Walther: Did Luther "carry" Melanchthon's errors? (Part 1 of 28); Bente shunned in LC-MS

[2024-05-25: Hochstetter's History covers this essay on pp. 425-428]

      C. F. W. Walther is a master historian of the Reformation and all the theologians connected with it.  And in 1876, in the pages of Lehre und Wehre, Walther tackled one of the most difficult issues a Lutheran theologian has to face: the relationship between Martin Luther and his associate Philip Melanchthon.  So when I ran across this extensive essay (39 pages in length), I knew that I had to get it translated.  Walther digs deep into Reformation history to unearth what the persons involved actually said, then he ties it all together.  This is no small task, given the ambiguous language that is used at key points in this history. During the translation of this project, I was greatly interested in the content of Walther’s essay and could hardly wait for each new paragraph in order to get the full story on this important–and controversial–subject. — What did Walther think of Melanchthon and his teaching?  He tells us the answer to that question near the end of his essay: 

"How much would we have preferred to be able to help that only the memory of Melanchthon should be kept alive from the time of his faithfulness and blessed efficacy, but that the memory of him from the time of his softening and falling should be wiped out and buried forever!"  

So why then did he take the time to go into this thorny topic?  We find the answer to that question in both the opening and closing comments. — I have spent several months working on this essay, its supporting documentation, and on the controversial arguments against it. We begin now the first of many blog posts presenting this masterful essay by… "The American Luther." From Lehre und Wehre, vol. 22 (Nov., Dec.1876), pp. 321-338, 353-373 [EN]:

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The “Carrying” of Melanchthon on the Part of Luther.

[by C. F. W. Walther, Part 1]

After Luther's death, it has often been pointed out to those Lutherans who did not want to hold fraternal, altar and church fellowship with manifest false teachers within our church, that Luther, as we know, had himself cultivated such fellowship with Melanchthon, even after the latter had no longer agreed with Luther on several important points of doctrine. *) Such Lutherans, it was claimed, obviously wanted to be more strictly Lutheran than Luther himself. A Lutheran in Luther's sense should not break off fellowship with the erring who still professed the faith of our church, but should rather bear and tolerate it, as Luther once did with a Melanchthon. 

In recent times this was also reproached to those East Indian missionaries [Zorn, Willkomm, Zucker] who had been dismissed and who declared that they could no longer remain in the service of the Leipzig Missionary Society if the latter did not break away from fellowship with notorious false teachers in which it is known to stand. Missionary Zorn wrote to us from East India that Director Hardeland had said to them, the missionaries troubled in their conscience, “You want to be more orthodox than Luther. — You have to take a man as a Lutheran for as long as he is Lutheran, that is, not to separate from him when he professes to be Lutheran. Here,” it goes on, “Luther's carrying of Melanchthon from 1542-1546 was cited (and cited again and again) as a resounding example of healthy church practice from the fundamental period of the Reformation.” 

————

*) This was done by, among others, the crypto-Calvinist Dr. Caspar Peucer, Melanchthon's son-in-law, in his Tractatus historicus de Melanchthonis sententia de controversia Coenae Domini, 1576, and the Philippists at the Altenburg Colloquium in 1568, who went further, claiming that Luther agreed with Melanchthon's deviations from the earlier doctrine. 

(LuW 322)   

If Melanchthon had really already become apparent in Luther's time as a stubborn false teacher, and if Luther had really let Melanchthon have his way during this time, then one would have to admit that those Lutherans who do not want to cultivate fellowship with false teachers appearing in our church [i.e. theologians claiming to be Lutheran] do not act in Luther's sense, at least not according to Luther's example. 

But the matter stands, thank God, quite differently; and the intention of the present article is to prove this. 

