The “Lutherans”, not “Evangelicals” – Walther corrects 3 blunders of Reformed “history”, and also Dr. Kolb's blunder

      I have blogged before (here and here) about how Walther corrected the false history of opposing Catholics and Reformed.  But I ran across a most instructive blurb by Walther in Der Lutheraner that masterfully catches a Reformed newspaper article in their false narrative of who the “Evangelicals” were in the beginning, during Reformation times.  From vol. 21 (May 15, 1865), p. 140: 

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The Reformed Church Paper of Philadelphia in the number of April 27 [1865] writes the following: 

“When the evangelicals had made their excellent confession of faith before the Diet of Augsburg, the Duke of Bavaria asked Dr. Eck: ‘Can you refute this confession with good reasons?’ — ‘Not with the writings of the Apostles and Prophets,’ Eck answered, ‘but with those of the Fathers and Councils.’ — ‘So the Evangelicals,’ replied the Catholic Duke, ‘are in the Scriptures and we beside them.’ Under the name ‘Evangelicals,’ however, were at that time not only the Lutherans, but also the Melanchthonians and Reformed in Germany.”  

So far the Reformed Church Paper. Hereby it wants to refute Licentiate Stroebel, who had quite rightly claimed that the Reformed are also “opposed to the evangelical faith”. This refutation, however, is very unfortunate, since it claims that among the Evangelicals mentioned at the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, not only the Lutherans, but also the Melanchthonians and German Reformed were included. With this, the editor of the Reformed Church Paper makes three bad blunders at once: 

1. First, as is otherwise known, there were no Melanchthonians at that time. 

2. Secondly, the Duke could not have meant the German Reformed at that time, since they, as is also known throughout the world, did not want to unite with the Lutherans in the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, in which the Reformed doctrine is rejected in Article 10, because of the existing doctrinal difference, and therefore presented their own, special, so-called Tetrapolitan Confession, which was admittedly received very ungraciously by the Emperor and was not read out before the Imperial Diet. 

3. The third blunder, however, is the worst. The Reformed Church Paper bases its entire argumentation on the fact that the Catholic Duke of Bavaria, in his address, understood under the Evangelicals to be not only the Lutherans, but also the Reformed, and thus also praised their Confession as being contained in the Scriptures; but it is not at all true that the Duke used the expression “Evangelicals”; rather, he expressed himself thus, without any ambiguity: “So I hear, the Lutherans sit in the Scriptures, and we beside them.” —  

Are now the Lutherans to be understood not only as Lutherans, but also as Reformed? [Answer: No!] — After this unfortunate attempt to draw polemical weapons from church history, let the dear Reformed Church Paper therefore be warned not to plunge again into the ecclesiastical past for this purpose until it has studied church history somewhat more carefully, and indeed from the sources. In general, it should never forget that one learns by teaching, but that teaching must always be preceded by a certain amount of learning. The more it will do in this, the more modest it will become; for the more one really learns thoroughly, the clearer it becomes to one how much one does not yet know; while just the most superficial knower is usually particularly plagued by the tickle of “scholarship”. W. [Walther]

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      Walther's words speak for themselves, but I would point out that he used the word "dear" when referring to the Reformed paper, something he did not do when he fought against the Catholic periodicals.  Walther wished to coax the Reformed back to their roots of the Lutheran Reformation, while the Church of the Pope, the Antichrist, will remain so until the Last Day.

      Two months later Walther touched on the same subject in a short blurb (vol. 21, July 15, p. 174):

Union. With “pleasure” the Apologist presents to its readers a communication from soldiers who, belonging to different confessions, have made union in the camp and now wish to see it carried out at home. In the message, the soldiers, some of whom are Congregationalists, others Evangelicals (Albrecht’s people, Methodists), Baptists, Episcopal Methodists and Evangelical Protestants, declare, among other things, the following: “Do we Evangelical congregations not all have one God, the same Savior, the same creed and the same baptism? Should and must only the name separate us, or the letter, or a word that was put or used this way or that way in the translation of the Holy Scriptures? That we are separated is mainly based on forms; but the main thing is one and the same.” — We think the soldiers are right. That the sects have not yet made a union is due only to unessential things; in the main they are one among themselves, namely in their views of what true Christianity is; on this they are only at odds with the Lutherans, who therefore, of course, cannot unite with them. W. [Walther]

 

