Missouri has not yet found sufficient reason to abandon its position. And anyone who picks up this volume can see for themselves that there is still no reason to do so today. It leads right into the middle of the battles that Missouri has had to fight for more than seventy-five years. [before 1842!] For it is ultimately his doctrine of grace with which Missouri caused the great stir in America.
The “GREAT STIR IN AMERICA”... by what? Franz Pieper’s Christian Dogmatics! How the opponents hated Pieper’s pure teaching! They sneered and laughed at him! (They still do. Bonhoeffer, in 1931, drove right past Concordia Seminary in St. Louis… [Strange Glory, p. 129])
The Missourian struggle over the doctrine of Church and Ministry is ultimately based on nothing other than the doctrine of justification.
Those who contend that the differences between the LC-MS and the Wisconsin Synod are chiefly “Church and Ministry” would do well to ponder this statement. When there is truly a difference, it means that there is a deeper problem with the Doctrine of Justification… something the Wisconsin Synod has denied in the past.
Romanism in the doctrine of Church and Ministry consistently, every time, amounts to a falsification of the Lutheran doctrine of “faith alone”. We are happy to admit it: Walther and Missouri are essentially only the “repristination” of Luther and his doctrine of grace.
The opponents within the LC-MS against its teaching of the past knew this and so they thought to put on a mask of being especially Lutheran by putting out portions of the American Edition of Luther’s Works. Pelikan and Piepkorn joined with the erring Theodore Tappert to produce his Book of Concord and also to collaborate on the American Edition of Luther's Works. The situation is the same today as the LC-MS’s Robert Kolb joined with the ELCA’s Timothy Wengert for their unionistic Book of Concord. Yes indeed, they call themselves “confessional”, Luther scholars! But it is all a mask, for it was C. F. W. Walther who spearheaded the true Confessionalism and the greatest Back To Luther movement since the Reformation Century!
And no attentive Lutheran will put down this volume of Pieper's Dogmatics without the impression that Missouri's battle for Lutheran truth was a great, glorious, holy, victorious war!
Truly a Battle Royal! Lehre und Wehre, or “Doctrine and Defense”, is filled with faith-strengthening essays and reports on this battle.
And the clarity, certainty, firmness and determination with which Dr. Pieper moves in the presentation of the doctrine of Scripture as well as in the refutation of the antitheses, creates the confidence that here speaks a master in Israel, a proven leader, whom no one can follow in his discussions without at the same time arriving at his own certainty.
… “Here speaks a Master in Israel [Franz Pieper]”!
– Friedrich Bente – a true Church Historian!
Over the decades, many of the strange prejudices against Walther and his theology have fallen away. And anyone who wants to lose the last remnants of his mistrust of Missouri and convince himself that in Walther and the theologians and congregations that have gathered around him, that Luther's Lutheranism has indeed experienced an American resurrection, should read this second volume of Dr. Pieper's Dogmatics. F. B. [Friedrich Bente]
“Luther’s Lutheranism – An American resurrection.” – Bente states it beautifully! He pronounces Pieper’s Dogmatics to be not only the heart of Walther’s teaching and that of the Missouri Synod, but also the heart of Martin Luther's teaching. Even more, Bente implies that Luther’s teaching had been largely covered up for some time and had experienced a resurrection. Where? In America.
"Missouri has not yet found sufficient reason to abandon its position."