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Walther did not want to write this unhappy essay, he was forced into it — forced because of false charges from Lutheran leaders in Germany in the 19th century. But along with the example of the director of the Leipzig Mission Society, Walther gives examples from the 16th Century who tried to hide behind this same false report of Luther.  Unlike his opponents, Walther focuses not on the early years of Melanchthon, but only on the years of the last 10 years of Luther's life. This is exactly the time frame that erring Lutherans want to avoid. —  It is a most unsettling history, not only because of Melanchthon's wavering, but also because it is difficult to defend against the misuse of it by erring Lutheran theologians. What a relief it is to have C. F. W. Walther take on this task, the "heavy lifting", of presenting a full analysis.

      As I progressed through Walther's essay, another work came to mind that would be a perfect compliment to it, Prof. F. Bente's 1921 Historical Introduction to the Symbolical Books, his best known work.  But as I researched Bente's work and reactions to it in today's LCMS, a counter concept of Reformation history came to light.  There is a radical shift in thinking being promoted within and without the LC-MS. And so to counter what is being taught in the LC-MS seminaries and institutions, or at least allowed, I decided to take several months to polish this translation of Walther — adding pictures of many persons, and inserting dozens of links to Walther's source materials so that readers can immediately access them and read them where possible. What makes Bente controversial will certainly make Walther's essay controversial.  More will be said about this in upcoming blog posts. — In the next Part 2, Walther explains the complexity of the problem, then begins to present the matter.

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Part 1: This intro; Leipzig Mission dismisses Missouri leaning missionaries

Part 2: The Melanchthon Conundrum; “Slight doubts [rising from] Church Fathers.”; list of LC-MS opponents

Part 3: M.'s good confessions in Luther's last years; Lowell Green's attacks, Marquart's rebuttal 

Part 4: More good confessions by Melanchthon; Green charges Bente on Supper

Part 5: M.'s errors not overlooked; L.'s "guileless, faithful heart"; Rosenbladt's "black hat" charge against Bente

Part 6: Ratzeburger "hits truth" on M.; Scott Keith: Bente's "poorly" covered history

Part 7: M.'s private letters; “objectivity” of modern history?; "Thinking Fellows" "biased" against Bente

Part 8: M.'s “ambiguous behavior”, Calvin: “bread adoration”; "Banned Books" Ban Bente 

Part 9: “Beloved Baumgärtner” testifies against M.; praise for Bente's history from Paul McCain

Part 10: M.: gentle or angry nature?; Dr. Green's false judgment

Part 11: M.'s notorious letter; Green avoids recipient's name (Carlowitz)

Part 12: Quenstedt & Calvin tell the truth about M.; do Dingel & Kolb on Melanchthon & Leipzig Interim?

    Excursus 1: Chemnitz on Melanchthon's errors: Philippism, “horrible heresies”

Part 13: Walther summarizes Melanchthon's ups & downs; Langebartels uses Bente

    Excursus 2: Hutter on Melanchthon's errors

Part 14: Melanchthon: Luther did not carry me; Drs. Keith & Green "perceived errors" vs. Chemnitz

Part 15: Cordatus blows whistle; “‘causa’ must leave”; Walther's Law & Gospel; Gillespie, Riley against Unaltered Augsburg Confession?

Part 16: "necessary cause", “What bondage it was”; the many editions of Melanchthon's Loci

    Excursus 3: Löscher: Melanchthon's “all too political, philosophical mind.”; Löscher vs. Rosenbladt

Part 17: “Luther's mildness; The Thinking Fellows: Bente's "bias" of "confessional historiography"

Part 18:  Luther too mild?; Bente's Historical Introductions uploaded 2 ways

Part 19:  M.'s "game of hide-and-seek"

Part 20: Transubstantiation, Venetians, Swiss; Kolb against Chemnitz on Church Fathers

Part 21: Luther calmed, but Melanchthon “himself was not calm”

Part 22: The unsuspecting Luther… but only too soon…; Kolb avoids Luther's explosive letter

Part 23: Luther to write against Melanchthon, but…; Dr. Green's false thesis on Melanchthon

Part 24: Elector's letter to spare M.; Kolb whitewashes history, theology; LCMS is not true "Missouri Synod"

Part 25: Luther reproaches Melanchthon, Elector seals record; Dr. Keith's Law-driving