As I read this blurb, I recalled an article by Prof. Dr. Robert Kolb in the Concordia Journal, of October 2001 where he held a similar spiritual position as these Civil War soldiers. The article had a title, in part, "On the Blessings and Challenges of Church Fellowship with the New Partners of the LCMS”: 

“C. F. W. Walther and Wilhelm Löhe may be worthy conversation partners in our discussion, but some of the most critical problems we face begin where they stopped speaking—or even some distance after they stopped speaking—more than a century ago. We must answer questions of which they could not dream. They [Walther and Loehe] provide us with an ecclesiology shaped for a world in which the church was conceived of as divided into “Konfessionen.” There is no readily understandable American translation of that concept! We have missed the chance to compose an expression of our ecclesiology for the denominational age of North American Christianity. We will reap only confusion and contention among ourselves and in our relations with other churches if we do not begin soon to formulate a proper expression of Biblical truth regarding the church for a post-denominational age. We must do so in humble submission to Scripture and to God's call to confess our faith abandoning use of ecclesiological problems as instruments for serving political interests [!] among us. We must turn to the honest theological exertion [i.e. forgetting Walther!]  required for repeating our doctrine of the church in ways that address the situation of the confession of Christ's Word in the early twenty-first century.”

Every time I read this plea from Dr. Kolb, I can hardly believe what he is saying, for it echos the spiritual unionism of the Civil War soldiers who questioned “Do we Evangelical congregations not all have one God?”

Fundament 6: Reformed, first the Calvinists; Calvary Chapel example

      This continues from Part 5 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a translation of Franz Pieper's essay on the foundation of the Christian faith ("Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens"). —  Although Pieper praised the Presbyterians perhaps the most among the Reformed camp, yet he pulled no punches when it came to their Calvinistic doctrines.  B.B. Warfield attempted to paint the Reformed doctrine as essentially no different from Lutheran theology in one of the encyclopedias, yet Pieper points to a glaring difference in this segment.  Pieper admired the Presbyterians for their stand in the 1890s for the Holy Scripture, but he certainly shows them here where that breaks down when their teaching denies… John 3:16. — Pieper keeps his subject matter simple and avoids enumerating all the hundreds of Reformed sects in the USA.  He covers the two divisions among the Reformed – Calvinism and Arminianism.  All the Reformed sects follow either of these, or attempt to mediate between them. I review one of those Reformed sects below following Pieper's essay.

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Text preparation and translation by BackToLuther using DeepL, Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, Yandex Translate. All bold text is Pieper's emphasis. All highlighting, red text, and most text in square brackets [ ] is mine.

Das Fundament des christlichen Glaubens.

The Foundation of the Christian Faith.

[by President Franz Pieper, Concordia Seminary; continued from Part 5 - page 97]

The Reformed sects and the Foundation of the Christian Faith.

The Reformed fellowships  are divided into Calvinists and Arminians. That's how they divide themselves. The great American Reformed dogmatist William Shedd goes so far as to divide even all Christendom into Calvinists and Arminians. According to Shedd there are only “two great systems of theology which divide evangelical Christendom, Calvinism and Arminianism”. 28) The Lutheran Church, which in its confession rejects both Calvinism and Arminianism, is denied the right to exist. Another important American Reformed dogmatist, Princetonian Charles Hodge, joins Shedd in his judgment. Hodge declares the doctrinal position of the Lutheran Church “illogical” and untenable. 29)

Let us now first imagine how the foundation of the Christian faith stands with the Calvinistic Reformed. The characteristic of the Calvinist Reformed is that they deny universal grace (gratia universalis). Calvin thinks that God earnestly wants to make about twenty percent of mankind saved. He had created the remaining eighty percent to damnation. 30) Likewise the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Presbyterians: “Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called . . . but the elect only.” 31) The Princetonian dogmatist Charles Hodge also very vigorously limits God's will of grace and redemption through Christ to a small part of humanity.  Hodge, in terms of expressions, is not such a ruffian as Calvin, who speaks of “excessive ignorance”, “childishness” and “dullness” on the part of those who teach a general will of God's grace in Christ. 32) Hodge [page 98]

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28) Dogmatic Theology, I, 448.       

29) Systematic Theology, II, 325.     

30) Inst. III, 21, 5; 24, 12. 

31) Chap. III, 6.

32) Inst. III, 23, 1. 

