GB13: Walther condemns State Church 10 ways: deprives of soul & salvation

     This continues from Part GB12 (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. — Ten strong charges against Germany's State Church: follow Walther's countdown of pointed questions beginning with "Who has…". — Valparaiso University students, under Pres. O. P. Kretzmann, flocked to German schools being taught by teachers (or as Walther calls them "false prophets") from the State Church. — The following translation is from Lehre und Wehre, vol. 32 (1886), pp.143-144 [EN]:

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Latest Defense of the State Church against the Free Church.

[by C. F. W. Walther]

There are only two things we would like to mention briefly.

First of all, Buchwald writes on p. 16: 

"To make such a constitutional question a condition for attaining salvation is quite un-Protestant." (Underlined by Buchwald)

Obviously Buchwald wants to say [falsely] that this is done by the Free Church. What are we to say about this? We remain silent; for if we were to speak, we would have to offend. And yet even the editor of the Sächsisches Kirchen- und Schulblatt (Saxon Church and School Bulletin), op. cit. confesses to it! God forgive him for this great sin.

On the other hand, Buchwald writes: 

"No one has ever been separated from his head Jesus Christ by the union of State and Church and this would be and remain the only conceivable reason for separation." (Underlined by us) — 

How? Through the connection between state and church, not one person has ever been deprived of soul and salvation?! — We rather say: uncounted thousands! (Of course, we are not speaking here of that connection in abstracto, but in concreto.) 

(1) Who appointed the educators of the false prophets at the universities? 

 

(2) Who gave wolves to shepherd the churches? 

(3) Who gave the school teachers' seminaries over to the disciples of the Rousseaus, Dinters, Diesterwegs, etc.? [Cp. these to JCWL!]

(4) Who has handed over the church's nurseries, the Christian parochial schools, to hollow, arrogant, rationalistic schoolmasters?

(5) Who has taken the good old agendas, hymnbooks and catechisms from the preachers and congregations by brute force and imposed on them the most wretched works of [theological] art, bristling with the poison of false doctrine? 

(6) Who, above all, has hindered the discipline of doctrine and life in the church? 

(7) Who has persecuted the pure teachers and appointed false prophets in their place? 

(8) Who has destroyed entire Lutheran state churches and turned them into unionist, unbelieving communities through expulsions, fines, imprisonment and corporal punishment? [Stoeckhardt’s imprisonment] Were they not your state bishops and their creatures, the royal, ducal, princely consistories and superintendents? 

 

(9) Who, therefore, can count the souls that have fallen <page 144> victim to the constitution of the state or, as one prefers to speak euphemistically, of the state church and have been dragged to hell by it? 

(10) Who has imposed on you, you believing Saxons, your godless unbelieving ministers and schoolmasters, over whom you sigh, with iron compulsion? Is it not your royal consistory? And you stand up for this constitution? —

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      One senses that Walther held back from these harsher condemnations in the main body of his narrative so that he could lay out the full picture of Germany's failed theology, and establish the groundwork for them. Then the reader would be prepared for his long list of condemnations.

    I contrast the likes of the unbelieving German/European teachers at the German teachers' seminaries that Walther names in point #3 with the president of the Missouri Synod's Teacher's Seminary in Addison, Illinois: J. C. W. Lindemann.

      Walther had personal experiences relating to his 3rd and 4th point. He described them in other places when speaking of his younger years and his training in Germany. The 8th point, which included fines and imprisonment, was experienced by Prof. George Stoeckhardt before he left Germany for America. — We conclude this series in the next Part GB14…