Part 26: Luther to Melanchthon: “do away with some points”; Walther's history of Formula polished, uploaded: Kern und Stern (another BTL book)

Part 27: Luther: great harm of silence; Pr Riley on Justification (UOJ) — a contradiction

Part 28: Impossible! (Walther's conclusion); Walther over Drs. Kolb and Green

Walther: “Unbelievable!” Salve regina in Ev. church?; Luther on Lutheran hymns

      This short blurb was spotted when processing the journals of the Old Missouri Synod. Walther gives us some history of this papal doctrine. — From Lehre und Wehre, vol. 20 (1874), p. 380 [EN]:

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Worship of Mary in the Evangelical Church. Yes, that is how it is. Unbelievable and yet true! The writer of this article has already noticed it repeatedly when he was in Leipzig and found the announcement among the church news in the Tageblatte [Daily News] that a “Salve regina” would also be sung as a motet at 2:30 on Saturday afternoon at Vespers in the St. Thomas Church. We calmed ourselves, however, by assuming that they had probably only used some famous composition of that old text, but had added a different text to it, since we could not believe that in a Evangelical church, and especially in Leipzig, a chant in which Mary is worshiped as the Queen of Heaven would be performed. But lo and behold, the other day we got hold of the musical text of the two motets which were performed on May 9 of this year in the Thomaskirche, and there again a "Salve regina" [Hail Holy Queen] by Robert Papperitz is mentioned as the second motet, and at the same time the whole text is printed, in which Mary is addressed as mater misericordiae, vitae dulcedo et spes nostra [mother of mercy, the sweetness of life and our hope], even as advocata nostra [Our advocate], and is invoked for her help. According to this, it is certain that in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, prayers are sometimes said to the Virgin Mary. If Pope Pius IX knew this, how he would rejoice, he, the great devotee of Mary, who raised her Immaculata conceptio to dogma and thus took her out of the ranks of the sinful children of men. (Sächsisches" Kirchen- und Schulblatt.) Also Luther once kept the beautiful melodies, which he found and with which papal idolatrous texts were decorated, but put purely evangelical texts under them. In his preface “auf die lateinischen und deutschen Begräbnißgesänge” (on the Latin and German funeral chants) of 1542, he writes of this: “The chant and the notes are precious, it would be a pity that they should perish; but unchristian and unrhymed are the text or words, which should perish. Therefore we strip such idolatrous, dead and mad texts and strip them out of their beautiful musica and put in place of them the living, holy Word of God to sing, praise and honor it with; so that such beautiful ornaments of musica serve their dear Creator and His Christians in the right way, so that He is praised and honored, but we are driven in the heart by His holy Word with sweet song, improved and strengthened in faith.” (See Luther's Works. Hall. A. Tom. XIV, 414 f. [StL 10, 1427 ff.]) Incidentally, the rationalistic sapless and powerless text of many of the more recent popular church choir hymns is not much better than a papist “Salve regina,” in addition to which the music that is supposed to decorate it is usually either a mindless tinkling, or of a thoroughly unchurchlike character. W. [C. F. W. Walther]

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I can only hope that this is not the case in any LC-MS congregation, but nothing surprises me about them now, especially with their Romanizing tendencies.

WA: “understood by all… read by non-theologians” — the final word on the St. Louis Edition (Part 2 of 2)

      This concludes from Part 1 in a short series on the analysis and judgment of the famous German Weimar Edition of the American St. Louis Edition of Luther's Works. — In the previous segment we heard the Weimar editor use the term "step backward" in regards to the principle structure of the StL in comparison to the critical editions of Erlanger and Weimar. Did he mean to criticize the StL?  Here is his final judgment: 

St. Louis Edition’s overall importance:

With the improved reprinting of the old Walch edition, the edition principles of the 16th-18th centuries were reverted to, earlier than the Erlangen and Weimar editions, in order to present a complete edition of Luther's works that could be understood by all in terms of language and could also be read by non-theologians. In this intention, the St. Louis Edition could certainly claim an independent place next to the Weimar edition published since 1883, which with its sections “Writings” (61 volumes), “Table Talks” (6 volumes), “German Bible” (12 volumes) and “Correspondence” (17 volumes) forms the provisional conclusion of centuries of efforts to collect Luther's literary works and written legacy.