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is more polite in his expressions. But [the doctrines of] only a partial will of grace of God and only a partial redemption by Christ he also holds to firmly and adds that it is against God's honor and dignity to accept a general serious will of grace of God and a general redemption by Christ. Hodge writes: 

“It cannot be supposed that God intends what is never accomplished; that He purposes what He does not intend to effect; that He adopts means for an end which is never to be attained. This cannot be affirmed of any rational being who has the wisdom and power to secure the execution of his purposes. Much less can it be said of Him whose power and wisdom are infinite. If all men are not saved, God never purposed their salvation and never devised, and put into operation, means designed to accomplish that end.” 

And specifically in relation to Christ's merit, Hodge adds: “If equally designed for all men, it must secure the salvation of all.” (Systematic Theol., II, 323) 

What becomes of the foundation of the Christian faith in this doctrine? Christian faith is, as our confession, the Apology, rightly says, fides specialis, that is, individual faith or personal faith, whereby a person who has come to know his sins refers to his person the grace or forgiveness of sins acquired by Christ for all men. Only “this faith, whereby everyone believes for his person (unusquisque) that sins are forgiven him for Christ's sake and that God is reconciled and gracious for Christ's sake, obtains forgiveness of sins and justifies us”. (M. 94, 45. [Apology IV(II) Trigl. 132-133, § 45, BoC here]) 

But the Calvinist denial of the general will of grace and of the general reconciliation through Christ's merit deprives this faith of the foundation which is inevitably necessary for it. Admittedly, as long as a person is still in a state of carnal security, has not yet awakened a conscience, it is quite irrelevant to him whether the grace of God extends to only twenty percent of humanity or to all human beings. But when the conscience wakes up, when the terrores conscientiae come, when the condemnation judgment of the divine law is felt in the conscience, then the twenty percent Calvinist grace fails completely. Then, under the pangs of conscience of the divine law, the sinner will count himself among the eighty percent of mankind for whom God will not save them and for whom Christ did not die. He will perish in despair if it cannot be proclaimed to him from the Scriptures that the grace of God in Christ extends to all men without exception. 

Calvinist must
become Lutheran

The Reformed themselves admit that. A more recent Reformed theologian, Matthias Schneckenburger, shows in his “Comparative Presentation of the Lutheran and Reformed Concept of Doctrine” 35) [page 99] that the Calvinist Reformed, who is seized by real knowledge of sin, must become Lutheran if he is not to die in despair in the challenge. Schneckenburger says: “The Reformed doctrine is in practice always pushed to the Lutheran side.” In short, the Calvinistic-Reformed doctrine of a grace that extends to only about twenty percent of the people destroys the foundation of the Christian faith. The fact that in the course of time millions of people from the Calvinistic-Reformed camp have nevertheless also been saved has primarily a two-fold reason. Some had never absorbed the deadly soul poison of the [doctrine of] only a partial grace of God, because their preachers were mostly very silent about the official doctrine, which so resolutely reads a denial of the gratia universalis. Others, who had absorbed the poison in themselves, have excreted it again in fear of conscience and death, because they were reproached with scriptural passages that testify to the general grace of God, albeit partly only out of embarrassment. In order to hold fast to the inevitably necessary foundation of the Christian faith, the Lutheran Church therefore confesses in the Formula of Concord: 36) “We must in every way hold sturdily and firmly to this, that, as the preaching of repentance, so also the promise of the Gospel is universalis (universal), that is, it pertains to all men”. 

How sturdily and firmly Luther held to the gratia universalis in order to hold fast the foundation of the Christian faith can be seen from the following concrete account: 37) 

“You may say: ‘Who knows whether Christ also bore my sin? I have no doubt that He bore the sin of St. Peter, St. Paul, and other saints; these were pious people. Oh, that I were like St. Peter or St. Paul!’ Don’t you hear what St. John says in our text: ‘This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’? And you cannot deny that you are also part of this world. . . For if you are in the world and your sins form a part of the sins of the world, then the text applies to you. All that the words ‘sin,’ ‘world,’ and ‘the sin of the world from its beginning until its end’ denote—all this rests solely on the Lamb of God. And since you are an integral part of this world and remain in this world, the benefits mentioned in the text will, of course, also accrue to you.” 

Each one of us has also experienced more or less clearly that the foundation of his faith would have disappeared if he had not been allowed to cling to the one hundred per cent grace that excludes no sinner. 

