EC3: Confessional Subscription (of Pres. Harrison?) (Western 1858, again)

[2025-05-24: updated and expanded download links below]

      This continues from Part EC2 (Table of Contents in Part EC1), a series restoring availability of English translations of several of Walther's convention essays that have seemingly been abandoned by Concordia Publishing House. — Although the following essay (Western District, 1858) has previously been translated three times, in CTM XVIII p. 241-253,  by Theo. Tappert and by Matthew Harrison (At Home in the House of my Fathers. p. 120-137), yet its importance cries out to be revisited again to see where these translators may be suspect in their own "Confessional Subscription". This becomes abundantly clear on page 12 of the original report where Walther makes the following statement against Pastor Wilhelm Loehe (underlining is Walther's own emphasis):

     In a similar spirit [as the Reformed and Calvin!], a few years ago an entire conference of Lutheran preachers gathered in Fuerth in Bavaria, headed by Pastor Loehe in Neuendettelsau in Bavaria, encouraged our Synod to understand and interpret the Symbols according to Scripture in order to come to an agreement on the controversial doctrines of Church and Ministry. …these additions [of Loehe] rather indicate that one cannot accept them as they read, and that one therefore requires to be able to connect with the words of the symbol a meaning which does not lie in them, but which one considers to be the right Biblical one. [Compare Harrison's translation here, p. 124-125.]

As I was polishing my translation at this point, I kept comparing it with Rev. Matthew Harrison's translation. I wanted to see what comments he would have concerning this major fault of his favorite theologian, Wilhelm Loehe. Would he be critical of Loehe at this point? Harrison himself was critical of the 1947 CTM translation which 

"was an abridgement, which unfortunately left out most of the critical references to other American Lutherans (an indication perhaps of where the Synod was headed already in 1947)."

On this point Harrison was critical of his own LC–MS of 1947 and their unionistic spirit. But he was totally silent when Walther brought up the false confessionalism of Loehe, even while Harrison praised the idea of "Confessional Subscription" in his introduction to Walther's essay. — More evidence brought forward by Walther, p. 13:

"A fourth way of subscribing the symbols only conditionally is to declare that one can only profess what is confessional in them. Pastor Loehe, for example, only subscribes the symbols with this condition. He writes: 'I distinguish in the Book of Concord what is confessionally said and what is not confessionally said, — and I distinguish even more. It does not occur to me to stick to the letter and be guilty of symbololatry. I accept what is confessedly (confessionally) said in the confessional writings.' It goes without saying that this excludes a significant part of the doctrinal content of the symbols from what can be professed as one's faith; just as Pastor Loehe, in the same writing where he states the above, openly declares several parts of doctrine found in the symbols to be not pure and therefore capable of purification." [Compare Harrison's translation here, p. 125.]

Again, no comment by Rev. Harrison. To praise confessionalism while not defending it vigorously is empty praise.

      While Harrison's translation is now freely available to the public on the Internet Archive, and is perhaps better in some respects, yet my translation includes (1) Walther's own emphasis of wording that is sometimes missing in Harrison's translation, (2) links to some of Walther's sources and (3) links to each original German page. I have added highlighting and some comments along the way.  It is presented below in an embedded window:

Web version >> here <<;  be download >> here <<; German original  >> here <<.

      In the next Part EC3a we publish a short blurb from this same 1858 Western District report against Pastor Loehe on another doctrine, the Last Unction, or Extreme Unction.