Allow me to repeat the pertinent excerpts from the above. The St. Louis Edition presented

"…a complete edition of Luther's works that could be understood by all in terms of language and could also be read by non-theologians.… [It can] claim an independent place next to the Weimar edition published since 1883"

While the Weimar editor rightly promotes its own great scholarship, nevertheless it "certainly" gives the St. Louis Edition a place next to it. — Just as Walther praised the Weimar Edition when it premiered in Germany, so the Weimar reciprocates with its analysis and praise of the St. Louis Edition.  

      What follows is the full analysis in WA 60, p. 602-606, on the Walch 2 or St. Louis Edition in English. It has the footnotes moved to the end and hyperlinked with return links for ease of navigation. Also hyperlinks directly to references to English translations of Old Missouri Synod writings are furnished.

The DOCX version may be downloaded >> here <<.

      Another quote from the 2018 book of Luther, Martin Luther in Context, edited by David Whitford, summarizes several points made by the Weimar editors, p. 363:

"The St. Louis Walch edition incorporated numerous texts discovered since the first Walch edition as well as updated or new introductions. Aiming to produce an edition accessible to German-speaking Lutherans in America, the organizers preferred to reproduce the Walch edition rather than texts from one of the contemporary critical editions, Erlangen or Weimer (see the following), both of which included untranslated Latin texts. The St. Louis editors also modernized language and spelling. The St. Louis Walch edition was reprinted in Germany in 1986-1987, reflecting a continued interest in translations of Luther’s Latin works."

May English speaking readers of Luther's works now be further encouraged to make use of the new English machine translation of the German language St. Louis Edition. I am. All of my future references, and some past references, to Luther's works will include links to these English translations.

[2025-04-28: So that the text of the above translation can survive the life of this blog, I am adding the full text below after the break:]

Weimar Edition on… the St. Louis Edition, in English (Part 1 of 2)

      Today's Luther scholar's, almost without exception, reference the Weimar Edition of Luther's works (Weimar Ausgabe, WA from Germany) without even mentioning the Walther-Walch St. Louis Edition or Walch2 or W2 or StL, from America. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is the American Edition of Dr. Jaroslav Pelican, where the StL is barely mentioned except in a condescending, critical manner in the introductions and footnotes.  The WA is generally considered a "critical edition", and it is recognized as having the greatest scholarship.  No scholar today wants to be associated with a "popular edition", an edition "for the people" (and scholars).  A current book on Luther's life said of the Weimar that it was: 

"an edition that would be organized chronologically and present Luther’s works in their original languages, without modernization of the text, and according to the oldest available editions. German and Latin works would be included in the same volumes, offering researchers ready insight into Luther’s theological development. Despite the overall commit­ment to chronological presentation, however, the WA was divided into four sections: writings, correspondence, table talks, and German Bible." Martin Luther in Context, p. 364.

But what did the editors (Eike Wolgast and Hans Volz) of the Weimar Edition say about the St. Louis Edition?  Would they be as condescending and critical of the St. Louis Edition as the American Edition has been?  Would they criticize its scholarship?  We find out in volume WA 60 published in 1980.  This volume has surprisingly been uploaded to the Internet Archive and so it was available for OCR processing and online machine translation (DeepL) to make available in English. The following are the main excerpts of its analysis:

St. Louis Edition’s completeness:

Due to the inclusion of many writings that have become known in the meantime and due to the removal of those that were previously printed twice, there is occasionally a shift from volume to volume compared to the original [Walch 1]. … Georg Buchwald's various publications of previously unprinted transcripts of Luther's sermons served as models for the texts not included in Walch's old edition and now included. Volumes 11-13 with the postils have been completely revised. … [House Postils] followed likewise the second edition of the Erlanger edition. In volumes 15-20 with texts on the history of the Reformation, various duplicates have been excluded, and numerous pieces have been re-dated or reprinted according to better models. Like volume 13, volume 21 with the letters is divided into two part volumes to accommodate the new material published since the 18th century. Volume 22, which contains the Table Talks, was also thoroughly edited and enriched by the translation of the Table Talks collections of Lauterbach and Cordatus.

