and do not rely on our opponents in the old fatherland.
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1) Buchwald transfers the proceedings to the years 1875 and 1877.
After Buchwald has sketched his distorted picture, he writes on p. 11:
"Now we only ask: is it in truth one doctrine that exists there, if one forcibly gets rid of those who teach otherwise?"
To this we reply as follows. First of all, we cannot understand the logic that if one really gets rid of those who believe and teach differently by force, then "in truth there is no doctrine". Secondly, it is not true that in our Free Church we get rid of those who believe and teach differently by force. Of course, there can be no question of physical violence here. Buchwald is therefore obviously attributing moral violence to us here.
But how does he intend to prove this? During a period of 1½ years our synod, first the district synod in question and then the general synod, in public assembly as well as in private through committees appointed by it, refuted the erring man's error from the relevant passages of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments until he could no longer raise anything against it.
Even by the authority of the confessions, to which he was nevertheless bound, we did not seek to bind his conscience. For we know well that when a man has gone astray from a truth confessed by the Church, his conscience cannot, nor should it, be caught by the Church's confession, but must go back to God's Word, to which alone conscience, as the voice of God, can and must submit. So let us now ask: Is this practice a "forcible removal of those who teach otherwise"? <page 133> Buchwald himself will not claim this. The belligerent apologist for the state churches has evidently once again transformed the idea he has abstracted from his derived sources of our Free Church into a historical account. [i. e. re-writing history]. It is also in this area that he claims, as we have seen above, that "he who refuses to accept the (synod) decision is excommunicated"; for if Buchwald takes excommunication in the usual sense of the ban, this is also quite untrue. Our Synod never ascribed the power of excommunication to itself, but left it, as well as the power of deposition, to the parishes to which it belonged. If, however, our apologist understands excommunication to mean exclusion from the synod without admixture, then it is certainly true that our synod excludes from the synod fellowship those who have been taken in by fundamental errors and are not at all wise, because in this case it can no longer work together with them in the work of the Lord. But this has nothing to do with the ban, to which only stubborn unbelievers [Unchristen] can and should be put.
With this abolition of church fellowship, however, we find ourselves in complete agreement with our noble Evangelical-Lutheran Church, which testifies in the Formula of Concord: "We also believe, teach and confess that no church should condemn the other, that one has fewer or more external ceremonies not commanded by God than the other, when otherwise in doctrine and all the same articles, as well as in the use of the holy sacraments, unity is held with one another." (op. cit. p. 553. § 7 [FC Ep X, 7; Trigl. 831, 7]) If the state church, of which Buchwald is the apologist, rejects this principle, it is high time that it should discard the name "Lutheran". —
On p. 11. of our pamphlet it now goes on to say:
"The theology of the Free Church is merely ‘backward theology’ and that is its fault, this is how it will fall." (Underlined by us)
The former we wholeheartedly accept; the latter, however, we deny; instead of regarding it as its error, we regard it as its merit and, instead of a sign of its decline, as the only guarantee of its continued existence. The theology of our Free Church goes backwards every day to Moses, the prophets and the apostles, that is true; but it is precisely in this backwardness that it seeks its forwardness.
Our theology is not a new one, but the old one, whose leaves, however, never wither, for it is planted on the right water coves [Wasserbuchen]; it is therefore not, as Buchwald fantasizes, a dead “scholasticism” that deals with idle questions, but a theology that deals with pure questions of life, and which therefore, by God's grace, has already <page 134> borne much fruit. We do not want a new theology any more than we want a new church and religion. Nor do we idly rest on the old truth as a dead inherited capital, but work diligently to make it new and ever more alive in us, to penetrate it ever more deeply, to experience it ever more powerfully and to utilize it ever better for the edification of the church on the foundation that has been laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Modern theology may call its progress a further development, but this is pure deception. For it does not really develop the already existing truth, but takes it away. The result of this "further development" of modern theology has so far been that it has partly eliminated a large number of old truths, partly made them waver, but has not brought to light a new alleged truth which a Christian can accept with certainty and joy of faith and die on it. We are therefore not ashamed to confess what Luther once confessed to the papists: "We invent nothing new, but hold and adhere to the old Word of God, as the old church did. ... For they find nothing with us but only the old things of the old church." (“Against Hans Wurst”, of the year 1541. XVII, 1659 [AE 41, 196; StL 17, 1324])
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