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35) I, 200 ff. [or  I, 264 here]     

36) M. 709, 28 ff. [XI. Election, Trigl. 1070-1, §28, BoC here]

37) St. L.VII, 1717 ff. [Am. Ed. 22, p. 169]

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      One of the Reformed sects in America today was started by Chuck Smith († 2013), his popular Calvary Chapel movement which falls into the category of "mediating" between the two Reformed divisions.  In his book Calvary Chapel Distinctives, p. 121-122 he stated:

“We’re neither ‘Five Point Calvinists’, nor are we Arminian.  We do believe in the security of the believer. We don’t believe that you can lose your salvation because you lost your temper or told a lie and, as a result, need to go forward next Sunday night to repent and get resaved. … So we seek to take a balanced position rather than getting on one side and pressing the ‘Five Points of Calvinism.’ When you take hard stands on these non-foundational issues, you’ll just empty your church of all of those who have Methodist, Nazarene, and other Arminian-influenced backgrounds. Why would you want to do that?”

Smith, while attempting to avoid  the labels, admitted that "we seek to take a balanced position", which means he does not reject outright either position. He may not take "hard stands on these non-foundational issues" but neither does he demonstrate that some of these "non-foundational issues" actually destroy the foundation of Christianity. — In the next Part 7…

Warfield to Pieper: on Walther, Luther, Inspiration; Copernicanism Part 25

[2019-07-16: updated link to Augustana Sem.; 2018-06-14: updated links to Adolf Zahn's book]
      This continues from Part 24, a series on Copernicanism and Geocentricity (see Intro & Contents in Part 1) in response to a letter from a young person ("Josh") who asked if I believed Geocentricity ... and did not ridicule me in his question.

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Dedicated to James Swan and his BeggarsAllReformation blog.

      Again I am compelled to concentrate on the importance of the doctrine of the Bible's Inspiration, even though this post does not specifically address "Copernicanism".  —  On several blog posts, I have pointed out the importance of Inspiration and inerrancy to a well known early Princeton Seminary professor: Dr. B. B. Warfield.  Warfield is highly regarded by conservative Reformed people even today.  As I noted on this blog, Franz Pieper also highly regarded Warfield for his defense of the Inspiration of the Bible.  Even Prof. Mark Noll, who seems to enjoy pointing out certain weaknesses in Warfield, says Warfield was "the nation’s strongest supporter for ... biblical inerrancy".  But when I posted Pieper's essay "Luther’s Doctrine of the Inspiration" that was originally published in Warfield's The Presbyterian and Reformed Review journal (Volume 4, 1893), I could only guess that it was actually Warfield himself who requested this essay from Pieper.  But now I have come across proof positive, personal letters from Warfield to Pieper which were postumously published in Concordia Theological Monthly (CTM) in 1933 (after Pieper's passing in 1931).  These letters show not only the specific request by Warfield for the essay on Luther, but they also show that Warfield even requested more information on... C.F.W. Walther!  Remarkable!  Below I re-publish Warfield's letters to Franz Pieper from CTM.  The first and last paragraphs are remarks by the then President of Concordia Seminary, Prof. Ludwig Fürbringer. Highlighting and hyperlinks are mine:

Three Letters of Prof. B. B.Warfield Addressed to Prof. F. Pieper.

[From Concordia Theological Monthly vol. 4, no. 7 (1933), pp. 537-538; CTS-FW]

Dr. B.B. Warfield
"how grateful we are"

Undoubtedly it will interest our readers to read the following letters of the distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology in the Princeton Theological Seminary Dr. Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield. The articles which appeared from his pen in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, the Princeton Theological Review, and other reviews are now being published in ten volumes by the Oxford University Press. Prof. L. Blankenbuehler of St. Paul, Minnesota, has kindly placed these letters at our disposal.

My Dear Sir: — Princeton, N.J., January 28, 1890.

Professor Weidner of the Augustana Seminary [2019-07-16 updated link], Rock Island, Illinois, has directed me to you in order to learn where the works and life of the late Rev. Dr. Walther can be had and at what prices. I should like very much to make the opinions and life-work of Dr. Walther a study for my theological classes. I am also editor of the Presbyterian and Reformed Review and should like to have the publications of the St. Louis Lutheran Publishing House sent to our journal for notice. Especially should I wish to have their new and splendid edition of Luther’s Works for review in our magazine. Presbyterians and the Reformed Church in general should know more of the good work done by this house. Will you kindly inform me to whom I should have our business house apply in order to obtain these books for review?