Weimar acknowledged the relative completeness of the St. Louis Edition.

St. Louis Edition’s translation quality:

All texts have been modernized linguistically and orthographically. The numerous and often extensive translations of the first edition, regardless of whether they already existed and were only reviewed and corrected by Walch or whether they were only prepared for his edition, have been partially compared again with the Latin original and the incorrect and inaccurate versions … corrected, incomprehensible expressions replaced by clear ones, complex paraphrases shortened; for the most part, however, the Latin texts were translated completely anew, including such extensive ones as Decem praecepta, Deuteronomium cum annotationibus, Operationes in Psalmos, Interpretation of the Gradual Psalms, both commentaries on the Epistle to the Galatians, Annotationes in aliquot capita Matthaei and De servo arbitrio.

Weimar acknowledged the superior translations of the St. Louis Edition. Because of this superior work, and its modernized language, it made the perfect source for machine translation, not only into English, but into many other languages. No longer are Luther's writing imprisoned in the Latin language, and now German, so unattainable for non-scholars among English speakers.

St. Louis Edition’s scholarship:

…volumes 11-13 with the Postils and volume 22 with the Table Talks, also published in this period, received new prefaces. After [A. F.] Hoppe took over the editorial duties in 1886, he provided the volumes published since then only with short prefaces [p. 606] in which he gave information about the scope of his work, and instead added an introductory, often detailed note to each piece in the text, in which information about the history of origin, earlier individual editions and places of discovery in the previous complete editions was given. While factual notes are generally missing in this edition as well, there are occasional text-critical notes with variants and conjectures from the Erlanger and Weimar editions.

Some of the scholarship of the Erlangen and Weimar Editions was included by the St. Louis editor Hoppe. — The St. Louis prefaces and introductory notes are likely to have better spiritual content than the Weimar because of a higher regard for Holy Scripture, especially verbal inspiration. From Walther to Engelder, the Old German Missouri Synod writings were filled with warnings against German theology's disregard for the Bible. An example of this disregard was pointed out in previous blog posts (here and here), where the comments of Weimar editor F. Cohrs were intended to cause suspicion of Luther’s teaching on Biblical chronology.

St. Louis Edition’s “step backward” principle: good or bad?

…Walch's principle of reproducing Latin texts only in translation is once again adopted, it represents a step backward from the standard established with the Erlangen edition and therefore cannot be compared with the latter in terms of importance; in any case, its intention was by no means of a scholarly nature.

Will the Weimar Edition criticize or praise the St. Louis Edition in its summary judgment?  We find out in the concluding Part 2.

Un8: Unionism & prayer fellowship (Der Luth. 1908); LCMS: Scott Murray, Samuel Nafzger

[2025-05-24: see added note at bottom on Pres. Harrison on this; 2023-12-06: see this site for further helpful links on this subject.]

      This concludes from Part 7 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting an English translation of Walther's "Foreword" on Unionism to the 1871 volume of Lehre und Wehre. — To follow up on the Walther series against Unionism, there was a small blurb in Der Lutheraner on an event in 1908 regarding the practice of prayer fellowship. The occasion was the opening of a new General Synod (a forerunner of today's ELCA) church building in Baltimore where Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopalian officials, even a Jewish Rabbi, were present.  The officiator lamented that a Roman Catholic representative was not present, although a hymn of Cardinal Newman was sung.  This event is a strong reminder of when, in 2001, LCMS Atlantic District President David Benke prayed among an even more eclectic group. — From Der Lutheraner, vol. 64 (1908), p. 111 [EN]:

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Colloquy of Thorn, 1645

      On prayer fellowship with those of other faiths and the remarks on this in No. 3 of Der Lutheraner a pastor of our Synod writes us: "It was very interesting to me when I recently read that our fathers acted just as we do." He then shares a passage from Krasinski's History of the Reformation in Poland about the religious discussion at Thorn in 1645 between Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Reformed, and Herrnhuters [Bohemian Brethren]. The Polish king wanted to reconcile the different church communities of his country in the interest of unionism through this religious discussion. In the report, which we have translated back from English into German [now back to English], it says: "At the general meeting on September 16, the denominations could not agree on the prayer with which each meeting should begin. The Roman Catholics wanted the Bishop of Samogita to read out a prayer at the beginning of each meeting, in which nothing was contained against the teaching of the other denominations, and that all present should repeat it. The Reformed and Herrnhutters agreed to this, but the Lutherans refused to pray together with people from whom they differed in faith." Our reporter adds: "From this it is clear: 1. that we are acting just as the faithful Lutherans of Poland did in 1646; 2. that this desire to pray publicly with false believers and misbelievers is a Reformed, Herrnhutian trait and foreign to the faithful Lutheran Church; 3. that in such indifference not truth, but untruth wins; for here it was Rome that won the day to the mischief of Poland." L. F. [Ludwig Fürbringer]

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Who would deny that Poland is now a Catholic country? — I suspect LCMS scholars will label this report as "apocryphal" or spurious. But Calvinist Krasinski would have little motive to give a false report. — This DL report has been cited in recent years by Profs. Timothy Schmeling of the ELS and John Brug of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary. Brug pointedly contrasts a writing of LCMS VP Scott Murray with the actions of the Lutheran fathers at the Thorn Colloquy in 1645. We quote:

“In a recent issue of LOGIA (Easter 2004 [13-2, p 8]) Scott Murray claimed, 'Our church fathers insisted on beginning with prayer when they participated in theological discussions with the Reformed and Roman Catholics in the seventeenth century. Only when the Catholics demanded to be the only ones to pray did the Lutheran party refuse to pray. More recently the so-called 10-10 meetings between ELCA and LCMS began with chapel in the respective national headquarters.' Does Calov’s report of the colloquy [of Thorn] permit such an interpretation? We will see that it does not.”

Brug also pointed out a similar falsehood that was stated by Dr. Samuel Nafzger:

“In an essay published in the Concordia Journal, July 2003, Samuel H. Nafzger, executive secretary of the Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations, renewed the claim that the LCMS never held a unit concept of fellowship which included prayer on the same level as the means of grace as expressions of church fellowship, though he did grant that some in the LCMS may at times have had such a notion.”

Members of the LC-MS may think that their Synod is not unionistic with the ELCA and others, but their Lutheran fathers would say otherwise.  The ELCA is not Lutheran in their teaching.

[2025-05-24: It has been pointed out elsewhere that Pres. Matthew Harrison also spoke like Dr. Scott Murray on an Issues, etc. program in 2015: 

"I think, however, it’s always been recognized, and I think from the earliest times – and we disagree with the Wisconsin Synod on this – but it’s always been the case from the earliest times of the Lutheran Church that we, at the Colloquy of Thorn, for instance, and in other instances, Reformed, Catholic, and Lutherans came together and they held prayers before sessions, praying for unity. I think that is certainly not inappropriate."]

Harrison can "think" all he wants but he cannot truthfully claim that "it’s always been the case" that true Lutherans prayed with those who did not hold to the Biblical, Confessional, Lutheran faith.

Un7: True Visible Church = True Union Church = the Evangelical Lutheran Church

      This continues from Part 6 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting an English translation of Walther's "Foreword" on Unionism to the 1871 volume of Lehre und Wehre. — We heard Pastor Hermann Fick say earlier in 1847 that "The Lutheran Church does not create a union, it is the union". Here in this 1871 "Foreword" Walther uses this idea continually.