I am

Sincerely yours

B. B. Warfield.

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My Dear Sir: — Princeton, N.J., February 24, 1890.

Thank you very much for sending the books, which have just reached me. I shall at once set about making the near acquaintance of Dr. Walther, and I perceive that your distinguished kindness has quite bountifully supplied me with materials for understanding him.

The volume of Luther’s Works will be at once reviewed for our Review,— probably for the July number, as the April number is already in press. I hope our Review will reach you regularly. If not, please inform me that I may have it sent.

It will be my study to discover some way in which I may partly meet your kindness.

I am

Sincerely yours

B. B. Warfield.

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My Dear Sir: — Princeton, N.J., May 13, 1892.

I thank you very much for undertaking so readily the paper we ask of you on Luther’s Inspirationslehre. I wish we had space to ask of you three papers covering, respectively, the ground you outline. But we are so crowded that that is for the present impossible. We shall have to beg you therefore to compress the matter which would fall under all three heads, — Luther’s direct statements, Luther’s dealing with apparent inconsistencies, and historico-critical examination of Luther’s statements often misinterpreted as favoring a free attitude over against the Scriptures, — into one paper of say 10,000 words maximum. This is the limit we set to our longest articles; and it covers twenty pages of our Review. The MS. will not be needed until the late autumn.

I cannot tell you how grateful we are for this paper. Every man who desires to attack the strict doctrine of inspiration falls back on the collection of passages former writers have made from the writings of the Reformers and pleads their example for loose views. It has become necessary in our Church to present the doctrines of the Reformers over, from the sources, in order to guard the Church from deception.

It is a great blessing to the German element of our people that your Church has occupied so firm a position on inspiration and against all synergism in salvation. Since Schleiermacher the whole world has been soiled with the synergistic leaven; and we have watched the efforts of your Church to retain the ancient truth as to sola Scriptura and sola gratia with the intensest sympathy.  May God give you ever-increased success!

I am

Yours most truly

B. B. Warfield.

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Dr. Pieper had devoted much time and study to the subject, and his article on “Luther’s Doctrine of Inspiration” was published in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. 4, p. 249. Some time later it was translated and published in Germany by Dr. Adolf Zahn in Ernste Blicke in den Wahn der modernen Kritik. Neue Folge, p. 127 [link updated]. L. F. [Ludwig Fürbringer]

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      The manner that Warfield corresponded with Pieper is strikingly cordial... certainly not condescending.  And we see that Pieper responded in kind by furnishing Warfield with the requested materials.  One result was that Warfield received a surprisingly favorable mention in Pieper's Christian Dogmatics book (as previously published; German edition pgs 327-328, footnote 902):

Because of this stand [on inspiration and absolute infallibility of Scripture] he had to endure opposition and derision from many in his own church body; in these trials he found much comfort in the fact that "an entire Lutheran Synod" unanimously subscribed to the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture.

      What is notable in Fürbringer's postscript is that he thought that Pieper's English essay had been translated into German, but subsequent research of Adolf Zahn's book (see here, pgs 127-128, title in English: Serious Attention to the Madness of Modern Criticism of the Old Testament. New Series.) shows that Zahn only published a summary and review, not a translation.  So apparently Fürbringer did not have a copy of Zahn's book.  — Adolph Zahn, a German "Evangelical Reformed", is well regarded among conservative Reformed and he gave a glowing review of Pieper's essay, calling Pieper "a good Missourian".  Zahn, like Pieper, fought against the "scientific theologians" of Germany.
      Ah, if only today's LC-MS had the respect for the teaching of Franz Pieper and C.F.W. Walther that B.B. Warfield (and Adolph Zahn) had.  What was it that Warfield said?

...your Church has occupied so firm a position on inspiration and against all synergism in salvation. 

– B.B. Warfield on the Missouri Synod

Indeed, I wonder that if Warfield were asked who was the greatest supporter of biblical inerrancy in America in his day, he might disagree with Prof. Mark Noll's assessment today.  And James Swan of the blog BeggarsAllReformation continues the tradition where the conservative Reformed honor Luther's Reformation... sometimes more than today's LC-MS.
[Next Part 26a here]