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So why is it that the General Council partly does not want to give a clear answer to the question of whether it excludes all non-Lutherans from its altars and pulpits, partly only too clearly to understand that it does not want to let this freedom be taken away from it, also with errorists, also with members of sects, depending on the circumstances, to cultivate altar and pulpit fellowship? This cannot possibly be a mere inconsistency. Rather, it is evidently due to the unionist spirit that still dominates this body, to the unionist leaven of our time, which it has not yet swept out of itself. The Council, however, wants to hold fast to the doctrine of our Church — although, as can be seen, among other things, from the tolerated chiliasm of its outstanding members, this too in a very modified way — but, like the other American sects, to their own, as to a doctrine which they prefer, not as to the exclusively true one. The Council wants to hold on to the separate existence of our church, but, like the other American sects, to their separate church fellowship, as to the church to which they give preference, not as to the true visible church of God on earth in an unrestricted sense of the word. In fact, the Council rejects the doctrine that in a church there should and can be unity of its members and even of its preachers in all articles of faith. By that the Council rejects that the Lutheran Church has the right of a separate existence. In fact, the Council declares that it was a sinful schism when the Lutheran Church separated from Rome, Zurich and Geneva and erected its separate altars and pulpits to them. The Council is evidently, whether consciously or unconsciously, still caught up in the American view that all fellowships which do not reject the primary fundamental articles of the Christian faith in thesi belong to the orthodox denominations, with whose members one can under certain circumstances, especially if they are not hostile to the teachings of our Church, maintain altar and pulpit, i.e. ecclesiastical, fellowship. The Council still regards confessional exclusivity with the local dissenters [Pastor Brobst] as something sectarian. The Council does not want to sacrifice its reputation of being mildly evangelical, liberal and noble to its Lutheranism. In short, the Council does not want to be a new resurrection of the old Lutheran Church of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was serious about its confession in doctrine and practice, but a new Lutheran Church transformed according to the demands of its time and its country, liberal towards the erring.

Thus, at the beginning of this new volume of the present theological publication [Lehre und Wehre], we must declare that it, as a servant of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the true visible Church of God on earth, must go forth on the path it has taken from the beginning and cannot become the organ of a (page 11) movement which in fact denies that our church is not a sect, not an erring fellowship, not a church party, but the true visible church of Christ on earth, a movement which already stamps the original Lutheran church as a schismatic one by deed, and under the name and banner of the same has set itself the goal of producing a new church of a different spirit. Our church has chosen the Holy Scriptures as the ground on which it stands, and on this it really and truly stands; from this ground it does not depart even one finger’s breadth  ("vel transversum, ut ajunt, unguem"); this is its character, this is its task, this is its blessing for all Christendom, this is its crown, which it will not and cannot let itself be robbed of. If the Church has ever had cause, if she did not want to give herself up, to watch earnestly lest a unionistic spirit should creep in among her, the Church has even more cause for this now, for it is only too evident that Satan, after he has not been victorious in his battle of destruction against the Church through rationalism, has chosen unionism as his last strategic means, and by this means has already handed over whole large Church fellowships finally to the complete unbelief of this last time as its prisoners. True union is indeed the shining goal which Christ has set for His Church for all time, but as long as there is a true Lutheran Church, this goal has already been reached, for the true union is none other than the true Evangelical Lutheran Church. It is this Union that our Lehre und Wehre [Doctrine and Defense] has hitherto endeavored to serve; it is this Union, and this alone, that it intends to serve in the new volume beginning with this issue, so long as it is worthy of God to be in the service of His truth and Church. W. [C. F. W. Walther]

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There is no theologian since the days of Martin Luther who could defend again Unionism and syncretism better than Dr. C. F. W. Walther.  The next best theologian is Dr. Franz Pieper who delivered a convention essay 53 years later, in 1924, to the Oregon-Washington District. That essay was translated in 1980 by Pastor Laurence White (available here) and deserves to be read. Lutherans will then have a clear understanding that their church has the pure Word and so will be able to fend off Satan's "last strategic means"… Unionism. — We could not leave this subject without including a report from the 1908 Der Lutheraner, and the current teaching in the LCMS, in the concluding Part 8.

Un6: Fundamental doctrines, narrow vs. broad sense

      This continues from Part 5 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series presenting an English translation of Walther's "Foreword" on Unionism to the 1871 volume of Lehre und Wehre. — In this installment, Walther gives special effort to intersperse comments into a defense writing of an orthodox Lutheran theologian against a Reformed-leaning theologian.  This was especially important for me as the traps that unionists set can be quite deceiving, even for those who consider themselves strong in faith. I took the time to separate Walther’s comments, in parentheses ( ),  from these writings to aid in my understanding. I learned about the distinction of fundamental doctrines in the narrow sense and the broader sense. 

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V. E. Löscher expresses himself similarly to Musaeus. He, too, recognizes the existence of truly believing Christians in the sects, and nonetheless rejects church fellowship with those who wish to remain in their sect. When in 1719 a theologian from Tübingen, who was of a unionist mind, pointed out in his paper "Die nöthige Glaubens-Einigkeit der protestantischen Kirche" (The Necessary Unity of Faith in the Protestant Church), as proof that one could also cultivate church fellowship with Reformed Christians, firstly that even our strictest theologians did not count the doctrine of the holy sacraments among the fundamental doctrines, and secondly that one could not declare all Reformed Christians under excommunication as unchristian, (page 9) Löscher answered him in a review of this paper: 

"From Hunnius and Hülsemann, he (the author) particularly states that they considered the point of justification by faith alone to be the actual foundation, but especially the doctrine of the sacraments not to be fundamental. But he deliberately does not want to see that sometimes, for good reasons, they take the foundation in the most exact sense, but sometimes in a proper and laudable amplitudine (breadth). The passages they cite refer to the first understanding" 

(to the fundamental doctrines in the narrowest sense, without the knowledge and acceptance of which no saving faith is possible); 

"but otherwise they also confess that all important doctrinal points, everything that the church must conserve, is in a sense" 

(that is, in a broader sense) 

"fundamental, hence they clearly remember the fundamenti organici" 

(the Scripture John 10:35, which cannot be broken at any point) 

"and make all kinds of other distinctions. The Consensus fundamentalis in the first and narrow sense entails nothing more than that one may hope something for the salvation of persons, but certainly no church unanimity. — On the other hand, he" 

(the author of that writing) 

"exaggerates greatly that ours excommunicated, banished, etc., so many thousands of souls of the Reformed. This, however, is entirely false; for we must beware of the church fellowship of the Calvinist-Reformists, and this must be done out of necessity, lest we be infected by them and have to bear their indebtedness before God." (Unschuldige Nachrichten [Innocent News], 1719, p. 890 f.)

But as little as our fathers wished to declare the members of erring fellowships banished by their rejection from our communion, so little did they mean to pronounce a sentence of condemnation upon them. They certainly condemned the errors of them, but not all persons who have them. Here, too, Löscher says:

"The question here is not of the Eventu (success) whether all are condemned who cherish the same" 

(condemned error of absolute predestination) 

"but of the inward duality, and whether this error in and of itself lies under divine doctrinal condemnation." (Ibid. 1733. p. 831.) 

Nor did our fathers declare heretics all those who were in error and with whom they had no church fellowship for the sake of the confession. They made a precise distinction between formal and material heresy, that is, between errors which supply the material for heresies and those which really are heresies, that is, which have become heresies through the attitude of those who cherish them. Thus, for example, Abraham Calov writes: "If a main article of faith, a fundamental dogma, an article from the system of that which is to be believed, is denied or overthrown, then this is materially a heresy; if (page 10) obstinacy is added to it, it is a formal heresy." (System, locc. th. Tom. VIII, 226. s.)

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I am told that in Germany, Calvinism has taken over much of Protestantism at the expense of Lutheranism. And this has happened in the land of Luther!  How could this happen?  Through Unionism. And Walther gives the best defense against this menace. — Walther's stirring conclusion follows in Part 7.